The Taj Mahal is NOT the Best Thing In Agra

It's true.  I was there.

Okay, before I get into my story, let me first apologize for not blogging for a month.  During the last 3 weeks, I went to Delhi and Agra (hence, this post), got sick (damn water), did some work (I guess I can tell you about that too...), and finally went to Rajasthan for 6 days.  And then celebrated Holi.  And then got sick again.  SO MUCH TO SAY!!!!  For the next some-odd days, I will post every night.  Sorry for all of the erratic posting.  I wish I could say that it would change but.... It probably won't.  Next apology.... Sorry for making this post so darn long lol.  If you do not have any food or water with you at the moment, I suggest you get up and get some now.  You will need it.  Maybe even a pillow so you can take a nice little nap in the middle.  Third apology... I am sorry if there are any spelling or grammatical errors throughout this post.  I usually read through it once before posting it, but.... It's too long lol.  Anyways... Follow me, my reader, and me alone, and I will show you such an exciting adventure!


My classmate, Elaine, told Rajiv that the only thing she REALLY wants to do while in India is see the Taj Mahal.  That was her only request.  To be honest, if I left India without seeing it, I would be perfectly happy, but since she was going, might as well tag along for a weekend excursion!  And March 4-6, that is what we did.

We woke up early Friday morning (3:00) and headed to the airport to catch our 5:45 flight to Delhi, and arrived in Delhi around 7:00.  We were greeted at the airport with, you guessed it, a dude holding a sign with our names on it.  Love it.  Turns out, he was our tour guide.  He walked us to our car/driver, opened up the trunk, and pulled out two garlands to put around each of our necks.  Wow.  Look at that hospitality.  I could tell this was going to be a good trip.  The whole trip was booked through a travel agent, which I have never actually done before, but I have to say, it was pretty awesome.  He set up flights for us, got us tour guides, hotels, a car and driver, and it was all really cheap.  Sweet deal!

Wow, I haven't had tost in forever

Our driver took us back to our hotel, we checked in, but since it was so early, our room wasn't ready yet.  While we were waiting, we decided to get some breakfast downstairs.  It was..... Probably the worst meal I had in India.  I mean, it wasn't AWFUL, but compared to everything else I have had, it was pretty bad.  They had some Indian food, like idlis (steamed rice), but they were hard.  They also had some other food, like toast, but I refused to eat that.  There was some fresh juice though, so that is good.  Well, the sign said fresh juice.  After I had a few glasses, I saw a waiter filling the juice dispenser back up with canned juice lol.  The meal kinda put a damper on my "this trip is going to be awesome" reaction from the garlands, but I figured that this is hotel food- it will get better!  Go optimism!  After our meal, we went up to our room and both crashed.  It was a much needed nap considering we didn't sleep much the night before.  Anyways, we got up a little bit later, went downstairs, met up with our tour guide, and we were off to our first destination, Swaminarayan Akshardham.  Do not ask me how to pronounce that.

I did not take this picture....

Swaminarayan Akshardham is a Hindu temple.  By far the most beautiful temple I have been to.  The architecture was amazing.  The layout was breathtaking.  Imagine a 141 ft tall temple, made of white marble, covered in over 20,000 intricate carvings/statues.  All done by hand.  Inside this building, there is an 11 foot gold-plated statue of the god Swaminarayan.  Now, take this building, surround it with water, surround THAT by the greenest, prettiest grass and gardens you can imagine, throw in some fountains..... Now you are starting to get the idea of what this temple is like.  The entire temple grounds is 100 acres big.  It was constructed in 2 years by 10,000 workers, completed in 2005.  Needless to say, it was impressive.  Want to see some pictures?!?!

Cameras were not allowed.

Wtf.  Really?  I found a few on Google Images, but even those are pretty scarce....

Exterior Carvings.  Pretty sweet, right?  All done by hand.

