Magnificent
This building reeked of urine.
It's a long walk to the restrooms
Prison Palace of Shah Jahan, where he could view his Taj Mahal.
Tomb of Itmad-Ud-Daulah
I dunno, somebody else's tomb.
Tomb of Akbar the GreatThe Taj Mahal
There’s only one good reason on God’s green earth to go to Agra and that’s the Taj Mahal. Actually that’s not true. There are several tombs and grand palaces that are precursors to the Taj Mahal in and around Agra. Palaces and tombs of the first Moghul emperors. They are all very interesting. If you see them in the right order you can see how they each evolved from one another until finally the Taj was the grand culmination. However if you go to Agra I suggest you see them first. Once you see the Taj Mahal, everything else is anti-climatic.
“And this is the magnificent Moghul palace created for Akbar the great. This is where he played hide and seek with his wives.”
“Boooooring! Can we go now?”
Outside the Agra train station there is a small tourist bureau that operates fixed price (and reasonable) tours so you don’t have to go trough the aggravation of bargaining with someone and hope they actually know something. Our guide Bobby was top notch.
Bobby told us the day before was fifty degrees centigrade (122 degrees Fahrenheit). Fifty degrees! That’s half way to boiling you realize! Humans are mammals, and mammals are a cold weather species (except for me who likes it hot); things don’t look good for mammals when Global Warming really kicks in. India’s already being affected, the glaciers in the Himalyas that keep the rivers running year round are retreating rapidly. Plus they’re still getting the same amount of rainfall as twenty years ago, but it’s all coming in a few big storms instead of the steady rains they’ve always had.
The good thing about the heat was that the waiting line was only a few dozen meters long to get inside the Taj Mahal.
I got a big surprise when we paid for our tickets to the Taj. For almost all India tourist attractions we went to I always had to pay about 300 Rupees ($6) and Kovi had to pay 20 Rupees (a dime). But at the Taj he had to pay 15 Rupees and I had to pay over 700. That they would gouge a Westerner is not what surprised me. What surprised me was that the entry fee for ASIANS was 500 Rupees. Lots more than an Indian, but less than an American or European. What counts as an Asian anyway? Is a Russian Siberian an Asian? A Turk? A rich Saudi Prince? If a Japanese-American tours the Taj, what do they pay? So after all the grief I’ve received about American racism, Indians practice it with even more precision than anybody else in the world.
Can you imagine going to Disneyland and the ticket agent looking at you and saying, “White, $2. Hispanic, $20. Indian, $50”. There would be a major uproar. But in India this is to be expected. And it’s not racism if it is white people being discriminated against.
However to make up for this crass favoritism at the Taj, Westerners and Asians can use the bathrooms for free. Indians have to pay 2 rupees (1 cent). Revenge is sweet!
One good thing about being American in India is that we never did anything to them. We never colonized them. We never enslaved them. We never bombed them. We generally just ignored them. They were always a British thing.
So whenever they complain about the British I can say, “I’m not British, never was, never will be. And despite you thinking we are buddies, that really only came about around WWII just before they left India. Even in WWI we weren’t so friendly. So don’t look at me accusingly when you recite the sins of the British Empire, we were competitors with them. We sided with you.”
The Taj Mahal is one of the few things that lives up to its promise. It is truly a magnificent specimen of architecture, art, and love. It was built by Mughal Emperor, Shah Jahan, as a mausoleum for his third wife, Mumtaz Mahal. It took 23 years to complete and is perfectly symmetrical. Even the grounds are symmetrical. It only took 5 years for the basic building, but the inlaid artwork took another 17 years to complete. It is marvelous from far away, and marvelous up close. And it is huge.
When you look at a picture of the Taj you will see a tall brass top piece of a crescent moon, apropos because the emperor was a Moslem. To give you an idea of the size, that brass top piece is ten meters tall.
And it was built to last. If you notice the four minarets around the Taj Mahal they all lean outward at at 1 ½ degree angle, just in case of earthquake they won’t fall into the Taj. Now that’s thinking.
In the second photo you can see two buildings on either side of the Taj Mahal that are mostly hidden by the trees. The one on the left is now a mosque. A mosque at the Taj Mahal? A victory mosque? Oh, yeah, the Moslems won here. The Emperor was Moslem. By the way, I’m told by Hindus that all mosques are victory mosques, something to keep in mind.
Actually his grandson, Akbar the Great, got so fed up with all the religious quarrelling that he started a new religion that said there was one God and everybody had to worship the same God. To keep his kingdom balanced he had three wives, a Moslem, a Hindu, and a Christian. But after he died the priests and mullahs got their religions back. His religion didn’t survive.
