Agra

Agra
January 13, 2009

We left Monday afternoon at 5 on the train to Delhi. From Delhi, we stayed at the army hotel room thing and then got up 5 am for the train to Agra, which is where the Taj Mahal is. We got to Agra at about 11 AM and I was not impressed. Immediately, I noticed the city is a lot messier than Dehradun but my guess is because it’s mainly a tourist town and they focus on the Taj Mahal than the town itself. Then when we stepped outside the train station, I saw a lost puppy, which upset me of course, and then the driver we hired was a really old man with a broken down Ambassador. That is mainly the reason mu uncle decided to hire him I think.
We got in the car and we were off to see the Taj. It’s about a ten minute drive from the station and I kept looking out the window to see if it would come into view but it never did. We then took a cycle rickshaw to the main gate. I felt terrible that I was doing this but my mom and uncle kept telling me that it’s at least giving him money. That doesn’t mean its right. The government should some how provide better jobs and especially population control if this is how its going to be forever. They just don’t care. Converting the money, we basically spent a dollar for this thing. It was horrible.
We got to the main gate though and there were many more older men with the same business plus horse and carriage, camel and carriage, and I don’t remember what else. Stray dogs all over the place there too. I noticed that everywhere you go the dogs look the same and my guess is because there has been so much interbreeding.
The gate to the Taj was fantastic and I would finally see the dome just a tad bit. I was impressed. It was bigger than I thought. We had to go through security though to actually get into the ground of the Taj Mahal. Security was a pain and I swear, the only place where security mattered. No wires and ipods were allowed. I don’t get why but whatever we finally got in.
It was the most beautiful thing once you hit the other gate. You go through security, then you go through a garden, and then another gate, before you finally see it. It is fantastic and beautiful. Honestly, I though I was going to be disappointed but I was far from. The Taj Mahal is huge and majestic and really is the ultimate materialistic way to show someone you love them. This man built this thing for the woman he loved (only bc she gave birth to his children and the other wives did not im guessing) and brought the finest marble and jewels. It took forever to actually get there but once you reach it, the marble is still mostly smooth, the semi precious stones mostly still intact except for the diamonds which surrounded the chandelier about the resting places, which were stolen years ago. The semi precious stones were amazing. Some of them were solid and dark while others, if you put light up against them, they glow. They say, when there is a full moon, the whole inside glows. They stopped letting people go see it at night though back in 1984.
That’s all there was to it really, I mean it is a tomb. Just all of it was amazing. I was just in awe of how Shah Jahan built this for the woman he loved you know? You don’t see that often throughout history.
Behind the Taj Mahal is a river, which has mostly dried up and whos name I forgot, and across it you can see the Agra Fort, which I also visited next. The thing about Agra fort is that is where Shar Jahan used to live and where he spent the last seven years, I believe, of his life imprisoned by his own son. He was able to see the Taj Mahal from there but hardly.
After I got out, I bought these lame key chains of the Taj Mahal and a few glass earrings for 500 RS which was a ripoff but I decided I don’t care. These people need the money and in the end it really doenst matter to me