The Breathtaking Taj Mahal and Other Events in Agra

After our relaxing time in Pushkar, it was back into the fray of harrassment in the tourist Mecca of Agra. We couldn’t spend 5 months in India without seeing the Taj Mahal. And it was definitely worth the visit. While you have to navigate your way through the thick throngs of tourists, they kind of make the place more alive and colourful. The Taj mahal itself has a peaceful aura, and is breathtakingly beautiful – made completely of marble, inlaid (by hand) with millions of precious stones from around the world. The work is so precise and detailed you have to admire it, and the place put tears in our eyes (ok maybe just Shelley’s eyes) because of the love that inspired it. If you didn’t know, the Taj Mahal was constructed by the Mughal emperor Shar Jahan in the 1600’s when his wife died in childbirth (of their 14th child!) – she made him promise to build a monument to their love. Or, as Drew says, it’s man’s biggest erection for a woman.

So we spent a pleasant couple of hours exploring the Taj (incidentally the most expensive place to visit we’ve been to in India – 750 rupees, about $25 – but you do get a free bottle of water). We didn’t get up to much else in Agra, since Drew and Chris both has short bouts of stomach upsets, something we’d all been expecting but thankfully lasted less than a day each. While Drew was having close encounters with his toilet one morning, Scott, Chris and I went off for a walk to explore the Baby Taj – a monument to the father of a Mughal empress, that was the predecessor of the Taj Mahal – and ended up surrounded by about 30 inquisitive kids while we stopped to drink chai on the way home. They were only mildly interested until Shelley decided to show them how to make houses from cards, and then Scott and Chris got their cameras out, at which point mayhem commenced. It was all fun until we paid and left, and then predictably some of the kids followed us to pester us for money and pens and sweets.