Taj Mahal and Environs
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Gas is $1.30 per liter or approx. $5 per gallon.
Auto insurance doesn’t get raised for an accident. There are a lot of signs about drinking and driving but guide said if you had an accident you run away, pretend someone else was driving and come back for your car in the morning
Upon
arriving in Delhi, we once again boarded buses for our 4-hour drive to
Agra. Our new guide once again provided
us with many interesting facts.
Delhi
has a population of 25 million people (2nd largest in the world
after Tokyo) with 7 million autos, mopeds and scooters. There is a new rule that will take affect
soon and any car older than 15 years must be scrapped. This is to prevent breakdowns along the road
resulting in worse traffic jams as well as added pollution…
There
are many green spaces (parks in Delhi) with many monkeys living in them. We saw monkeys walking down the sidewalk near
the park in the city.
The
two things that struck me along the way were the amount of agricultural land…we
passed nothing but farms for at least three hours of our drive. The second was the haze and smoke in the
air. This comes from both the burning of
crops at the end of the season as well as the brick kilns all along the road. The guide did say that this was the worst
time of the year for the haze.
49%
of the people in India still make their living in agriculture. Mustard was one of the major crops that we
passed along the way and mustard oil is in great demand in India…once as cooking
oil but still plays a part in their culture. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mustard_oil
We
finally reached Agra just after dark.
The traffic was horrible and Chris’s description definitely conveys a
feel for what we saw:
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Typical street scene |
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Truck overloaded with bricks |
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Local street scene. |
We
arrived at our hotel around 6 PM…the Jaypee Palace Hotel. It is a 5 star hotel and quite spectacular
and in sharp contrast to the surrounding areas.
It was gated, with guards and before a car was allowed to enter, a
mirror on wheels was slid beneath it to check for bombs. India is very security conscious because of
the many terrorist attacks that have taken place in recent years, the most
recent being a train bombing in May 2014; they are especially worried about
terrorist attacks/bombings at their most iconic sites like the Taj Mahal.
We
had a great buffet dinner at the hotel and went to bed early as we were
departing at 6 AM the next morning to experience sunrise at the Taj Mahal.
The
next morning we got up and had coffee and pastries before embarking on the 1.5
mile journey to the Taj Mahal…but even at that hour the trip took probably at
least 30 minutes, again passing the weddings…this time just ending after all
night celebrations. Once at the parking
lot we were loaded into small electric cars to continue our journey as no
polluting vehicles are allowed within 500 meters of the Taj Mahal. We were dropped off close to one of the gates
and once again stood in separate male/female lines while we waited for the gate
to open and to go through security. Our
guide had told us that many items were prohibited and thus he told us what we
“could” take rather than list all the items we couldn’t take. A still camera was okay but no video and no
extra batteries, no tripods. We could
take a bottle of water. Chris of course
tried to take a small flashlight that our guidebook suggested (to demonstrate
the translucence of the Taj’s marble), but that was confiscated in security and
given to our bus driver and later returned to him.
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Taj Mahal at Sunrise |
Construction
took 20 years and 20,000 workers including sculptors, stonecutters and
inlayers. Building materials were
gathered from all over India and Asia and 1000 elephants were used in
transporting the materials needed including pure white marble (Makena, from a
region hundreds of kilometers away), but also the 28 precious and semi precious
stones including jade, sapphires, turquoise, that are inlaid in the marble. In fact, this technique of inlaid marble is
still a specialty of the area. Chris
went to the marble store and watched a demonstration of this hand technique and
we are now the proud owners of a marble inlaid plate.
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Mosque at Taj Mahal |
In front of the buildings are beautiful gardens with flowers and trees
(full of parrots). Cross-shaped
waterways intersect the gardens, but didn’t have water when we were there. There are a number of other buildings in the
complex also. A curious site was watching all the monkeys climbing and scooting
about the buildings, and with all the babies hanging on to their fast-moving
mothers.
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Monkeys at Taj Mahal |
The
main building contains the tombs of the “beloved wife” in the center of the
building, but also the tomb of Shah Jahan off to the side, which destroys the
symmetry of the building. Their actual tombs were underneath the building with
its memorial marble tombs. The guide told us there is a bit of an interesting
story to this.
Shah
Jahan had two children by his first two wives but after marrying Mumtaz Mahal
supposedly remained faithful to her. Of
the 14 pregnancies she bore, only 7 produced surviving children. She also had great power as his wife, and was
an important advisor for her husband.
After her death, he was quite distraught and after building the Taj
Mahal in her memory, the story is that it saddened him to view it. When he became ill in 1658, the oldest of his
sons by Mumtaz assumed rule, which angered his brothers. After a lot of intrigue, the third son, Aurangzeb won out and even though his father recovered, he
declared him incompetent and imprisoned him in Agra fort (more on this later)
where he remained a prisoner for 8 years until his death. His prison in the fort allowed him a view of
the Taj Mahal in the distance (see the picture below later in the post.) The story is that this was done to “torture
him”. And upon his death, Aurangzeb had
him placed next to his wife in the Taj Mahal in such a way as to purposely
destroy the symmetry of the setting.
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Local color |
We returned to our hotel for breakfast and a
choice of other excursions. We chose to
visit Fatehpur Sikri (also known as the deserted city). The journey took a bit over an hour but also
allowed us a great opportunity to view the surrounding areas (please excuse the
quality of some photos as they were taken through the window of a moving bus
with not very clean windows).
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Stacked cow paddies drying |
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Roadside shops |
Fatehpur Sikri was founded in 1569 by the third Mughal emperor Akbar and was the capital from 1571 to 1585. Akbar was the grandfather of Shah Jahan who built the Taj Mahal. Akbar decided to shift his capital to this location to honor a Sufi saint Salim Chishti. The multiple buildings that make up this “city” are constructed of red sandstone.
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Fatehpur Sikri Courtyard |
Among the buildings of the Fatehpur Sikri are residences purportedly for the three wives, a mosque, a Hall for Public
Audiences and a Hall for Private audiences, a treasury building, the
Astrologer’s seat and in the center of the courtyard a Pachisi Court…squares
marked out for a game.
More about Akbar can be found at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akbar
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Entrance to Agra Fort |
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Marble Inlay |
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View of Taj Mahal from "Prison" |
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Hotel decorated for wedding. |
We got up at 4 AM the next morning for
breakfast and left the hotel at 5 AM for the drive to the airport in Delhi and
our flight to Goa to re-board the ship.
Unfortunately we didn’t get to see much of Goa
other than the bus ride from the airport to the ship. Goa is the smallest state in India and supposed
to have beautiful beaches….maybe we will need to visit again in the future.
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