Day 45 - Nov. 29 - Good-bye Nepal, headed home

Faithful waiting for the high-ranking lama to arrive

Faced with a day of sitting - in airports and airplanes - I opt to take the hotel’s Heritage Walk with Aman.  It’s the same kind of walk as the first day with Rup, but in a different direction (at least I think it is) and with different explanations.  The narrow streets part is similar, but Aman takes me into the bahas, the courtyards running between streets.  Much quieter and no vehicles, with at least one small temple for offerings in each.  A space used to wash clothes, to dry clay pottery and let the children play safely.
       We walk through the fruit and vegetable market - several, actually - and Aman explains the vegetables I don’t recognize, such as a prickly cucumber they use for pickles... the same family.  Americans need “pretty” fruit, so they’d be disappointed here, but all I’ve eaten has been delicious.  Given Nepal’s different altitudes, and resulting different climates, there’s little they need to import.  Everything from corn (maize) to pineapples to cabbage to pomegranates grows here.  Wheat and rice. 

Goalamari

       At one temple there’s much activity because a high lama is expected; people are waiting, seated, or having free tea and whatever passes for cookies here.  On another street, Aman stops at his herbal doctor’s shop, where the shaman is treating a woman’s leg with some black paste, then taping it up.  (No photos allowed so his trade secrets, handed down from his ancestors, will be safe.)
       Aman buys some freshly fried goalamari (phonetically spelled from what I heard him call it), little balls of rice flour cooked crisp in a wok of boiling oil.  Just a few minutes is all it takes.  The lady drops them in, then flips them over, and presto!  A gift for the ladies behind the hotel counter, but they give me one to taste.
       While I’m finishing breakfast, Rup arrives.  I give him my jeans, socks and walking shoes.  He’ll find them a new home.  Then a lovely surprise:  he and Aman sit with me for nearly an hour and we just talk.  They have made all the difference on this visit to Nepal, with their knowledge and kindness.  I’ll miss them.
       But it’s off to the airport.  After almost seven weeks, the next bed I sleep in will be my own!  Paris, here I come!

Kathmandu from the plane window

Day 46 - Saturday, Nov. 30 - Paris

Arrive in Paris at 6 a.m.  The pilots made up time for our late start.  Nine hours is too long to be sandwiched in the dark in a middle seat between two big guys who never had to pee; that’s all I’m going to say about that.
       Nice conversation with the cab driver who is from Martinique.  He drops me at my door.
       Bed!  Sitôt dit, sitôt fait.  (No sooner said than done.)  I don’t remember my head hitting the pillow.

Day 44 - Thursday, Nov. 28 - Everest

I’m up before the wake-up call and downstairs early.  The ride to the airport is a short one at 5:30 a.m., before traffic.  The guide explains the procedure and deposits me before the security check.  After a minute or so wondering, I realize he meant I should go through to the second security check right away.  Verification at Buddha Airlines, boarding pass in hand, and I’m off to Gate 1 for flight 100.  When I get to the gate, they’re already boarding (well, on the bus to the plane).  Whew!  Close call!
       There are 18 rows on this two-engine ATR-72 prop plane and I’m in the last row.  Four seats across, with a central aisle, but only the window seats are sold, so there are 36 of us about to see a fantastic sight:  miles of Himalayas.  In spite of some clouds, we take off and climb above the white.  This is my 13th flight, not to Delhi to change for Paris, but an added one to... Mount Everest, the highest peak on the planet.

