As one of my friends put it when she saw the above picture, it looks like I'm standing in front of a painting of the Taj Mahal. But that's just what the Taj Mahal looks like: painting perfect.
You could say that Agra has a Taj-based economy; there's not really all that much to see or do in the city other than its famous tomb. M and I arrived late at night on a train from Jaipur and checked into the hotel, getting a room with a view of the Taj. Since night had already fallen, we got to wait for the morning for our first glimpse of India's most well-known site. Anticipation.
We got up in the morning, and there it was outside our window. We had breakfast on the roof of the hotel and snapped our first of many, many pictures.
The walk to the Taj Mahal takes you into the No Vehicle Zone, set up within several thousand meters of the Taj to keep away pollution that could cloud the translucent marble's glow. (I was reminded of Zermatt.) We walked through the first gate, the courtyard, the second gate. We hired a government-authorized tour guide to show us around and tell us the history. The main gate has 22 small domes for the 22 years it took to construct the Taj, and it has the morning prayer verse of the Koran inset around the door. Many verses of the Koran can be found in inlaid calligraphy on the Taj or its outlying buildings, especially prayers marking the time of day and those dealing with the Day of Judgment. Then we entered the Taj gardens.
The Taj is set in a perfectly manicured and symmetrical garden. In fact, the entire complex is perfectly symmetrical: Shah Jahan, who ordered the Taj built for his third and favorite wife, also built an enormous mosque to the left of it for use during construction. To keep the symmetry, he built an identical but empty building on the other side, too. He also ordered the towers surrounding the Taj Mahal to be built with a slight lean away from the building, so if it were ever attacked the towers would fall away from and not onto the tomb of his beloved wife.
One of the remarkable things about the Taj Mahal is how its appearance seems to change both throughout the day, with the changing light, as well as when you approach it. In the early mornings and during full moons, it seems to glow. From afar it looks like a fairly plain white building, but as you get closer you notice more and more details. In fact the entire building is covered from top to bottom in inlaid precious stones and marble carving. From simple patterns, to jeweled flowers, to Arabic calligraphy, many of the details are inlaid jewels. On a building of the scale of the Taj Mahal (which is extremely enormous), it's truly remarkable.
Once you approach the Taj itself, you have to either take off your shoes or else put on scrub-like covers to keep your shoes from physically touching the mausoleum. We wandered through the building. The actual tombs of Shah Jahan and his third wife are inaccessible in a room below the Taj, but we saw marble replicas on display. The Taj was originally meant only to serve as Mumtaz's tomb (n.b. "Mumtaz" was the wife's nickname; it means "jewel", as she was "The jewel of the court"), and so her grave sits in the middle, perfectly lined up with the symmetry of the entire many-acre grounds. Her husband's grave is off to the side. Shah Jahan intended to build a second Taj for himself across the river from the Taj Mahal, to be constructed out of black onyx. Unfortunately while the foundation was being put in, he was deposed by his son, who didn't want the remainder of his inheritance spent on a second "black Taj". You can still see the remains of the foundation, but we are left to wonder how awesome a sight a black Taj Mahal would have been sitting next to the white one.
I took a few hundred more pictures of the Taj, but I think you get the point. I was surprised when I met another backpacker of Indian origin who told me that many of her friends and family in India told her not to bother seeing the Taj, that it was overhyped. I have to say, if this isn't worth seeing then you might as well skip the entire country.
From there we grabbed some lunch and went off to see Agra's other main attraction, the Agra Fort. India's "most important" fort, it was also expanded significantly by Shah Jahan, who used it as the seat of his government before moving it to Delhi, and who was later imprisoned there after his son deposed him. From many places on its walls you can see the Taj Mahal, less than 3 km away, and a legend says that Shah Jahan died in one of the towers with a view of the Taj.
The fort is a massive complex, only 25% of which is open to the public, as 75% of it remains an active military base. In addition to its history as a capital of the Mughals, it was also the site of a battle during the Indian Rebellion of 1857 against the British East India Company, after which the British established direct control of the subcontinent. Our guide of this building took us through many of the palace's incredible spaces -- the diwan-i am, the diwan-i khas, several mosques, the throne (which M and I are sitting on below, and which had been cracked by a cannonball).
The absolute highlight of the Fort, however, was one we shouldn't have been able to see at all. Our guide told us (and we later confirmed in our guidebook and online), that Shah Jahan had built an insanely decorated bathroom for his favorite wife, Mumtaz, that is not open to the public since many people used to pry bits out of its walls. He offered to intercede on our behalf with a maintenance guy, who, for a price, would sneak us in. We said sure, and it was worth it. The room, which was almost pitch black except for some candles the guide brought, a flashlight I happened to be carrying, and the flash of our cameras, is decorated in what he claimed were "four million" (number impossible to verify) tiny mirrors covering every surface, creating a glowing and glittering effect that I haven't seen anywhere else. I have some incredible video of it, but until I figure out how YouTube works I'll just have to post some pictures, which came out very well but still don't do it justice. If you're ever at Agra Fort, do try to bribe your way in if the opportunity presents itself. The walls are also built to serve as drums and other musical instruments, and there's more of the inlaid marble that covers the Taj Mahal, and glows in faint light. At least according to our guide, this part of the palace is, after the Taj Mahal itself, Agra's greatest treasure -- it's a real pity that it remains closed to the public (except for the many tourists who, like us, are willing to be extorted).
Agra in a day -- it needs no more. On to Delhi, our last stop in India.
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