Day 21 - Taj

Agra is not great. There is a deficit of life and a surplus of people harassing you at every step you take, making you want to get out of here as soon as possible. I guess that is what you get when you have one of the Seven Wonders of the World at your doorstep - you do not need to try very hard.

Leaving Jaipur not to return anytime soon was obviously necessary, but a bit sad. Despite there being more tourists around than on my first visit, I still found the city charming and beautiful. An early morning visit to the Monkey Temple was only ruined by a lady who received us up in the Sun Temple with the pragmatic words “you want to look around you make donation”. Not wanting to explain the actual meaning of the word “donation” to this lady we just turned around and left, mostly out of principle but also as there did not seem to be that much to see. Aside from that the place was incredibly busy with life, and not much of it human. The peace found on the path to the Sun Temple is sublime, especially given the very loud and busy city only a few hundred metres away, but the dozens of monkeys jumping around towards the bottom of the hill are obviously the highlight of this place.

A short sleeper train journey was just about enough to recover some of the lost sleep from the previous night, and upon arriving in Agra we were informed by our rickshaw driver that the Taj was closed on Fridays, automatically spoiling our plans of checking it out at sunrise. Thankfully there was enough time to check in at our hotel and head to the queue. In the end, even though it was obviously busy, the crowds were not exactly suffocating.

To sum it up in one sentence, the Taj is the most overwhelmingly beautiful building I have ever seen. Its sheer scale, tranquillising symmetry and crystalline perfection do not have a match in anything I had ever seen and I doubt that will change anytime soon. Built by Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan as a resting place for Mumtaz Mahal, his favourite wife who had died after giving birth to her fourteenth child (!) at the age of thirty eight, it has been described as a manifestation of undying love rather than a piece of architecture. Standing in front of it, that cheesy description feels hard to refute.

I have seen a few impressive monuments, but there was something different about this one. No, I did not find my place in the World while looking at it, but for the first half hour I could not even be bothered getting my camera out of its bag. After a long time looking at it and at one of the most insane sunsets I can remember in the background, I could not help but thinking it must have sucked to be one of the Emperor’s other three wives. You know, the ones who did not get this built as a testament to their beauty:

Cheers,
J-Wowww