Thursday 25 January
Agra – Taj Mahal, the Resplendent Immortal Teardrop on the Cheek of Time!
We got up very early to catch a 6am bus to get the Taj Mahal at sunrise. It was so beautiful (duh) and a lot larger than you think from pictures. You also never really see the gardens & side buildings – a mosque, a guest house (17th c Motel 6) that flank the Taj, two other smaller buildings, and an elaborate entry gate. There are lots of workers who keep it immaculate.
The Taj Mahal is the burial tomb of the “beloved” wife of Shah Jahan, the grandson of Akbar the Great. She died in 1631 having her 14th child (I guess he really DID love her, yikes!), and was buried someplace else for 22 years while he had thousands of workers construct the tomb. It’s all marble-faced, most of it elaborately carved with flowers & geometric designs, and vast sections inlaid with semiprecious stone like lapis. The workers who did the inlay still live in Agra (well, their descendents I should say) and their work is famous all over.
We came back to the hotel about 9 for breakfast & a nap, then went back about 4 to see e Tajit in the afternoon light – a much warmer look. At 6:30 there weren’t too many people there, but in the afternoon it was packed – families lounging on the grass or on the flat walkway around the Taj, lovers, tourists of all nationalities, mostly Indians though.
I read on a sign that in 1810 an Englishman came up with the idea of tearing the Taj down to salvage the marble. Wow! What a concept. Fortunately he didn’t get very far with his plan.
When you enter any historical site in India you have to go through a security line – actually there are two, one for “ladies” and one for “gents.” (How English is that?) the ladies’ line ends up in a screened-off area so strangers won’t get a thrill watching you being frisked. How different is that from the bathing pool at the temple where the women were wandering around half naked?
Speaking of contradictions, someone in our group took a great picture – two signs right next to each other, one saying “Remove shoes here,” and the other “Do not remove shoes here.” That’s India all wrapped up in one image.
A few interesting things. Mothballs in the sink drains to keep bathroom smells down – or to overpower them actually. Women in saris wearing helmets over their scarves as they zip in & out of traffic on motorscooters. Vendors shouting “hallo, hallo!” to get your attention – again very british. Children putting together the fingers of one hand and moving it toward their mouth over & over to indicate that they want money for food. No concept of littering as a bad thing – no public receptacles and everything just gets dropped. You may remember the ad with the American Indian with a tear on his cheek, if he were an Indian from around here he’d be sobbing.
The honking on the road drives you nuts but it’s actually a polite beep-beep rather than our angry ho-o-o-n-n-n-k-k-k. The driver uses it to warn the person in front that they’re back there. Trucks even have signs painted on the back that say Honk Please. I don’t know why no one can use a rear-view mirror! And considering all the traffic on the road, the honking, although polite, is continuous. I thought that our bus honked about every minute, then started counting between honking “events” to confirm it. Turns out that the longest he ever went was 16 seconds. Multiply by everything on the road & you can imagine.
Smells are really loud here too. Incense, food cooking, animal “waste,” the crush of other people, public “bathrooms” that are just a u-shaped square faced by a wall – no water it seems, not to mention cows, dogs, goats, and monkeys wandering loose.
None of this compares to the loud colors though – the women’s saris are beautiful! Spangly, or with stripes or fancy borders, or all three at once. Flowers for sale everywhere to offer in the temples – very bright colors like marigolds & that deep purple cockscomb? lion’s something? And since most folks are vegetarians, vegetable stands everywhere full of red & yellow & green. Their carrots are red by the way not orange like ours.
Thanks for listening!
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