Agra & The Taj Mahal

08/06/2013

We were up at 04:30 to meet the driver at 05:00 to go to the Taj Mahal.  Due to the early start I slept terribly as always dreaming that we’d got picked up in the wrong car and were going to the wrong place and had lost our driver or we had overslept.  Plus my standard sleep walking around the room fiddling with things and waking Will up to deal with my imaginary problems.  As I went into the bathroom for a morning wee the presence of the log reminded me that unfortunately wasn’t a dream and we still had to get it round the U-bend.  Luckily the water must have softened it in the night so one bucket of water had him away.

The driver was already outside waiting.  One of the guys offered to carry my bag down the treacherous 3 steps but I assured him I could handle it myself and proved this by struggling, grunting and almost dropping it down the stairs.  But I’ll keep my 20 rupees!  (That’s about 25p.  Worth it).  We headed off to pick up our guide and I couldn’t believe how many people were around at 5am!  Most of the local shops were open and people were out on bikes.  Once we picked up our guide we drove round to the entrance of the gardens before the Taj Mahal and it was teeming with people playing badminton and cricket and sitting around chatting like it was a Saturday afternoon!  I’m guessing they get up early to enjoy being outside before the heat gets too unbearable.  The gardens were also filled with rhesus monkeys with their babies and loads of stray dogs and chipmunks.  It always amuses me how fundamentally different the cartoon chipmunks in Alvin and the Chipmunks look to the real life ones.  There are no similarities whatsoever.  It’s like they took a chipmunk and changed everything about it then still called the cartoon ‘chipmunks’ for no other reason than to annoy those that know what a chipmunk looks like and care enough about trivial things such as children’s cartoons when you’re an adult in their late twenties to let it bother them.   

 Look how many people are just chilling in the park at 5am!!!!

A real life chipmunk.....

The popular cartoon show, Alvin and The Chipmunks.  As you can see, an uncanny resemblance to really aid children in identifying animals

As it was so early there was no queue to get into the Taj Mahal so we walked straight in.  At first there was a courtyard area to walk through which brought you out through the north gate.  When you catch sight of the Taj Mahal it is as impressive as it appears in photos and on the TV, there’s been no photoshopping or post production enhancements to make it look brighter or grander than it actually is.  It is naturally a spectacular sight.  When you think how quickly a magnolia wall gets dirty it’s amazing that it is still so pristinely white after nearly 400 years! 

As we walked through the gardens our guide set us up in some brilliantly awkward and precise poses for some photos.  They scream ‘natural’ like he just caught us chilling out and taking in the view....

 Will could barely get his leg in this position but there was no room for suggestion, the man had a vision

The classic tourist shot, it's like pretending to push the Leaning Tower of Pisa, it must be done so no point fighting it

The Taj Mahal is made from the finest marble which deflects light allowing it to appear to glow.  It has carvings all over it and it is also decorated with small, coloured flowers made from semi-precious stones from all over the world from China to Belgium.  Each piece of the flower was hand carved taking around 2hrs to complete each piece and each flower is made up of 70 pieces.  The marble is then filed away and the pieces were glued into place.  I must take off my hat (I was actually wearing one at the time as you can see) to the glue manufacturer who has kept stones attached to marble in 40° heat for nearly 400 years.  I tried sticking a pendant back on a necklace once and it lasted a day. 

The guide explained how the design came from 7 different design ideas taking parts from each one; the main dome from Turkey, the 4 smaller domes are Muslim from Afghanistan the arches in the walls Egyptian and the 4 towers have completely slipped my mind.  I can’t for the life of me remember the origin of these and it’s driving me insane!  I’ve even tried looking it up online and can’t find it.  The towers were build at a 92° angle away from the building so if they ever fell they’d fall away from it and not into it.  Smart!  You wouldn’t want to be the guy that rocked up to work to build the tower slightly hung-over one day and your shoddy workmanship got you be-headed for destroying the Taj Mahal!