Statue of Swaminarayan

After we left the temple, we were off to another temple!  Lotus Temple.  Lotus Temple is a Bahá'í temple.  Again, do not ask me how to pronounce that.  The Bahá'í faith is a religion that accepts all religions.  The temple is open to anyone who wishes to pray to god, no matter who their god may be.  This temple was a stark contrast to Swaminarayan Akshardham.  Whereas the previous temple was extremely intricate and detailed, Lotus Temple is very plain.  However, it is also very beautiful.  How do I describe it.... It looks like a lotus petal lol.  Just like the last temple, it is surrounded by water (the moats were used as a cooling system so the temples never get too hot), which is in turn surrounded by grass.  Much smaller grounds than the last temple too.  I think that it is much less intricate because Lotus temple is a place for praying, whereas the other one was dedicated to a god.  Regardless of reasons, it was very cool.  And yes, I went into the temple to pray.  =)  

That water looks sooooooooooooooo refreshing.

After we went to the temple, the tour guide took us to a few different places which we didn't leave the car for.  Honestly, I have no idea where we went nor what we saw.  His English wasn't the best... Plus, it was impossible to take pictures because the driver never even stopped the car.  Therefore, let me skip ahead a few hours.  A friend recommended that we go to Delhi Haat, which is a shop, so we went, and it was pretty cool.  Mostly textiles and jewelry.  They also had a lot of really cool hand carved Ganesha statues.  Ganesha is one of the Hindu gods.  Very easy to identify Ganesha- he has an elephant head.  Almost every car that I have been in has a little Ganesha statue on the dashboard and many buildings and homes have Ganesha paintings; they bring good luck and prosperity.  Not a bad thing to have.


Our friend also recommended that we go to Red Fort and the Bengali Market and a few other places as well, but the day was coming to a close.  Red Fort has programs at night (I think a sound and light show), so we asked the tour guide to take us there.  He didn't really want to.  He insisted on taking us to a different place instead, Delhi Gate.  He said that we could go to Red Fort afterwards.  Remember the Gateway of India?  Yea, basically the exact same thing.  Nothing exciting.  Some little girl came up to Elaine and asked her if she wanted name bracelets.  Only 2 rupees.  So Elaine said sure!  Good price, I will get 3!  She gave the girl the names she wanted, the girl took some string, put little letter beads on the string, and made the bracelets.  And then she asked Elaine for 200 rupees.  She now told Elaine that it was 2 rupees per bead.  Never thought I would see a 5 year old scam artist lol.  Elaine got mad, yelled at the girl, and refused to pay that much. The ONLY good thing about going was this picture:

Moneys on leashes.  How cool is that?  Why don't we have them in New Jersey???  Fun Fact- I have seen more monkeys on leashes than dogs on leashes.  True story.


We left Delhi Gate and I was pumped to go to Red Fort.... But he insisted on taking us to see some other buildings first.  Again, I have no idea what they were, and we didn't go inside, just took pictures from the car. And then when we were done, I asked again about Red Fort!  He said that we missed the night programs already, so there was no point in going.  "Go to hotel?"  I was pretty mad, not gonna lie.  Anyways, I told him that we had to go to the Bengali Market.  He said that there was another market near our hotel that we could go to, but I refused to go to another market.  My stubbornness won out.  Go me.  =)  We went to the market, had some delicious ras malai (a spongy sweet in a flavored milk).  Made me happy.  Then, he took us back to our hotel.  It was kind of early (only 8:00), but we had to get up early to go to Agra, home of the Taj Mahal, so whateves.  Slept like a baby.  Onto Day 2!


Woke up, didn't have breakfast because it was awful the day before, hopped in the car, and headed off to Agra!  It was a long, long, long drive.  We got to see some interesting stuff along the way.  For instance,

I spy a vehicle with too many people on it.  Well, I guess that doesn't narrow it down much...

was a pretty common sight.  Oh, and since we passed in between different states, our drive had to stop to show paperwork or something... And whenever we would stop, hawkers would bombard our car.  Rule #1- Keep the windows closed.  Within a 3 minute period, at least 10 people would knock on our car windows, trying to sell us stuff.  Rule #2- Do not make eye contact.  If you look at them, they will assume that you may be interested in buying something, and they will not leave.  The scariest thing happened to me, too.  I was following Rule #2, keeping my eyes inside the car, when I hear a loud THUD on the car door next to me.  Scared the heck out of me.  I turn around to see what it was... A monkey was sitting on the car.  On my window sill.  Now, keep in mind, I am following Rule #1, so he was standing on the slight curve of the door frame away from the window.  Very impressive.  This monkey was holding a banana in its left hand, chewing like a little kid without manners, drooling, and had snot running down its nose.  At one point he put its face up to the window and got a whole bunch of nastiness all over it.  Pretty gross.  The owner of the monkey was trying to get us to take pictures with the monkey.  "No bite!"  If you tell me "No drool", then maybe.


