Crown Palace

We took an early morning flight to Delhi and hired a driver/car to drive us to Agra. As always, driving in India is a very unique experience, which you will later see in the photos. The 4 1/2 hour drive took almost 6 hours, but did include a yummy stopover for lunch. By the time we arrived at the hotel and checked in it was nearly dark. So we started out bright and early the following day. Our guide met us at the hotel and then we drove to the Taj Mahal. I was somewhat skeptical whether this palace was worth the long journey, but that uncertainty was quickly put to rest. I doubt that the pictures will do it justice, but here's a glimpse. It's definitely worth the trip!


Here's the gateway/courtyard to the Taj Mahal, made of red sandstone.

Here we are in between the gateway and the Taj

The Taj Mahal
Some history behind this masterpiece...The fifth Mughal emperor was Shah Jahan. His second wife was a Muslim from Persia. She had died while giving birth to their 14th child. Before dying she had her husband promise her 4 things...to build a tomb, in her memory, unlike any the world had seen before, be kind to their children, visit her tomb every anniversary, and to remarry. Following her death, construction of the Taj began and lasted 22 years. There are 22 domes on top of the gateway, one for each year of construction. It was designed by an Iranian architect (who allegedly got his hands cut off upon completion so that he could never build anything more magnificent) and 20,000 people from India and Central Asia came to build it. The Taj was built using white marble, which was transported by more than 1000 elephants. The marble is carved with flowers and inlaid with semiprecious stones, as seen below.

This stud had planned to build a smaller Taj Mahal just opposite her, for himself. His would have been made of black onyx. As you can see below, it was never built.

Side view of the Taj Mahal



Sudi trying to pick it up

Identical mosques on each side of the Taj Mahal

The emperor certainly fulfilled one of his wife's wishes, but not sure about the kindness to children bit. He never got the chance to build his Taj Mahal because his son went and killed all of his brothers and then captured his father so that he could become emperor. The poor guy lived out the rest of his days imprisoned at Agra Fort. But if you have to be in prison, this is the place to be, which also happened to be his home.
Here's the view of Agra Fort from the Taj Mahal
Here's the view from his "prison"

Here's a look at what offensive driving is like. This is the "highway" which we took from Delhi to Agra. By western standards, it would be considered a two lane highway with a divider in the middle. By Indian standards, you do whatever you want to get where you're going. You can see the sign which states work in progress, drive slowly.

Well traffic was really backed up, so...here we are driving against the traffic. Here's some type of official removing the barbed wire and barrier that was dividing the highway.

Here's people moving the cars over the divider to get to the other side. We then reversed and followed suit, but apparently angered quite a few people as they were physically hitting our car.

You know that skit at the circus where a tiny car pulls up and dozens of clowns just keep coming out of the car. Well, that's the standard way of travel here.