Day 3: Agra, Taj Mahal!

Good morning Delhi! An early breakfast in our Japanese hotel restaurant. Almost everyone recovered from the flight and the intense first day. Today we move on.. to the most important landmark of India, Taj Mahal. Google maps says 4 hours.. we took 2 hours to get out of the city.. circles.. again! But everything you see out of the car window is interesting.. at least for my travel friends.. well, here is the thing.. I come from Egypt, it is practically the same shit.. the noise, the dirt, the horrible traffic.. the tuk-tuks.. although Egypt is a bit milder, it is the same kind.. This is why many of these scenes don’t even drag my attention till someone says “look at this!”.. I remember what my brother Morad once told me after coming back from some neighborhood in our town: “I was in Ghana.. the dirt, the little naked children.. everything was the same!”..

On the road, Davide keeps recording videos with his “GoPro”.. random cows wandering freely.. while Arja resumed his hobby in finding the high score in the highest number of passengers in each type of vehicle. I personally slept to recover some energy..

In Agra we arrived to the hotel around 3pm where we decided to check-in and head directly to Taj Mahal.. Our drivers took us there where we hired a local guide and went to the wonderful monument.. It is remarkable.. it is beautiful to see.. I have seen many palaces and monuments, but this one is really beautiful.. we spread like bread crumbs taking pictures from every angle and producing many really good ones. I am specially looking forward to Rolando’s pictures and the videos by Davide. Boss and I were mainly around the tour guide trying to know more about the place.

Built as a sign of love.. Jahan Shah built it for his wife Mumtaz as a sign of love.. as you probably know, she died before it is finished and never saw it as you see it now.. In its beauty and majesty.. the perfect symmetry and balance as our guide kept repeating during the tour.. I stopped and reflected on how lucky I am to be here.. didn’t imagine that I would visit India at this age.. I have to thank Diljit for this push. The palace was built in 22 years.. took 22 thousand workers.. The white marble is probably the magic touch.. A huge white palace, you can’t miss it with the beautiful domes.. inside, there is Mumtaz’s tomb. With more handcrafted marble works, precious stones and Quranic Verses everywhere. It is impressive.. From outside, the towers are stretching into the sky with 2 degrees declination far from the palace. The guide explained that it is designed this way in case of earth quakes or so.. if the tower falls, it falls far from the palace and not on the palace it self. I forgot to mention that Taj means crown (also in arabic) and Mahal means palace.

The sun was setting while we were there.. unfortunately a bit of clouds prevented ornamenting the palace with a beautiful orange color from the sunset. It was time to leave.. Taj Mahal was very very beautiful.. I decided I will come back.. with her..

If Jahan Shah built a place for Mumtaz to express his love.. I wonder how he expressed it in daily life.. in the simple situations.. The tomb in the palace has Mumtaz in the center.. with all designed around her.. but there beside her, almost out of place, far from symmetry, comes the tomb of Jahan Shah.. Just to be near to her..

We went to a nice restaurant for dinner recommended by the guide.. The food was really good after our long foodless day! We invited the drivers to join our table. Something seemed uncomfortable for them.. They sat far.. The owner of the restaurant talked to them.. We sensed that something is different culturally, maybe the cast system or something similar prohibit them from joining our table.. They did eventually after we asked them a zillion times.. Actually in all following meals, they didn’t join the table and ate somewhere else.. I don’t know..

After dinner, we went back to the hotel.. Tomorrow we have a long drive to Jodhpur, google maps says 9.5 hours.. drivers need to rest..

I leave you with this set of photos from Chiara 🙂