The Taj Mahal!

Normally, groups get up early around 5:30 and watch the sunrise at the Taj Mahal, but due to the rain the night before they were expecting fog, so we didn't leave until around 9.  It's too bad we didn't get to see the sunrise, but at least we got some more sleep.  For this part of our trip, we had another tour guide... Ramesh.  He's given tours for everyone from the CEO of Intel to members of Congress.  When you first get your ticket, you have to either walk the last kilometer, or take a non-gasoline powered vehicle to preserve the Taj.  We took one of their electric buses in.  Not only that, but no phones, or video cameras are allowed past a certain point as well.  I'm going to try and walk through my visit to the Taj Mahal with a picture tour.

When you first walk in, you enter in the east gate of a large courtyard surrounded by the low red wall in this picture.  The gate shown is the north gate... the one that serves as the entryway to the Taj Mahal.  I guess I should say the wall is more like a bunch of rooms that once were for the craftsmen that worked on the Taj, since there were no hotels back then and none of the workers were Indian.

This is the entryway from the front.  It's hard to see on this small picture, but there's Hindi script around the large arch... the really cool thing is that it's all inlaid onyx.  None of it is painted, and the higher words are stretched so that from the ground everything looks even.  There are a total of 22 little domes on the top of the entryway, 11 of which you can see on this side, and 11 on the other side symbolizing the 22 years it took to build the Taj.  The entry is symmetric.

My first glimpse of the Taj.  It was amazing!

I thought for my next one, I ought to insert a token picture with me in it.  Apparently, from my smile, I haven't fully grasped that I'm at the Taj Mahal.

This one shows the symmetry a little better. It was built in the 17th century, but has amazing accuracy.  The line from the entryway to the front of the Taj is a straight line of fountains.

Oh hey, look!  I'm looking happier.  Some of you may be wondering what that ridiculously orange shirt I'm wearing is.  A kurta is a traditional shirt worn in India (mostly northern from what I've seen).  So this shirt is basically a kurta, only kurtas normally go down to your knees.  Time for another Taj fact.  The towers look perfectly straight, but they're actually tilted outwards at 93 degrees.  Apparently, this is not only to prevent them falling inwards in an earthquake, but also so they're more visible from different angles.

Each side of the Taj is actually exactly identical.  This is the east side, the side in most pictures is the south side.  It's all made of marble from 70 miles away (if I remember correctly), which they had to transport and carve without modern technology.

This is just under the main arch on the front of the Taj.  Not only are the flowers carved from single pieces of marbe, but the outside patterns are all inlaid stones.  The girls in the picture are some of the other volunteers here; Stacey's on the left, and Brianna's on the right.

This is from inside looking east at the guest house.  To provide symmetry, they built another one on the other side.  In the very center where the tombs are, of the emperor and his wife (his tomb was added post-construction, so it's the only non-symmetrical thing about it), pictures are not allowed, but this in a hallway that wraps around the center room.

So, after the Taj, we went to the Red Fort.  It served as the residence of the imperial family.  Think really big castle, only it's red, and in India.  The details inside of it were also pretty impressive, but it has been looted 5 times, and so many of the precious materials are now gone.












It rained on and off all day today, both at the Taj and the Red Fort, so we got soaked several times, but it was a blast.  We danced in the rain, and made the best of it.  And our day wasn't over yet.  We then went to a carpet company where they showed us how authentic Indian rugs are made, with individual knots.  A 6 by 8 foot rug takes 2 and a half months when two people are working on it full time.  It's really an amazing thing to watch.

The store had 2,000 workers all around villages that get paid by the square inch.  These knotters were in the room for presentation purposes mostly.  I'm still impressed by how quickly they move through each row.








We did some shopping as well, but the majority of our day was over.  We had Pizza Hut for dinner, because pizza is especially good when you have rice and vegetables every night.  That's not to say I don't like Indian food, though.  Sunday's events will be up soon.