Fortunately, we got out of there soon and headed off to brunch.  Brunch was... also disappointing.  At this meal, I figured something out.


Top 10 Signs that You are Eating At A Touristy Restaurant:


1)   The menu is in English.
2)   They serve non-Indian food.  (Exception- Chinese food.  For some reason, most restaurants have Chinese.)
3)   They give you a fork.
4)   They give you a knife.
5)   They do not have the cheap, square, 1/2 ply napkins found everywhere else.  They have actual napkins.
6)   There are pictures on the menu.
7)   There are white people in the restaurant.
8)   The waiters know English.
9)   The prices are comparable to those in America
10) There are bathrooms.


Okay, I am exaggerating a little bit, but there is some truth behind each of those statements.  This place violated all 10 rules.  The most important part about the restaurant, of course, is the food.  These signs were just warning lights that the food wouldn't be up to par.  And it wasn't.  The food was just kinda bland, stale... Just overall not very good.  And the coffee and tea that we got at the end was upsetting too.  Neither one of us could finish our drink.  OH!  Another fun fact about the restaurant- they had cheeseburgers on the menu.  Nuff said.


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INTERMISSION

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We finally reached Agra mid-afternoon and checked into our hotel.  Very nice hotel.  I approve.  We met up with our tour guide and.... This guy was awesome.  AWESOME!!!!  Very cool dude, great English, knew his facts, etc.  He took us to a restaurant for a late lunch too, which was also a touristy place, so that was kind of upsetting, but I forgive him.  The food was better than the last few meals.  And finally... The Taj Mahal.


Cars are not allowed past a certain point for pollution reasons, so we had to hop in an electric rickshaw to get the rest of the way there.  And then we bought our tickets.  20 rupees for Indian nationals.  750 rupees for foreigners.  I don't even know what to say to that lol.  Before we walked the rest of the distance to the Taj Mahal, our tour guide gave us a warning.  There would be a lot of hawkers, and everything they will be selling is of awful quality.  If we want something, let him know and he will take us somewhere else to get it.  But most importantly, we cannot tell anyone that he told us that; he could get in trouble.  So let's just keep that between you, me, and the World Wide Web, okay?


Most people think of the Taj Mahal as that big, white building.  There is actually more the to Taj Mahal than just that.  When you enter the Taj Mahal grounds, you first enter through one of 3 gates to get to a sort of "foyer".  Just some grass and walkways.  Pretty nice.  Then, there is another gate.  The North Gate.  It is a very large gate made out of red sandstone.  Very dark inside the gateway.  That way, when you exit, the white marble of the main building seems extra brilliant.  Pretty neat idea.  And yes, it works.  Don't believe me?

Approaching the North Gate

Entering the North Gate

A Glimpse of The Other Side

TA DAA!!!!

Wow.  Its beautiful, isn't it?  That is the prettiest morgue I have ever seen.  Yep, in case you didn't know, the Taj Mahal is a morgue.  It was built by the Mogul Emperor Shah Jahan for his third and favorite wife, Mumtaz Mahal.  She died giving birth to their 14th child together.  Shah Jahan was very upset, since she was his favorite wife, and he vowed not to marry again and to build her a monument as beautiful as her.  So, 21 years and 32,000,000Rs later (roughly $200,000,000 in today's currency), this is what we have.  The picture is a tiny bit misleading; the reflecting pool does not go all the way up to the building.  There is a small, square platform at the end of the reflecting pool.  This platform also has identical reflecting pools to the left, right, and opposite side.  So, basically, there is a square platform with a reflecting pool coming out of each side, which divides the grounds up into 4 gardens.  Why?  It is a symbol of paradise.  Heaven.

