Ohhhh, that was not the last time my jaws were tight on ‘The Great Taj Tour’ as it was billed, the “Sumptuous Buffet Breakfast” was anything but—they SERVED us. Hmmm, doesn’t one serve THEMSELVES from choices at a buffet? The fare was pretty weak too—a tired omelet, a smattering of corn flakes in an almost microscopic bowl, toast, poori [inflated Indian bread which I love but this? EEEEEEEEEEEEE!] & juice. As it was only 9:30, I prayed I wouldn’t get hungry before lunch which was scheduled for 1:30 & I hoped IT would live up to its billing.
Anywho, the rain hits hard when we make a pit stop for photos at the tomb of Emperor Akbar in Sikanda, an interesting place visually, but at the time it was in the ‘WHY?’ category as far as WHY were we just stopping here wasting time, WHY not continue to the main event???? Not the first or last time I ask ‘WHY?’ on this tour.
By the time we arrived in Agra, the rain was a distant memory as I saw the Taj looming in the distance. WOW.
Mumtaz Mahal, the favorite wife of Shah Jahan was dying after giving birth to their 14th child in 20 years [GREAT GOOGAMUGA!]. She said ‘look man, promise me 3 things: 1) you’ll take care of mah kids; 2) you’ll never take another wife or I'll come back & kick ya ass [well, maybe she didn't say that part] & 3) you’ll build a kick-ass building in tribute to me. Well my man did just that, hence one of the 7 Wonders of the World, the Taj Mahal, with workmanship that cannot be replicated today, modern technology notwithstanding. Completed in 1653 by over 20,000 craftsmen during a 22 year period using the hardest marble in the world found only in India, which doesn’t stain, scratch or wear down so we're told. Lapis lazuli; carnelian, a red or reddish brown variant of chalcedony [a cryptocrystalline form of silica]; black onyx, sapphires, rubies & other stones adorn its walls. I’m tellin’ ya, pictures (including mine, more on that later) do it NO. Justice. When you walk toward the gate & get a glimpse of it, you suck in your breath. IT DOESN’T LOOK REAL! Once you step through, it looks even more unreal—sorta like someone stuck a giant postcard up against the sky, for no other building surrounds it. The Indian government closed off & created a building/industry-free zone to help battle pollution. [Well, that’s a battle they’ve lost as far as the pollution goes] but they are right on in banning any construction within a certain radius because it would truly mar the view & mystique of the great monument.
The jacked up part of the story is that after the Shah completed the magnificent mausoleum to his wife, he started to build one for himself on the other side of the Yamuna River, but his son Aurangzeb wasn’t havin’ it & tossed his pop in jail at the Agra Fort [another amazing structure which we visited on this tour]. In the last 8 years of his life, he gazed across the river at the memorial to Mumtaz, & before his death, got his son to promise to bury him next to his wife. Today the steps that descend to the actual crypt housing man & wife in eternal sleep are closed, & replicas of the tombs reside on the ground floor for public viewing. They are surrounded by an incredible, INCREDIBLE lace like marble screen called jali which are studded with precious stones . These screens are made in ONE PIECE! We were told if the craftsman made a mistake he would start all over!!!!! YIKES! Can you imagine being almost finished & a mosquito lands on your nose prompting you to smack it thus causing you to drop the screen & it breaks so you have to START OVER??????!!!!!!!!! Whoa. Deep beans man!
You have to remove your shoes to enter the area just outside of the building. Some chose to go barefoot, [can we say major YAWH-ZAH because that ground was HATEFUL hot] but our guide provided us with footsies that fit over our shoes so we didn’t have to remove them which was way cool since leaving your shoes are always a risk ‘cause they may not be where you left them!
After the brief stint at the Taj oh, forgot to tell you about the pictures they take for you. I wanted some of those corny things & though they're supposed to be real, you really look superimposed in front of the monument but hey, I was purely being a tourist at the moment & jumped at it though I gotta tell ya, t’was quite a tacky package they presented me with afterwards—the pix hadn’t been processed well so there were friggin’ double exposure lines running at the top & sides of some of them! Needless to say, those I got for free.
After going to the Agra Fort which was truly impressive, I could have skipped the rest of the tour, well, not the lunch which was on the money. Except when I found out how much my little glasses of watermelon juice cost [I LOVE watermelon juice!]. Everything is a hustle here, I mean EVERYTHING. You can’t shop in peace without merchants diving on you to go into their shop, then throwing items you wouldn’t buy doped up to the phrase ‘it doesn’t cost you anything to look’ aiiiiiii-eeeeee! [Well, they don’t say aiiiiiiiii-eeeeeee, I say that] & no, I am not digressing—you’re in the middle of a Bird Rant which brings me to the ‘free time for shopping’ portion of the tour & Tourist Trap #2: we’re ceremoniously taken to a shop whose specialty is marble—of course they think it’s appropriate that one would want a piece of marble in their suitcase because we just saw the Taj Mahal! We are greeted by I guess the owner who offers us tea or coffee in the effort to butter us up for the sale. We watch as the workers, some I suspect were kids, do painstaking & exquisite work with crude & rudimentary tools. One child is etching out a design & his ‘chisel’ is the handle of a wrench! Another is sawing down what I take to be an almost microscopic sapphire with something akin to a bow, the other part like some type of grinder. To coin a phrase I use in this blog, fascinated & horrified simultaneously was I, which pretty much sums up my impression of what I’ve seen of India.