Sandeep told us we were going first to an 11 year old Hindu temple, Akshardham. Well, there was some grumbling throughout the tour folks….”who wants to see a brand new temple…I want to see a 500 year old temple.” But this place was fantastic! They were very strict about what you could bring inside… no cameras seems to be pretty standard in Hindu temples. You go through a metal detector and are frisked…which also has become common. 7000 carvers and 3000 volunteers worked on this temple and completed it in a very short time, something like 5 years. . And it is gorgeous…the carvings on the columns are fascinating and non-stop. Not a single inch of the place is not decorated some how yet it is not tacky, it is extremely beautiful. This is one of the few temples dedicated to a human and not a god. The outer wall of the temple is decorated in carved elephants and animals and people telling fables. I guess it was a good thing that we were not allowed to bring in cameras because I could have been there for hours. Here are a couple images I downloaded from the Internet.

One of the really great things about the Akshardhan Temple was that is very clean and they are taking really good care of it. There were people cleaning the pools and the gardens and wiping everything down. It is so good to see that they are trying hard to keep it clean and nice….because it is so not happening elsewhere.

The rest of the day was spent driving to Agra. A lunch stop at a turnpike station had very good Thali.

We stopped along the way at the tomb of Itmad-du-Daulah which was commissioned by a Persian Amir in exile for his wife’s parents. He also happens to the the grandfather of Mumtz Mahjal for whom the Taj mahal was built.  It is called “the baby taj” and is apparently reminiscent of a jewelry box that is popular in India.

Taj Mahal

Every country I have visited, I have a moment that I am overwhelmed with where I am and what I am priviledged enough to be seeing and doing and the Taj Mahal was it for me. What a gorgeous place and a beautiful story that goes with it.

The fact that this was built in the 1500’s makes the building’s engineering even more amazing. The four towers on each corner are tilted just a little bit away from the main mauselom so if there is an earthquake they will fall away from it. There are wells dug all around that are filled with sand and supported by sawdust made of “iron wood” which is kept moist by channels from the river whose job it is to also protect the tomb from earthquakes.

It is funny because it is a huge building yet the actual tomb part is very small and dark and unfortunately no cameras. (on the walk through the shops I asked if the seller had a postcard of the inside of the Taj and he said it was in one of his books. I did not want the whole book …so he cut it out of the book for me!! I probably should have bought the whole book….it would have been cheaper!) Mumtaj mahl’s tomb is actually underground but the monument is right in the center of the building. Her husband was also buried there and his monument is bigger and off to the side of hers. There are passageways all the way around the inner sanctum where you can see into the middle and they are very plain. The outside of the building is decorated with semi-precious inlays into the marble….lapis lazuli, malachite…. The grounds are beautiful and manicured.

A little history…Emperor Shah Jahan and Queen had an amazing love and shared 14 children together. She died not long after the 14^th child was born. The 4^th oldest son was not happy about not becoming King so he killed his three older brothers and was going to kill his father, but one of his sisters (who took over as Queen when the mother died) talked him out of it and persuaded him to just put the father on house arrest. The King lived his final years at the Agra Fort with a perfect view of the Taj Mahal a little  ways down the river.

Agra Fort is also beautiful yet much more rustic except for the family quarters which are beautiful but simple and small.

A stop at a company which specializes in marble inlays was the next stop. They demonstrated and talked to us about the procedure used and then served us a cold drink and somehow we ended up buying a small table!! It is beautiful and being shipped to Colorado and will be our new housewarming gift to ourselves…when we have a house!

The evening was a “Bollywood” type live show with singing and dancing of the story of Emperor Shah Jahan and …….. It was so hokey that is was great. They had headphones which you could tune into 10 different languages. No time for dinner today so we finished up a chocolate cake that somehow got mysteriously delivered to our room in Delhi. I also treated myself to a henna design on my hand. It cost 100 rupees ($ 1.50 USD) and she used a pre-packaged henna tube that she used like she was decorating a cake. The henna goes on very thick and dries like a ganache on your hand. After an hour, you wash it off and I was shocked…it hardly showed at all. But when I woke up this morning it had gotten darker overnight.