Sagarmatha aka Mt. Everest

       Once the peaks start coming, we look at the mountain silhouette crib sheet the staff has handed out and try to identify them.  The two stewardesses patrol to help name them; the first they point out is Gaurishankar, Nepal’s holy mountain, a respectable 7,134 m (23,406 ft).  Next to it, the flat-topped Melungtse, a few meters taller.  Then just more and more of them, all snow-capped, with steep green mountainsides tumbling down into cloud-filled valleys.  Another and another and another, until... Sagarmatha - Nepali for the very descriptive “forehead in the sky”.  (Everest was the name of the Welsh surveyor who charted much of the subcontinent.)  The world’s highest mountain at 8,848 m (29,028 ft), and growing five centimeters (2") each year.  Its triangular peak coyly plays hide-and-seek behind a small cloud.  We are either very lucky or truly blessed because the French guests at the hotel did this on Monday and only saw one-third of it.
       Each of us gets a chance to go up to the cockpit for a minute, for a broad-screen view of what we see in bits and pieces from our windows.  (I have two!)  It all reminds me of my dear friend Jean-Jacques Languepin (aka Gigi), child of the French Alps, pilot, cameraman, mountain-climber who was nearby once scaling and filming Nanda Devi (west of here on the India border).  I still miss him, and I admit my eyes tear up.  All of a sudden I can feel him sitting next to me, just smiling, or maybe giving that little chuckle of his.  I didn’t think, until now, that I was doing this for him, but somewhere in the back of my mind, he paved the way.
       We can’t fly around Everest; the other side is in Tibet - now a part of China - and we’d be shot down, so... A sharp bank, and the movie plays in reverse until we land back at tiny Kathmandu’s one runway.

On the way home, lower mountains where roads and towns cling to mountainsides

My last afternoon here I decide to stop being a wimp and foray out on my own.  The palace museum and the Garden of Dreams are not far from the hotel.  Sure, the streets in this neighborhood are small and winding and have no name signs, so I could easily get lost.  Sure, the people, motorists and bikers alike, drive with what I could glibly call abandon, and I might get crushed, especially with bloody few sidewalks to afford refuge.  But let’s try it, map in pocket.  I head out one way and will come back another.

       Narayanhiti Palace was built in 1969, replacing the previous one, destroyed in an earthquake... yet another.  It’s now a museum, so I was expecting artwork.  But no.  The palace - no longer used by the king - has become its own museum, mothballed in time.  Which may explain why I’m the only European here, and also the tallest person around, man or woman.  This is something the Nepalis come to see and visibly they can’t imagine why I’m here.  No cameras or smartphones are allowed; you have to check them at the entrance.  And security does frisk you.  (Always a separate line for ladies, with a female guard.)
       What I’ve seen in front of temples and pagodas I see here on the entrance steps, but a more modern version:  on either side, a fish, then a peacock, then a horse, and an elephant, and finally a lion.
       The building isn’t pretty, the furnishings are nice but not ostentatious by Western standards, except for the scepters and dinnerware.  And for the king’s golden throne, rife with snakes (on the armrests and on the back) and the feet being lions standing on elephants’ backs.  Sadly, there are dead animal heads on the walls and whole stuffed dead animals attacking you from beyond taxidermy:  tigers, bears, deer....  The ground floor was either living quarters for visiting heads of state or reception and banquet rooms; the royal family lived upstairs.  And what a grand horseshoe staircase that is... a wet dream of a banister to slide down, if only there were no guards.  With a huge sitting Buddha at the top, sandwiched between vases of rather tired peacock feathers.  And a stained glass peacock window at the bottom to let in lots of light.
       (A linguistic highlight:  a sign by some folding chairs saying “for elderly and differentlyabled”, the latter in one word.)

The Garden of Dreams

       Then a quick look at where the former king and crown prince were assassinated in 2001, an even newer building behind the palace, which was “dismantled “ (read “emptied out”).  The garden behind that is pretty simple, nothing to write home about, so I decide to go down the street to The Garden of Dreams.

       Again, a different (higher) price for “non-Nepali” visitors, but still reasonable.  Smaller than I’d expected, it’s filled with young chipmunks and people on smartphones.  All the gardeners I see are women working hard to keep things colorful in the now-dry season.  And there’s a huge building of about 20 stories being built just behind the garden; I can’t help but wonder if that’s wise in an earthquake-prone land.  (The waiter at the café tells me it’s a hotel, and shares my concern.)  I sit at a table and have a mocktail, a Tipsy Guava:  guava juice, ginger and lime all frothed up.  Delicious.

       On my way out, an elderly man asks to speak to me.  We’d smiled at each other in passing in the street pre-palace visit, and here he is again.  Turns out he runs a magazine and wants to interview me!

       Then back to the hotel for dinner and some delicious fried cashews to take with me tomorrow on my flight... home to Paris!

