Our hotel, while having a great view of the Taj Mahal was also facing the road where cars, rickshaws, motorbikes etc spent most of the night honking their horns (did I mention the horn honking?), and started again in early morning shortly after the call to prayer at the local mosque ... Therefore we were ready in plenty of time in the morning to meet our guide. The reason I was so excited to see the Taj Mahal was because when we were in India before we didn't get a chance to visit and it's something I've wanted to see for years. Sometimes when you feel like that about something, when you actually do or see it, it's a disappointment, but the experience lived up to my expectations!
Built entirely from white marble, this building was the most magnificent of all Shah Jahan's creations and took 22 years to construct. Built as a monument to his favourite wife, Mumtaz Mahal, the name Taj Mahal - "Crown Palace" - perfectly describes it. As you walk through the first gate you glimpse the whole building in miniature through the arch of the main 30m sandstone gateway. Passing through the gateway, the ornamental gardens are laid out leading to the Taj Mahal which sits on a raised platform at the top. It is impossible to describe the inlay work and decoration of the marble, suffice to say it is the best craftsmanship I have ever seen. Again, everything is perfectly symmetrical and walking around the site - with our shoe protectors on - there is a sense of stillness and majesty that is timeless.
Of course you can't go abroad and not be taken around the handicraft shops! At the 'U. P. Handicrafts Palace' we watched and learned how the craftsmen shape the precious stones and etch the patterns into marble to create the wonderful inlay work that can be seen on the Taj Mahal. Apparently these craftsmen were direct descendants of the workers who created the Taj ... well maybe they were or maybe they weren't but they were certainly very skilled and after a good look round, we emerged with our pockets lighter and our baggage heavier!
This time we remembered to speak to our guide about lunch! There seem to be little restaurants dotted around India that are especially for tourists. They sell traditional Indian food - India tourists use them as well - and because the guides are confident about them you feel that it is safe to eat there.
After a quick and tasty curry we got in the car and crossed the extremely rickety bridge over the river and made our way to the Agra Fort. As we drove across the bridge we looked down onto the river and saw people farming! The river ebbs and flows seasonally around the monsoon, so in the dry season the river gets low and exposes very fertile land suitable for growing vegetables etc. We saw little huts where people obviously live while they are farming. Just before the monsoon they gather their last harvest and move off the river before the monsoon comes and floods the river.
The Agra Fort is made of a mixture of red sandstone - built by Emperor Akbar in 1565 and - white marble - added by Emperor Shah Jahan (Akbar's grandson) during his reign. The original purpose of the fort was for military use but Shah Jahan made it into a palace and so there are many halls, rooms and ornamental gardens, all with their own character and style. However it is the romance of the place that for me gives it a special character. After the death of his wife Mumtaz Mahal, Shah Jahan's one aim in life was to complete the building of the Taj Mahal. After its completion, his son Aurangzeb, seized power and imprisoned his father in the white marble octagonal tower in the fort. It is said that Shah Jahan looked at his beloved Taj Mahal every day from his window, and when he was too weak to go to the window, he managed one last glimpse of the tomb reflected in a mirror as he took his last breath...
Crossing back over the river we paid a visit to the 'Baby Taj' - the nickname for Itimad-ud-Dualah's tomb. As most people visit Agra for the day to see the Taj and the Agra Fort, not many people make the trip to see the the Baby Taj and so we more or less had the place to ourselves. This monument again follows the symmetrical Mughal design and was the first structure to be built from marble. The decoration on this tomb is more prolific than the Taj - almost every surface is covered with colourful inlay work and you could spend ages there admiring it. It also overlooks the river so we spent some time relaxing and trying to coax the chipmunks to stay still long enough to get a photo of them!
Returning to the hotel it was too late to sit by the pool so I visited the bookshop instead. I had already read the book I bought at the airport so I tried to talk the shopkeeper into making a part exchange, but the he wasn't having any of it. I'm not surprised. The book I was offering was some pop fiction novel, however his shop was filled with serious looking cultural books and coupled with the fact that it was a shop based in a Taj hotel, the book I was trying to palm off on him obviously wasn't classy enough! In his one shelf of novels I found this fantastic book called "Taj" by Colin De Silva. It is a fictional account of the life of Shah Jahan (based on known facts and real places) and was the perfect book to take on my journey through Rajasthan.