Guest House

The main building is made up of white marble, and has a lot if intricate inlaid work on the walls.  There are nine different types of precious and semi-precious gems inlaid in the Taj Mahal.  The four pillars are not vertical.  They are actually built at a 95 degree angle, tilted slightly outwards.  That way, if there is some crazy circumstance which causes a tower to collapse, it will not fall on the main building.  Also, to the left and to the right of the white building are two red sandstone buildings.  One is a mosque and one is.... for symmetry.  It may have been used as a guest house on occasion, but its main purpose was symmetry.  Pretty expensive symmetry lol.

Inlaid work with semi-precious stones.  Not paint.  Therefore, it will last forever.

We then decided to venture inside the Taj Mahal.  No shoes are allowed on the white marble, so the tour guide gave us little red coverings for our shoes lol.  We both decided to man up and just go barefoot instead.  So we climbed some steps, got to the first landing and..... Got in line.  There was a long long long long long long long line that we had to wait in.  Wrapped around a significant part of the platform (as you can see in the picture of the guest house).  We had to wait for approximately one and a half hours before we entered the building.  However, it was fairly easy to keep ourselves entertained, especially since there were....

That monkey needs to learn how to read....

MONKEYS!!!!

Also, the armed guards were fairly entertaining.  They would start waving their guns at people if they tried to cut the line lol.

Yes, those are the red shoe covers that we decided not to wear.  I just wouldn't be able to pull it off like those guards.

But eventually, we got to enter the building and.....I was super disappointed.  First of all, no cameras allowed inside.  Second of all, it was just a tiny tiny room with two coffins.  Replicas.  It was kinda dark in there too, so it was somewhat hard to see the decorative walls.  And there were so many people just pushing their way through that you kinda got swept along, so you were only in there for a moment.  There was so much build-up.  Flying to Delhi, 6 hour drive to Agra, all these awesome gates and beautiful buildings to entice you, a long wait in line anddddddddd.... That's it.  Ah well.

Picture Perfect.
Except for that tree.

To wrap up the Taj Mahal, I would like to go back to Shah Jahan.  He spent his entire fortune on this morgue.  One of his kids got super pissed that Shah Jahan spent the family fortune on a dead wife.  What kind of ruler would do that?  The eldest son always gets to rule after the father, but this kid wasn't the oldest son.  Therefore, he killed his older brother and threw his dad in jail for 8 years and took over as Emperor.  Thank god I don't have a younger brother....


After the Taj Mahal, we went to a store which sold inlaid work.  Different tables and stuff like that.  However, I am not in the market for a table, so that ended quickly.  We got a good cup of chai out of it though, so that was good!  And then we turned in for the night.


Day 3 of our trip.  Almost over.  In the morning, we went to Agra Fort.  The best place in Agra.  It was a fort used by the Moguls.  It was first built by Akbar, Shah Jahan's grandfather, and he chose to make it in red sandstone.  However, when Shah Jahan became emperor and used the fort, he added on to it, but chose to use white marble.  Therefore, it is very easy to see who built what part of the fort.  In some places, there is white marble resting right on top of red sandstone.  Pretty cool.  Oh, and yes, the fort had a moat.  Which used to have alligators in it.  Remember how I mentioned Red Fort in Delhi?  That is another fort very similar to Agra Fort (made out of red sandstone, hence Red Fort), so seeing how much I liked it, I was very upset that we did not have a chance to visit Red Fort when we were in Delhi.  When I told our tour guide this, he asked us where we went in Delhi, so we told him.  He laughed.  "Your tour guide must not have been certified.  He was only taking you to places that were free.  Certified tour guides do not have to pay to enter all of these cites.  He must have wanted to avoid paying."  Wow.  I like that Delhi tour guide even less now.  Also explains why his English wasn't that good....

What an entrance!

Anyways, back to the fort!  When we first entered the fort, we entered through a massive gate, and the floors were grooved.  Why?  So that when they rode elephants in and out of the fort, they would fit through the door and the elephants wouldn't slip.  Don't want your elephants falling all over the place.  After we got through the first doorway, we got to a grass courtyard with a giant cement bowl in the middle.  It was a bathtub lol.  Crazy.  Through the next doorway there was a pretty fountain and we could look over the outer wall of the fort.  We could see where the moat used to be.  Not much water in there anymore haha.