It was built for Queen Mumtaz Mahal (‘Taj’ meaning ‘crown’) by the King at her request.  After popping out 13 kids she died in childbirth with the 14^th (died in childbirth/lost the will to live having squeezed out enough children for a premier league football tip plus subs.  ‘Squeezed’ probably wasn’t the right word….).  On her deathbed she gave her husband her final wishes.  I’d have thought ‘look after the kids, be happy, remember me but move on, don’t give the kids too much junk food and don’t forget to unblock the gutters in autumn.’  But this chick had a different idea.  Her demands were as follows;

1)      You are not to ever re-marry!

2)      You must build me a huge memorial building that will house my body

3)      It must be the 7^th Wonder of the World

Understandable demands.  Not at all over the top.  14 kids is a lot and deserves some credit but a 120,000,000,000 rupee building taking 22,000 slaves 22 years to build was quite a high demand!  (Maybe that’s why they don’t have toilet roll, their taxes are still through the roof to pay off this bill!)

Inside the Taj is just one room with a carved barrier protecting the tomb of the Queen.  Next to her, disconcertingly off centre, is the tomb of the King.  Quite a kick in the balls to just be chucked into his wife’s shrine you might think?  True.  He had wanted to build himself a black Taj Mahal over the other side of the river for when he died.  But for whatever reason (maybe thinking that 120,000,000,000 rupees could be spent more wisely on maybe surveying the need for bin-men and increasing the standard required to pass a driving test) his son took unfavourably to his Father’s idea and threw him in prison instead so he couldn’t build it.  To rub salt in the wound he imprisoned him in Agra fort in a room which painfully overlooks the Taj Mahal so he could see everyday what he would never have for himself.  (I bet he painfully scrutinised his parenthood in that cell, “damn those  educational’ toys I got him for Christmas. Always go for the latest short-lived fad.  Stupid. Stupid!”)

It's a hazy day but you can make out the Taj in the distance

On the east and west side of the Taj are two identical buildings; to the east is a guest house and to the west is a mosque, both built out of red sandstone. 

It was definitely worth getting up so early for.  Firstly for the colour the rising sun gave the building, secondly for the peaceful tranquillity of only a few other tourists (except the rude little jerk sweeping outside that told me to ‘move’ so he could sweep the leaves by my feet.  They’ll still be there in 15 seconds time jackass!  I pointed out how much it costs people to visit this place and he wants to wind his neck in.  Clearly ‘wind your neck in’ was not lost on a lower-class Indian lad speaking English as a second language, not at all) and thirdly for the fact you could enjoy the place without the unbearable heat!  It’s obvious why it’s one of the wonders of the world.  Its an incredible example of superb craft-man-ship and very beautiful to behold.  I’m very glad I’ve been able to see it myself.  

As it was only 7am we went back to the hotel for breakfast and a quick nap.  Will reminded me why he’s not authorized to have alarm duties as he always turns it off and we oversleep! 

When we got outside 6 stray dogs were all lying underneath the car taking shade from the sun.

We went to see Agra Fort which is where the British Army were based when we had control of India and, of course, where the King was imprisoned by his son.

After that we were taken to where they made the stones that were used in the Taj Mahal.  It’s a very slow process to make each piece and is a skill only passed down from Father to son.  The items they made (and tried to sell us) were very nice but I don’t think my 23kg luggage allowance would give me room to bring back a coffee table….We settled for a magnet instead.

This concluded our visit to Agra, there wasn’t really anything else left to see. 

We wanted to go to ‘Ghost Town’ on the way to Jaipur which was the old capital city and when it was moved to Delhi everyone just upped and left and left the place empty!  Our driver (after a lot of repeating and over pronunciation to get him to understand where we wanted to go despite the Tourist Information dude telling us he’d take us there) he said it wasn’t empty at all but very busy.  He clearly wasn’t keen to go there and his English conveniently deteriorated when we tried to argue with him so we gave up.  If there are people living there then I’m happy not having gone as it was a 50km detour on an already long journey but if he lied to us I’ll not be able to do much about it except curse him strongly and send him bad thoughts.