Day 43 - Wednesday, Nov. 27 - Nepal

Another breakfast at the low traditional tables.  Apparently neither the French nor the Germans like them.  We Americans do, I’m told, but we only make up about 15% of the hotel’s clientele, so we always have a choice of where we want to sit.  In addition to other ecological facettes of this hotel, the honey here is fresh from the comb and the marmalade is homemade.

Changu Narayan

       Rup picks me up before 10 and we’re off to not-Kathmandu.  Off to the east, past the airport.  On the way, he explains a bit about his country.  Kathmandu lies near its center and benefits from agriculture, industry and tourism.  The eastern region offers more economic opportunities than the west, which is more cultural but has more unemployment.  Many people there go to India to work.  So it’s in the west that the Maoists are most powerful, now even holding a few seats in Parliament.  But there is still some unrest and so some U.N. forces have stayed since 2006.  The king is now just a figurehead and the President is a “rubber stamp”.  Power lies with the Prime Minister.  (Nepal is a three-branch government, like the U.S.:  executive, legislative, judicial.)
       Outside the city we soon see farms.  Many grow that yellow flowing plant I saw the other day in India; Rup says it’s mustard seed.  Our road twists and turns upward, with each turn seeming to leave the road narrower.  Here the hills are terraced.  In several places I see haystacks; it’s harvest time, including for rice.  Birds are everywhere, so scarecrows are too.  In one field I see a man molding clay into bricks.

       And when we get to Changu Narayan, the oldest pilgrimage site of the Kathmandu Valley (3rd c), I see why Rup’s brought me here.  Especially as it’s now a World Heritage Site.  The 2015 earthquake left devastation everywhere and rebuilding is still on-going.  The Hindu temple dedicated to Vishnu has been repaired but other monuments are still broken and others are totally destroyed.  One statue is of a kneeling woman and has no head.  I thought it was lost in the quake, but actually it’s a goddess who beheaded herself to offer up her blood!  (Actually almost all the statues in Nepal are splattered with color and blood from sacrifices... but not of heads.)
       As we reach the temple, a monk is sweeping the slates in front of the temple and a young woman (!) is seated, beating the drum rhythmically for a ceremony.  The monk runs the tourists off, but Rup sits us down near the drummer and we watch while a second monk walks around the outside of the entire temple twice, sprinkling holy water.  Then a few prayers are muttered, the monk throws the rest of the water on the offeratory stela... and, with a nimble goat-like leap, he jumps over the bars blocking the entrance to the temple and is gone.  The woman brings her drumming to an end... and it’s over.
       We walk around the gilded temple, with stone animals guarding all four entrances and the ten incarnations of Vishnu carved in the struts.  As we circle, we see a life-sized statue of a kneeling Garuda, covered with red paint left from previous festivals.  Other statues date back to the 7th and 9th centuries.  And a column built atop a turtle, rising between a conch shell on another column and a towering trident.  It’s all very dense, and I can’t imagine what it looked like before the devastation.  (Building materials and half-finished tenon-and-mortise beams are everywhere.  So are visiting school children.)

Bhaktapur

Back we go downhill, to the cultural city of Bhaktapur, another UNESCO World Heritage Site.  Surrounded by walls and gates, the city of 100,000 people lies at an altitude of 1400 m (4,600 ft), down from Changu’s 1540 m (5,050 ft).  It’s tried hard to keep its old look, with grants awarded to local people to buy wood, traditional bricks and tiles so they will build in the traditional style.  Municipal money is also spent on keeping the city clean, much more so than in Kathmandu or anywhere I saw in India.  To help with funding and to cover restoration, the city charges an entrance fee to all foreign tourists: 1500 Nepali rupees, which is a little over $13.  Something I’m very willing to pay for such a good cause.

Golden Gate

       Our first stop, after climbing uphill past shops, coffee houses and restaurants, is Durbar Square (yet another one).  On the corner is the striking Palace of 55 Windows, made of red brick (the most used construction material here) on the first two floors and of timbered windows and walls on the top level, with a tiled roof.  Rup tells me the wood is from the “sal” tree, previously a valuable Himalayan timber tree which it’s now forbidden to cut down. There is much ecological protection in Nepal. 
       Next to the palace is the Golden Gate, with its intricate pagoda-like roof with multiple ornaments, and an armed guard.  The gate leads to the entrance of the National Art Gallery and to an old palace with its own fountain/pool, where a father is trying to show his young son a recalcitrant carp in the green waters.  It was in this pool that the king and court bathed in the morning before prayers or breakfast.  There’s another gate, the magnificent Lion’s Gate built by artisans whose hands, after completion, were cut off by the king so they’d be unable to make anything like it again.

