Spring Break Trip to India - Part III - Taj Mahal

On Monday morning, we woke up at 5:30 and our guide and driver picked us up at the hotel at 6:00.  We could have done without the driver, because it is illegal to drive to the Taj - Mahal in a normal vehicle, you have to use one of the provided electric vehicles or donkey or camel carts (really!)  The pick up point was only about two blocks away.

Waiting at 6:00 am outside of our hotel to be picked up to go see Taj Mahal

By the time we bought tickets, missed the first bus, started walking, and got picked up by a second bus - it was about 6:20.  We had to stand in line.  Men in one line, women in another.  Each of the men's and women's lines was further divided into local and non-locals.  The local line was mostly tour guides.  I was lonely in my line, but only had to stand for about twenty minutes.  The security procedures went pretty quickly for me and I waited for the ladies to get through their line.  That line took longer because most of the women had purses or bags that had to be inspected. Yulia had to throw out our big bucket of gum that we take with us when we travel (air pressure on airplanes....), but that was our only casualty.

Waiting in line to go through the entrance. Ladies on the left (a much longer line) and gentlemen on the right.

Waiting in line.

The grounds for the Taj Mahal are very impressive.  The building itself even more so.  The attention to detail is amazing.  The designs on the stones were made by inlaying semi-precious stones into the marble.  The marble was brought from another part of India that was over 250 kilometers away - so the labor involved in the entire endeavor was massive.  The building itself was built by Turks (the dome) and Arabs (the minarets) and Persians (the marble inlaying) and it took 22 years to build.

Darwaza-i Rauza (the Great Gate) is the main entrance to Taj Mahal.

About to go through. If you look hard, you can see Taj Mahal right through the opened gate.

Here it is!

The view was breathtaking!

One of modern 7 wonders of the world is right behind us!

It is massive and so beautiful! The minaret on the right has scaffolding around because it is currently undergoing cleaning using "mud-pack therapy" to remove yellowness from the white marble.

Gorgeous! Taj Mahal was commissioned by Shah Jahan in 1631 to be built in the memory of his second and wife Mumtaz Mahal (her name translates as "crown of the palace"), a Persian Princess and a love of his life since his childhood who died at age 39 giving birth to their 14th child. Taj Mahal carries her name (Taj is short for Mumtaz)

The Great Gate

Listening to our guide (on the right)

Just can't get enough of it.

World class travelers!

The details of the work are amazing!

Detail of jali inlay, made out of precious and semiprecious gemstones.

A view of the Yamuna River from Taj Mahal. In the distance you can see Agra Fort that we visited the day before.

Nika and her Indian pants :)

Yulia

One of the other gates

Saying goodbye to a beautiful masterpiece! 

One last photo.

Our guide took us to all the places to get good pictures and we enjoyed looking at the whole complex.  In the Taj Mahal itself we had to wear feet covers (or go barefoot) to preserve it.

Overall we spent about 2 hours on the grounds.  When we were done, we caught the bus back to the beginning of the trail and walked back to our hotel.  We packed up, ate breakfast, checked out, and then got back into the van for a long day of travel to Jaipur.

A monkey climbing up the Great Gate. We saw a lot more monkeys in Jaipur.

Our trip to Jaipur was just as long as our trip to Agra had been.  We actually had to take a detour because there was some sort of pilgrimage going on along the road that we were taking.  The farmland was pretty similar to what we had seen up until then, until we got closer to Jaipur and went through the mountains and hills.

We stopped about halfway and it was a real tourist trap.  We bought some cookies, crackers, and soda - and paid over $25.00 for just that.  It was enough to get us by, though.

Saying goodbye to Aman Homestead, the best B&B in Agra!

Busy, busy roads!

People are going to some sort of event, so we had to take a detour.

And we saw a lot of these on our detour - buffalo chips! We even saw how women were making them!

Water buffalo

Six hour drive will do it to you!

On our way to Jaipur we were going to stop at Fatehpur Sikri, the abandoned city which was founded in 1569 abandoned shortly after in 1585 due the the exhaustion of the lake supplying the city with water. However when we got there we were "attacked" by guides one of which was very persistent and kept rising the price for his services. We finally got tired of arguing with him and decided to continue unto Jaipur. This was our very short 2 minute ride in a tuk-tuk which we had to take to the entrance of the city right before we decided that enough was enough.

Getting closer to Jaipur. Hills!

We arrived at our hotel in Jaipur at about 5:00 p.m.  The hotel was amazing - and had a small pool [which was unheated, so still quite cool] and the girls were excited to swim.  After checking in, they swam, and we went to dinner at the rooftop restaurant at about 7:00 p.m.  The food at the restaurant was really good.  We ordered a bit of everything.  I ordered a mutton dish that was the most tender, most delicious mutton I've ever eaten.  The exciting part of dinner was that there was live entertainment - music and two women dancing.  They invited the girls to come and dance, and they did.  It was a fun time for everyone.

Girls' room at the Umaid Bhawan - Heritage-Style Hotel. They were in heaven!

They had this net over the pool. We suspected it was protection from birds and ... monkeys. We saw one jumping from one side of the wall to the other over the pool.

A beautiful hotel with a great attention to detail!

Lina watching the life performance at dinner. Little did she know that soon she will be the entertainer herself!

One of the dancers.

And here we go, learning the Indian dance

These guys provided the music and singing.

After dinner we hit the hay - we had to get ready for a long day of sightseeing in the morning.

