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!
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| 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).
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| Agra Fort |
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| From across the Yamuna River, the site of Shah Jahan's never-built tomb |
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