Bhaisan Temple

       Also on the square, the Vatsala Temple being rebuilt after the earthquakes.  And a large bell called “the bell of barking dogs”, whether because of the sound it makes or the fact that it made all the dogs bark when it rang, I don’t know.  The Pashupatinah Temple has erotic wooden carvings, always a crowd-pleaser.  Yet another temple - Taleju - was one for Hindus only; perhaps that’s because the king is supposed to be an incarnation of Vishnu?  (And if that sounds silly, think of the pharaohs... or even medieval European kings who were sent down by God.)
       We take a coffee-and-tea break on the wooden veranda of a building overlooking the square.  From up here, it’s easier to admire things.  For instance, the Nyatapola Temple, one of the tallest in Nepal, where bamboo scaffolding is going up so that the grass can be cleared from its tile roof.  Or perpendicular to it, the Bhaisan Temple, a 15th c structure with a long gold vertical “stripe” running down from the roof to just above the entrance.  Or the fountain with a bronze snake on which there sits a golden lizard, the representation of a species now so rare that if you kill one, you’ll get 15 years in prison (and be reincarnated as a cockroach probably). 

Taumadhi Square

       All or most of this was built during the Malla Dynasty (1201-1779 AD), felt to be the Renaissance of culture.  This dynasty built the architecture in the Kathmandu Valley, although much of it was ruined in the extensive earthquakes in 1697.  Much of it is also found in Palan, as we saw yesterday, and right here in Bhaktapur.  Six hundred years of splendor.
       But we must head home.  On the way, we walk through Taumadhi Square, where brightly-dressed women are having a fashion shoot.  All the buildings here look regal, with a final temple (for me):  Dattatreya.  In front of it, a turtle statue, here the symbol of good luck, not long life as in China or wisdom as on Rapa Nui, where I was decreed one of the turtle people.
       After saying good-bye to Rup back at the hotel, I have an early dinner and try the local trout, which is excellent.  Then a bit of reading, and sleep.  Up early tomorrow for the Mount Everest fly-by, gods willing.

Day 42 - Tuesday, Nov. 26 - Kathmandu

Thamel

Rup, my guide, arrives at 10 o’clock, as promised.  We spend the rest of daylight together.

       First we walk and walk the lanes around the hotel, much of the Thamel neighborhood, including Freak Street, named in the Sixties when American hippies invaded in large numbers.  Shop after shop, mostly grouped by activity:  coppersmiths (see above), guitars, spices, fruit and veg... There are small temples scattered all around, many still damaged from the twenty or so large earthquakes in 2015.  (Rup tells me there were 70,000 tremors in all!)

       Then we meet the driver and head across the river and up the hillside to Swayambhu, the Monkey Temple, the oldest in all of Nepal.  And yes, there are monkeys.  The centerpiece, decked out in prayer flags, is a huge white stupa with eyes that reigns over Kathmandu from the west.  The view would extend to the Himalayas if it weren’t for the smog.  Book-ended by two tall temples, it rises like a square face with a many-tiered pointy hat.  Said to have been built in the 5th century, it was damaged in the 2015 earthquakes and is still being restored.  One exception:  a huge gilded Buddha that came out unscathed when his temple crashed down around him.  Obviously he’s now venerated even more.  Especially as in one temple destroyed, 24 people died.

