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Published: January 27th 2010
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The main reason why we, and hoards of other people, come to Agra is to see that white thingy, what do you call it, ah, the Taj Mahal! On arriving in Agra we were surprised by how clean the streets were in comparison to other cities - apparently they only clean around the area of the Taj just for us tourists. Although there is a vehicle exclusion zone which initially leads you to think that it may be relaxing to walk around, you soon learn that the lack of vehicles is made up in touts offering you all kinds of rubbish on a stick. I think our favourite item for sale was a snow globe taj mahal. Funny that, we had just been walking around wondering what the Taj Mahal would look like in a snow storm. Thanks to the many thousands pushed in our face that is something we can now picture! Another of our favourites was the small torch, but not just any torch, it lights up a picture of the Taj Mahal, another must buy!!
We went for a walk around the streets surrounding the Taj to plan our trip the next morning at sunrise and got
our first glimpse of the Taj over a wall. The next day we woke up early to go see the Taj but as we were leaving, delhi belly took over and we went back to bed for the day running between the toilet and bed, fun times.
After recovering from that, we got up early the next morning and joined the queue to buy tickets for the Taj. We could've paid someone extra to skip the queue and buy us tickets but by doing this, it only meant we could join the next queue waiting for the doors to open so although others were tricked into it we really didnt see the point. Eventually, we got in to see the Taj and it was much more than we expected, we were totally blown away by it. Its bigger than you think, gleaming white, and so perfect. It was built by Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan in memory of his favorite wife, Mumtaz Mahal. Its symmetrical in every way except for when the emperor himself died, he was buried by his son beside Mumtaz. The sad part for the emperor was that very soon after its completion, he was imprisoned by
his son in Agra fort nearby, where his window view was of the Taj Mahal. It is said that it took up to 22 years to complete the whole complex using marble and precious stones such as sapphire, jade, turqoise, crystal and more. Some people say that the Taj Mahal is a testament to love, but considering what it took to build, perhaps a testament of madness. It's estimated at having cost 500m dollars in todays money to build. However, amazingly enough this is not the most expensive thing built by Shah Jahan. He had a throne built, known as the peacock throne, which had many precious stones such as rubies, emeralds, pearls and diamonds. In fact, a diamond known as the koh-i-nor which was 105 carats was in the throne. However the throne was lost at some point and the koh-i-nor diamond was eventually seized by the East India Trading company and ended up as part of the British Crown Jewels. Anyways,we spent the morning watching the Taj change colour with the sunrise and hopefully we got some good pictures of the Taj, god knows we took enough of them! We had a hard time choosing pictures again so
Finally.....
The Taj Mahal at sunrise look don't forget about page 2.
Finally after a few hours, we left the Taj to have breakfast.....overlooking the Taj of course! But the day was only just beginning. We rented a cycle rickshaw who took us to see Agra Fort. We saw the view that Shah Jahan would've had of the Taj Mahal, however we never found out why his son imprisoned his father here....maybe an argument over spending all his inheritance on a billion dollar chair???
Our lovely rickshaw guy had waited around for us hoping to get our business again and he brought us home where we rested for a bit (after Garry got kicked out of the cycle rickshaw and had to walk part of the way while lady muck Carol got pushed uphill), before taking an auto rickshaw out to see the baby Taj, the tomb of Itimad-Ud Dajlah who is the grandfather of Mumtaz from the Taj Mahal. The baby Taj was built first and was apparently some of the inspiration behind the real Taj Mahal, and seeing the baby Taj you can really see the resemblance. After seeing this, we went to a garden to get a view of, yep, you
guessed it, the Taj Mahal at sunset where we took way too many photos again but its just so hard not to. Again it was amazing, but we were thankful we made the effort to see the Taj Mahal at sunrise as the crowds at sunset were crazy.
We finished the day with a fantastic meal at a place recommended by some english friends of ours, Joneys. As Tom and Frances had told us, there is something special about ordering a meal and then the staff run to the markets to buy the food fresh. This was not the last time we came here before leaving Agra.
Next and last day in Agra we took a day trip out to another Shah Jahan built wonder, Fatepur Sikri, built for three of his wives, who were muslim, christian and hindu so he had large temples built for each. The city was soon abandoned due to water supply problems but makes for a fabulous day tour. The scams are never ending though. We organised a taxi to bring us here and we were told there would be no other charges. But of course when we got there, we stopped to
see a friend of our taxi driver who was conveniently a rickshaw driver who could take us up to Fatepur Sikri for a good rate as it was way too far to walk of course. We decided we'd try the walk and amazingly enough, it was only 5 minutes away, funny that!
Through all the scams and touts, Agra remains a must do on the tourist route of India, it's worth it all!
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Shaun
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Love the Taj pic, Sounds and looks like you are still having fun. Not much going on here at work. People leaving in droves. Stay having fun bloke Abes