|
|
| .. |
Nicole's
Travelogues and Budget Travel Tips..
|
|
|
THE TAJ MAHAL, INDIA
After watching the back of the Taj at sunrise, we went back to hotel to sleep for 2 hours, then paid for entrance around 10am. They directed me to Indian door but, then, they asked me for ID and I didn't have the NRI ID (non-resident Indian) so I had to pay 750 rupees instead of 20. SHOOOT!!! I guess me looking like an Indian wasn't going to save me money today!
First things first. The Taj Mahal is without a doubt, absolutely, wickedly impressive! No matter how many pictures you may have seen of it, it still holds a power and you want to gaze at its quality and symmetry. Nothing compares with actually being there. Before my trip, I watched videos and read books and thought I was ready. I even thought, embarrassing as it is to write, that it was just a building. Why do people rave about just a building when there are so many natural wonders of the world. But then I rounded the corner, passed through the arch of the Darwaza (main gateway), and then I saw it. In front of me was, by far, the most impressive man-made sights I had ever seen. Yes, it sounds corny but it is soooo true! It is THAT amazing.
Taj Mahal means "Crown Palace." It was built by the fifth Mughal emperor, Shah Jahan in 1631 in memory of his second wife, Mumtaz Mahal, a Muslim Persian princess. |
From 1631 A.D., it took 22 years in the making. An estimated 20,000 people worked to complete the enchanting mausoleum, on the banks of the Yamuna in Agra. The material was brought in from all over India and central Asia and it took a fleet of 1000 elephants to transport it to the site.
Shah Jahan had meant to build a black Taj to match his wife's white marble edifice, on the opposite side of the river Yamuna, but his extravagant spending was ended when his son, Aurangzeb seized power and locked him away in the Red Fort.
The Taj is pinkish in the morning, milky white in the evening and golden when the moon shines. These changes, they say, depict the different moods of woman.
The famous Taj Mahal monument focused world attention on pollution concerns when studies found that the industrial emissions around the vicinity were causing the monument’s marble to deteriorate at a extremely fast rate. Public outcry forced the closure of several nearby foundries and refineries, which to date have in most cases been reopened with the companies promising to find methods to reduce the pollution output. But, still tightened standards have prompted many industries to install pollution reduction facilities, but enforcement lags way behind as in everything else in India. A huge backlog of litigation in India’s courts blunts the legal instrument’s effectiveness.
|
She died while accompanying her husband in Burhanpur in a campaign to crush a rebellion after giving birth to their 14th child. The death so crushed the emperor that all his hair and beard were said to have grown snow white in a few months. When Mumtaz Mahal was still alive, she extracted four promises from the emperor:
first, that he build the Taj; second, that he should marry again; third, that he
be kind to their children; and fourth, that he visit the tomb on her death
anniversary. He kept the first and second promises. Six months after the death of his wife, he laid the foundation for her memorial across the Yamuna River near his palace in Agra.