       Then it’s back into the city, to Durbar Square.  There are many Durbar Squares in Nepal because “durbar”, a Persian-derived term (think Moghul and Taj Mahal), indicates a ruler’s palace, and as each city had a ruler and each ruler had a palace...  On Kathmandu’s square, there is the palace, Hanuman Dhoka, which includes a small museum.  There is also the Taleju Bhawani, a Hindu temple, just to keep things even with the Buddhist stupa.  A guard won’t let me into the temple because visibly I’m not from these parts, judging by my face.  But we see many “chapels” and other rooms.  All are much more ornate than the stupa, with a very different architecture, and mainly in wood.  Another place is called the Kumari Chok, the residence of the Kumari, the living goddess.  Chosen young, a bit like the dalai lama, she reigns until her period comes, then is replaced by a younger version.  Shortly after we arrive, she comes to the window overlooking the courtyard - a young, unsmiling thing of about 8 - then disappears back inside.  I feel lucky, even though to me she’s just a young girl with what seems a sad life... until Rup pops my bubble and tells me she does that all day long.  And indeed, as we leave, we’re replaced by a new crowd negotiating the small, low entrance with the high threshold.  (All entrances are small so that invaders and pursuers had to slow down to get in.  Similar to the thresholds in China to keep out evil spirits.)

Ashok Stupa

Time to head by car across the river again.  This time is to Lalitpur, where Rup lives.  (He calls it Patan, which is the ancient name.)  I would never have known to come here.  It, too, has a Durbar Square.  There we see a baroque fountain which is actually a water storage tank from the 17th century.  We go up the wooded hill to the temple complex in the center of which is another white temple called Ashok Stupa.  I’m not sure where the complex ended but suddenly we’re standing on its limit, with cafés and restaurants and guest homes on its perimeter.  What a view over Patan and Kathmandu that must offer!

       As we drive down the hill and back into Kathmandu, Rup points to the horizon and, lo and behold, that’s not a cloud I see; it’s one of the Himalayas!  Langtang Mountain north of the capital to be exact.  Maybe I’ll be able to take that Mount Everest flight Thursday, if conditions improve.  But it’s not this traffic that will help that.  Yesterday it was rush hour coming in from the airport; today it’s school buses.  Why don’t policemen directing traffic die an early death from asphyxiation or being run over?  I also see a U.N. vehicle; Rup explains they came to keep the peace during the Maoist uprisings and are still here because there’s still a threat.

        We finally get close to the hotel and Rup suggests we walk the rest of the short way.  He guides me to the hotel and says good-bye.  He’ll pick me up at 10 tomorrow morning to go somewhere outside the city.  I trust his judgment.  For the moment I take out more rupees from the ATM to cover tomorrow, then rest my weary feet.  For dinner, I dine on some momos like the ones I couldn’t finish last night.  Tonight’s are round, not long and fish-shaped like yesterday’s.  But every bit as delicious.

       All that’s left to do is read... and sleep!

View of Patan & Kathmandu

Day 41 - Monday, Nov. 25 - Off to Nepal

First sight of the Himalayas, the Roof of the World

Yet another day of airports!
       But it isn’t supposed to be.  The plane was to leave Delhi at 12:50 and arrive in Kathmandu at 2:35.  1 hour and 45 minutes.  That’s all.  Even leaving for the nearby airport at 10... completely fine.  That’s what was supposed to happen.

       Instead, what happens is that the flight leaves at 1:15, with no explanation given - although one passenger thought she heard “air quality” mentioned.  Maybe they were just inspecting the checked-in baggage for coconuts, something that for some unknown reason is forbidden in your bags.  Lord knows it wasn’t to check passengers, because that’s done at the doors into the airport; if you don’t have a ticket to somewhere, you don’t even get into the building past that point... something I’ve never seen anywhere else. 

Kathmandu Airport thinks of everything

       Whatever the reason, we arrive in Kathmandu a little past 3.  Still O.K.
       And then the lines started.
       The Nepali website said Americans could get a visa at the airport.  Like in Cambodia.  Fair enough.  I had even saved the $30 cash required.  But two or three planes have arrived at the same time.  The first line is to fill out the visa form.  Second line to pay for the visa.  Third line for immigration.  Fourth line for a second security check to get into baggage claim, a new one on me!  Total time:  two hours! 

Kantipur Temple House Hotel

       That means the ride into town is in rush hour.  Traffic with the same non-laws as in India, but honking is forbidden in Nepal, except in extreme cases.  The taxi van barely fits down the narrow lanes of the hotel’s neighborhood.  But we make it.

The hotel is a quiet bubble amid the clamor.  An eco-friendly place with solar power from panels on the roof, and no TV or A/C.  Which is fine.  It’s not hot and I don’t need to hear about the world’s miseries.