Cry me a moat

They should go on Trading Spaces

Moving on, we went into one of the daughter's living quarters.  I had a little bit of trouble imagining what it would be like to live there since there is no real furniture or anything.  It feels very empty.  Very beautiful, but very empty.  As you can see, this was made out of white marble.  It was for one of Shah Jahan's daughters.  And, as I said, they had 14 kids together.  Pretty decent sized room considering the amount they had to have lol.










Now.  Probably the most depressing room in the whole fort.  Shah Jahan's prison.  Ready?  

Yea, thats a prison.  That is a fountain right there on the floor.  In fact, Shah Jahan got regular visits from family members, got anything he asked for, but was confined to this room.  I was curious how his son "arrested" him, considering Shah Jahan had power.  Turns out, Shah Jahan told his son that he could have power and would go in "jail" as long as this room was his jail.  Why this room?  It has a fantastic view of the Taj Mahal.  Man, he was REALLY in love.

To the right is Shah Jahan's prison and to the left you can see the Taj Mahal 1.5 miles away

Next was the king and queen's pond, full of fish and everything.  They would sit on opposite sides of the pond and go fishing.  How cute.  Now, just like the moat, there is no more water and it is all grass.

Pic taken from the Emperor's side.  His wife would sit waaaaaaaay over there.

Garden next to daughter's room

There was some other grass too, that was actually intended to be grass, but thats not as exciting.  Just some nice gardens to walk through.  There were a lot of fountains scattered throughout the fort.  And if I recall correctly, they were all hand powered fountains.  In other words, they would have servants pumping water to make the fountains spray.  What a job!  We also got to see one of the mosques in the fort.  Pretty nice, but kinda small.  

Mosque

We saw many other rooms too, including one room completely covered in little tiny mirror fragments.  Really cool.  Overall, we spent a solid 3 hours in the fort.  And we were only allowed to see 20% of the fort.  The other 80% is still being used by soldiers.  I hope the moat on that side is working....


Thus ended our trip to Agra Fort.  I personally like Agra Fort WAY more than the Taj Mahal.  There was more to it.  More interesting facts.  More rooms.  You could see how it changed throughout the years.  I don't know... It was much bigger and there was something new around every corner.  Maybe I liked it because I have a short attention span.... Regardless, I loved it.  


After Agra Fort we went to an embroidery place.  I think that embroidery work is one that that Agra is known for.  At first, I didn't want to go but.... This place was awesome.  Like, legit awesome.  They made large pictures, like 2 x 3 ft pictures, out of needlework.  The pictures were 3D too; they would stick out about one in in parts.  And they didn't use anything to puff out parts of the painting.   They didn't bump it.  It was just layers and layers of string.  Crazy.  Extremely lifelike.  And with that, we headed back to Delhi.  


But on the way, we stopped for food.  =)  Yes, there is a reason for a smile this time.  I insisted that we stop at a dhaba, which is a roadside restaurant on the highway.  We sat outside.  The food was hot and greasy and I have no idea what was in it and there were a bunch of flies flying around and... It was delicious.  I completely understand why the tour guides didn't want to take us to local restaurants like this, but honestly, I would take that any day over touristy food.  

Oh Anand Family, How I Love You

Not much left to say about our trip.  After food, we just went to the airport and then flew home.


Whew!  That was a lot!  Thanks for sticking with me guys, I know it was a lot to read/look at.  Tell you what, I will reward you with a funny little story.  When we got back to Mumbai, we told Rajiv all about our trip.  We told him the ups and the downs.  The thing he was most concerned with was our Delhi tour guide.  He said that we should definitely tell the travel agent that he was not a very good tour guide.  Well, a week later, we talked to Rajiv about it again.  "Yea, I looked at your itinerary and then spoke with the travel agent about your Delhi tour guide... You were not supposed to have a tour guide.  I have no idea who hopped in the car with you and showed you around Delhi, but you were not supposed to have a tour guide."  Some random dude had a sign with our names at the airport, gave us flowers, and gave us a tour of Delhi.  Wow.  That explains a lot.  No wonder he sucked.

Can't believe I got lei'd by a total stranger.