The most amazing thing about the Taj Mahal is that it is still white. In 1984 the Indian Supreme Court realized that the pollution coming from local factories was staining the white stone yellow and set up a 100 kilometer protective area that banned factories. This doesn’t mean there’s not pollution mind you, it’s just not as bad as it would be without the ban.
The people still complain about the high unemployment due to this ban. But after 26 years they still haven’t figured out anything else to do that doesn’t pollute? God forbid they just install pollution control equipment. Then again, that’s their competitive advantage, they’re willing to poison themselves for money. But at least Agra has a huge tourist influx due to the Taj, when was the last time you visited Detroit?
An Indian friend of mine, Pramoud, was always dis’ing the British, claiming they had taken all the gold from India and the jewels from the Taj Mahal. So I asked Bobby about the theft.
“That is a myth”, he said sternly, “The British helped to restore the Taj Mahal to it’s former glory”. A guy named Captain Joseph had founded an organization dedicated to restoring and maintaining the cultural treasures of India. It was the Persians in the early 1700’s who had looted the Taj Mahal. The tall brass piece on top used to be gold, they took that. Captain Joseph raised the money to have it restored and a brass replica top piece installed in 1940.
Bobby went on to expound on Captain Joseph and all he and the Anglo-Indian organization he founded had done for Indian cultural treasures and how it was still working hard today. I never met any Indian who went so out of his way to defend the British.
Of course Bobby’s story may not be quite true, it looks like the British Army did chisel out some of the lapus lazuli and other precious stones from the Taj Mahal in the 1850’s. But then, just like everything else with their Empire, they paid to put it back later.
It reminds me of the fact that the English spent centuries and a fortune trying to stamp out the Welsh language and now that it’s dying out they spend millions trying to keep it alive.
When we got close to the Taj we had to put on protective slippers. The inlaid marble is exquisite. Words do not do justice to the beauty of the place. I was encouraged to come at dawn just to see the Taj in a different, more beautiful light. However, I had a real Western Hotel room and bed, so I wasn’t that motivated.
The Emperor must really have loved her to build her such a monument. She is entombed in the center and he a few feet to the left of her. His tomb is the only thing not symmetrical about the place. He was actually overthrown by his son who jailed him in a palace nearby where he could view the Taj Mahal. It is said he cried every day looking at it.
Bobby explained, “When she was dying she made him make three promises. First that he would take care of the children”. Okay, fair enough. “Second that he would not remarry”, now that seems odd as she was technically his third wife, after all he was Muslim and allowed to have four wives at any one time, “And third, that he build her a beautiful mausoleum unlike any the world had ever seen”
Now wait just a gosh darn minute. You’re telling me this wasn’t his idea? He didn’t do this out of love? This is not the world’s greatest love story? The poor guy was guilt tripped into building it by a jealous, possessive, megalomaniac wife?! I suspect he knew he would see her again in heaven and didn’t want to spend eternity with her nagging him about how he promised to build her a magnificent tomb but look at the one some Chinese Empress had! Like every other husband on Earth, fear of his wife drove him to do the batty things he did.
Bobby didn’t understand my disappointment in the story. We toured around the Taj, examining all the artwork. I decided I wanted to visit the open air building to the right of the Taj. There’s really nothing there, but I walked in and there was a washer woman sitting in a corner. The building smelled of urine. Ironically the closer I got to the washer woman’s area the stronger the smell got.
Please people, tell me you’re not peeing on a UNESCO World Heritage site. Granted the restroom is a good 100 yards away, but still…
We went over to the building on the left which was a mirror image of the building on the right, an open air building. This was the mosque and an Imam guided us around.
One thing you should know is that the Taj is closed on Fridays, Islam’s holy day. Why? Because the Taj Mahal is a Muslim holy site? No, it’s just a tomb (However, Hindu Fundamentalists claim it was built on the site of an ancient Hindu Temple. Then again, throw a rock and you’ll hit an ancient Hindu temple). No, it’s closed because the building on the left, inside the main grounds, is a mosque. On Fridays everyone would claim to be a Muslim going to prayers to avoid paying the entrance fee to the Taj Mahal. The government wasn’t going to tolerate lost revenue so they close the place on Fridays, no tourists, no prayers, no nuttin’.
We got to a corner of the mosque and again I smelled the faint whiff of urine. Perhaps it was centuries old, worked into the stone. But somehow I fear it has more to do with the 2 rupees they charge for the restroom.
Okay Nehru, you win, this place is too special, too beautiful, too glorious, this is one of the Seven Wonders of the World.
Please…I beg of you…let them pee for free.