       I haven’t eaten in two days to let my Agra Belly calm itself, so I go down to the restaurant early and sit cross-legged at a low Japanese-style table to have some veggie dumplings, what Nepal calls momos.  Seems bland enough.  But after three of the ten served up, I’m full.  I reassure the worried waiter, who says there’ll be no charge.  And I head for bed.

Day 40 - Sunday, Nov. 24 - Agra to Delhi

I’m leaving the Radisson Citadel today.  That’s the name I’ve given it because it has closed gates at both entrance and exit.  And rightly so in my mind... or else I’m just a wimp.  I walked around Hanoi alone, and a bit in Siem Reap and Shanghai and Kyoto, but it just doesn’t seem like a good idea here... and nowhere attractive to go anyway in the immediate neighborhood.  So citadel is an appropriate name.

Agra traffic

Father & child at Taj Mahal

       My night was interspersed with trips to the bathroom.  Although I’ve eaten no stall food or drunk unbottled water - even brushing my teeth with bottled water - or had ice cubes in anything, I have a mild case of Delhi Belly.  Or Agra Belly.  Didn’t get Montezuma’s Revenge in Mexico, but this is serious stuff.  Luckily I came equipped with meds.  Maybe it’s just the spicy Indian food.  Or else someone in the kitchen isn’t washing their hands.  Or the tea at the carpet store was made with tap water and not boiled... at least not long enough.  I vote for that last explanation.
       At sun-up, still no Taj Mahal view.  As a matter of fact, it’s even murkier today.  The BBC World News was talking about that last night.  I hope Nepal tomorrow will be clear skies and breathable air.
       The hotel kindly lets me keep the room past check-out time, and I spend it mostly sleeping.  Then off by car to the train station and that’s an education!  Pure pandemonium.  No one is wearing a uniform to ask directions.  Doing my Blanche DuBois imitation from Streetcar Named Desire, I depend on the kindness of strangers... to find the right platform and to carry my now-heavy, gift-laden suitcase up a very tall flight of stairs.  One detail:  there is a cow on the platform.  Maybe he/she is also waiting for a train.

Agra station, with cow

Seen from the train

The train arrives, I show my ticket/reservation and board.  I’m seated next to a couple from Croatia.  We were all told that this is the “good train” but maybe a mistake has been made by the booking agent.  If this is the good train, what are the others like?
       At the station in Delhi, Gaurav from the hotel (remember him, my savior from the taxi-gang incident?) has arranged for someone to meet me at my coach.  And boy, I’m glad he did!  Because if I thought the Agra station was a zoo, the Delhi one is even more so, and many, many times larger.  The sheer number of people, some sleeping on the platform, including beggars with totally blackened feet, piles of goods that are somehow going to be put on-board some train... the platform is like the street but without cars.  Same pandemonium.  I follow the driver to his car and then, traffic being heavy, we take as long - 1½ hours - to travel from the train to the hotel as I spent on the train from Agra to Delhi.
       Worn out, it’s directly to bed.  Tomorrow is another day.  (Oops, that’s Scarlett O’Hara, not Blanche DuBois.)

Laundry drying by the Yamuna River in Agra

Day 39 - Saturday, Nov. 23 - Agra

After a good night’s sleep - still recovering from the Cambodia-Shanghai-India trip plus the ride down to Agra - I’m up at 6 a.m., ready for the Taj Mahal, even if I still can’t see it from the window, as advertised.

       My guide Mohinsha arrives soon after breakfast and we drive through not-yet-ridiculous traffic to the Taj Mahal’s East Gate.  Warned by a friend before I left for Asia that Indians dress with respect at this monument, I’ve donned my one skirt and brought my scarf for the mosque part.

It took 20,000 Persian workers 22 years (1631-1653) to build the Taj Mahal, designed by a Persian architect... all at a cost of the equivalent of $4 million.  Why Persians?  Because the Moghuls ruled India then and they were Persians.  

       Shah Jahan built it for his beloved second wife, Arjumand Banu, renamed Mumtaz Mahal.  Although he’d loved her since childhood, she was the daughter of a servant, and therefore not worthy in the eyes of Shah Jahan’s father.  So he had to marry a noble, but never had children with her.  When his father died, he married his always-love.  They had 14 children; only 6 of them survived.  

