Agra and the Taj!

  Agra, India
Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Today we drove to Agra which took a good 4 hours including a stop on the side of the road to talk to a family making religious necklaces out of wooden beads (each has 108 beads, one for each vice).  We picked up a few and I've been wearing mine ever since! 

The kids with the shirts I gave them

I presume the 2 younger brothers of the family have been wearing the shirts I gave them ever since!

Aladdin's castle?

We drove by Sikandra where Akbar (Mughal emperor) is buried.  It is quite impressive but we are on a tight schedule and move on to "the big one" quickly.  The Taj Mahal... 

The TAJJJJJ

AMAZING!  I discover that it was all built for one lady who was actually the second wife of Shah Jahan, and one of many.  

Classic pic

The greatest display of love, and the recently voted #1 wonder of the world, and he had a harem on the side as well!  The marble inlay work is amazing and the size of the mausoleum is breathtaking.  It's hard not to be in awe and I hardly close my mouth the entire time we are there.  Adjusted for inflation, the estimate is that it would cost $300 billion to build today...

Next, we went to the Red Fort of Agra. 

The Red Fort of Agra

Not only did this fort have an awesome view of the Taj, but the buildings were much more impressive than the similarly titled fort in Delhi.  This is where Shah Jahan was imprisoned by his son in quite a sweet confine.  His son imprisoned him because he thought he had spent too much effort and money on building the Taj, go figure.  Having said that, he had quite the nice prison "cell" in his palace. 

This is one of the best pics of the trip yet!

The fort had a moat with crocodiles, a pit with tigers and capital punishment inflicting elephants to boot!  This complex was possibly equally impressive as the Taj to me.

Given that my Mother Dearest is the coolest of all time, we were able to get our hands on tickets to see the Taj Mahal at night.  For two days on either side of the full moon each month, the Taj is opened for viewing for a limited crowd.  It happened that tonight coincided with the Taj Mahotsav Samiti festival, which meant that the typically tight security turned into more security than I've ever seen!  After getting screened about 8 times it turned out that almost everyone was late (as a result of the festival's traffic jam) and it wound up being just five of us seeing the taj mahal under a full moon! 

The Taj under the moonlight, see it?

While we were limited to staying near the entrance to the building, again with the security, it was still so peaceful and seeing the Taj in the misty moonlight made it look completely fake.  Such a cool experience.