Spring Break 2017 - Trip to India Part II - Agra Fort

On our second day in India we started off by going to the Raj Ghat - the area in a park where Gandhi was cremated.  It is in an area where many other leaders and VIPs were cremated and it has been turned into a beautiful park and memorial.  It was another area that we really enjoyed.  It was pretty peaceful (we were there early in the morning and so we beat a lot of the tourist traffic), and there were lots of beautiful flowers and plants in the gardens.  We spent about an hour looking around and then headed out of town.  We didn't go see the Red Fort in Delhi because we had been told that it was very similar to the one in Agra, and that was on our agenda for later in the day.

Waiting at our hotel for our driver to pick us up to go to Agra.

The streets of Delhi

Also the streets of Delhi.

We've seen a lot of these on the roads.

And of course, tuk-tuks.

This was a little flea market right along the side of the road. From what we could see, they were mostly selling shoes there.

Raj Ghat park which translates as King's Bank (meaning river bank). Just beautiful!

In our exploration of the park we came to this point where we had to take of our shoes if we wanted to go any further.

All kids but Sophie decided to check it out. The adults stayed with the shoes, just in case.

Here they are, off to explore. When they came back they reported that there were more flower beds but nothing else. Of course they didn't think to read the signs that were everywhere.

When the kids came back, this woman-guard who made sure everybody took off their shoes before proceeding on their walk in this area came up to them. For a moment we thought they were in trouble. It turned out that she wanted to take a picture of them. This was our first of many such experiences while we were in India. Wherever we went, somebody always wanted to take a picture of us.

Beautiful park!

Entrance to Mahatma Gandhi Memorial. The twins were learning about him in their History of the World this year, so it was neat to see the place of his grave.

We didn't go down to get closer to his grave because one had to take off the shoes again but we had a very good view from the top of the wall.

Looking good!

On top of the wall that surrounded the Gandhi Memorial were beautiful flowers that Lina fell in love with and made us take some pictures of them! Here are a few.

An ordinary honey bee

And a not so ordinary one. We've seen a very impressive hive made by these honey bees in Jaipur a few days later.

A couple relaxing on the lawn with a crazy, noisy city beyond the park.

Oranges, pineapples, bananas, and coconuts were the fruit we saw the most of in India.

We spent a good portion of the day driving from Delhi to Agra.  The trip was about 240 kilometers, but the roads in India are not very high speed, so it was about a five hour drive.  We stopped about halfway at a little tourist trap place.  The girls were supposed to go to the bathroom, but got caught in the souvenir section.  Lina and Nika found some pants that they fell in love with, and I helped the twins to find some skirts.  By the time Yulia had come back, we had spent money on Indian clothes.

Most of the drive between Delhi and Agra was agricultural views. My grandfather had done a lot of irrigation consulting work in India in the 1980s and early 1990s, so I was constantly wondering if the fields I saw through the van windows were the fields I saw pictures of during one of his infamous slide shows [Do you want to see India? Here's a picture of a ditch! Here's a picture of a different ditch!  Here's a picture of the first ditch, but from a different angle!  Here's a picture of the ditch with water in it!] About halfway between Delhi and Agra we began to see square smokestacks everywhere.  They were the smokestacks of brick drying operations.  Yulia got some good pictures of the brickyards as we drove past them.

Here is one such brickyard. We saw many dozens of them on the way to Agra.

We arrived at our hotel in Agra only after driving around a neighborhood about four different times and ways and finally finding someone who could point out where it was.  It was a home-stay hotel (Aman Homestay) run by a family, and it was really nice.  We checked in, and then went for a walk and found a nice little restaurant to have a light lunch in.  We liked the food in general, and it was in this restaurant that we had saag paneer (a spinach and cheese dish) that Sophie fell in love with.

The streets of Agra

A view of the city from the roof of our hotel. You can see cupola of Taj Mahal in the distance 

A lunch at some restaurant we found while wondering around.

And cows. Right on the street. It is hard to see from this picture but these cows (called haryana cow) have a big hump right between their shoulder blades, and they were everywhere in Agra. We also saw horses, camels, donkeys, and goats.

We met our guide and driver back at the hotel, and we went to the Red Fort.  The red fort was very interesting.  It was the home to a number of rulers, the most famous of which was Shah Jahan, the man who built the Taj Mahal.  The influences of Islam, Hinduism, and Christianity can be seen in the architecture, and the palace buildings within the walled city were quite beautiful.  The view of the Taj Mahal from the fort were great.  We spent about two hours with the guide learning about the history and architecture, and then we went back to the hotel.

Agra Fort

To enter the fort you had to go up the hill a bit. You see these horizontal lines chiseled in the stone? These were made so the animals could go up without slipping. 

Agra Fort has many palaces. This one is Jahangir Palace.

Diwan-I-Aam, hall of public audience where shahs were listening to the people.

Those arches are beautiful!

Diwan-I-Aam

A wall from which you could see a good view of Taj Mahal

Muasamman Burj. Shah Jahan was imprisoned by his son and spent the last few years of his life in this little palace . It is rumored that he died in this tower from which he could see Taj Mahal that he built.

And here we are!

This was the fountain that created a cooling mist during hot summer season.

Grape Garden (our girls thought that the guide said "grave garden", and so their imagination got a little out of hand). 

More of the fort

Amazing work on those arches!

We had ordered dinner with the family.  We had a home-style meal with the other guests.  At our table we had a lady from Birmingham, England with her three children.  She was Indian in background (her grandparents were Indians who emigrated to England) and they were visiting India as the start of a six-month tour around the world.  They were fun company.  The meal was delicious.

Our delicious home-style Indian dinner at the homestay! And new friends!

Relaxing after a long day on the roof terrace.

The rooms, atmosphere, and family that owned the hotel were fantastic and we had a nice relaxing evening before going to bed early.  We had plans to be at the Taj Mahal in the morning at 6:30 when it opened.

Day 2 was in the books!