       And when she died, he had this monument built to her.  When the foundations were ready, he moved her tomb onto the site and the building was constructed over her.  The tomb you see is not hers, just a monument.  He planned to build a black marble replica on the opposite side of the Yamuna River for himself.  It would have cost three times more, so his son arrested him and emprisoned him - in majestic quarters - in Agra Fort, from where he could see his beloved’s mausoleum.  Eight years later, he died of natural causes and was buried next to her “tomb” in the Taj Mahal.

       So much for the history.  Now we visit; no photos allowed and no writing in the inner sanctum.  But I have images in my memory and they are amazing.

First around the courtyard, there are 210 “rooms” - niches - for visitors because there were no inns at that time.  Around the gates are verses from the Koran in black onyx from Belgium, which was very far away at that time; inside that are red flowers and green leaves of precious stones inset in the sandstone.  Mohinsha tells me they glow in the moonlight, a fact demonstrated by the gemsmith we visit later.  The red sandstone of the other buildings comes from here in the region, but white marble was conveyed, by elephant, from Rajastan almost 300 miles (400 km) away.  To one side of the Taj Mahal is the mosque (Persians were Muslims), and we go in - thus the shawl - so I can say a prayer for baby grandson Ibrahim, who died at premature birth.  On the opposite side of the Taj is the guesthouse, where I will obviously be staying on my next visit.

       The Taj itself is breath-taking.  Looking so white from afar, even in the haze, darker details become visible as we approach.  And the many panels inside, with no joints, are like lacework.  How many were ruined before one was completed?  What craftsmanship!

Mosque of Taj Mahal

The visit is over too soon and we head back through the gardens, along the reflecting pool.  Back to the hotel for lunch and a change to shorts, then Mohinsha is back and we’re off to Agra Fort.  The red sandstone walls look high and forbidding, running 2.5 km around (1½ mi).

Agra Fort

Walls of Agra Fort

This is more than just a fort.  Part is the residence of Shah Jahan’s two daughters, who were not allowed to marry, ever.  (You wonder how they felt about that.)  One part of each daughter’s palace is a white marble palanquin that looks like the one they would have been carried in on their wedding day, just in case they forgot they were doomed to be old maids.  I kind of felt like that’s adding insult to injury, but...

       Past the two daughters’ palace is the palace that served as a cell for Shah Jahan after his son arrested him.  Jailed in splendor, he spent his days looking out the lace-like white marble window at his beloved Mumtaz’s mausoleum in the semi-distance.

       We exit through the gardens, where chipmunks chase each other and a mama dog nurses her six pups.  We exit down the long ramp where troops could pour boiling oil down on any invaders, should they manage to cross the raised drawbridge.  This fort is far more than I’d expected.

Daughters' palace, in the shape of a bridal palanquin

Last on the list, the Khas Mahal, a park across the Yamuna River from the Taj, where you can walk to the bank and see the Taj Mahal reflected in its waters.  This is the spot where Shah Jahan was planning to build his own black marble mausoleum.  I think he’s better off closer to her.  (N.B.  Entrance price for Indians to this park:  25 rupees (35 cents).  Price for foreigners:  300 ($4).)

       On the return to the hotel, Mohinsha drags me to a rug merchant, the usual routine for guides in some places, but which I’ve been spared until now.  I don’t need a rug, even if they’re willing to send it to me.  (After all, I bought that silk comforter in Shanghai, which I’ll find on my doorstep a day after my return home.)  I do give in and buy a Black Star of India necklace, a gemstone black star diopside gemstone with needle-like inclusions that create a unique four-pointed cross star in the right light.

       Back at the hotel, I’m just in time for the end of lunch (3:00).  My “friend” waiter Ram, who served me Indian wine at lunch yesterday, jokingly chides me for not coming down to dinner last night; I tell him I doubt if I’ll be down tonight either.  He reappears with some lovely garlic naan again, like yesterday, the best I’ve ever tasted... all because he remembers I liked them.

       With a full stomach and a head full of the wonders I’ve seen, I retreat to my room, where I can just make out the silhouette of the Taj Mahal from my window.  Maybe tomorrow, before I head back to Delhi, it will be the view I was promised.

From across the Yamuna River, the site of Shah Jahan's never-built tomb