Jan 31st: The Taj Mahal

Guess what I had for breakfast - a donut, a real one with sugar. Its a pretty western oriented hotel so there is the full of continental breakfasts and I give in and have one. I do have an Indian breakfast as well. I give the sausage bacon and egg a miss as well as i'll be able to have that any time I want when I go back. One other dish they have is a "Scottish Chicken Stew". I didn't know we had them, let alone they were for breakfast, so definitely dodge that.

I'm meeting my driver at 10.00 to go for a days sight seeing. It also includes a free local guide as well which will be good.

We meet up and go to the Taj Mahal. With Local knowledge we go to the south entrance as it is never as busy as the east or west entrances. It is closed on Fridays as well, thank goodness I cam today I would have been gutted to not get in.

What a place, it is like a fairytale it really is. You walk through the entrance and then go through another gatehouse before you can see it. You can start to see bits of it as you approach the second gate but you can't see it all before you go though.

I literally got goosebumps when I saw it. The work, detail and materials that went into it are unbelievable.

What you see when you get through the gatehouse.

I took over 100 pictures of it as you can't help yourself. How they built it so perfectly and precisely over 400 years ago defies belief. They thought of every detail, such as the four corner towers, they lean slightly outwards. The reason why is that if there were an earthquake the and the towers fell they would likely fall away from the main building.

You can go right inside and see where the King and queen are buried, you are no longer allowed down into the crypt but can walk around the entire building.

At the back is the holy river, it is where many Muslims ashes are scattered. The Taj Mahal was built mainly by Muslims from Iran. So the first thing they build was a huge Mosque to pray in and then built the Taj Mahal and then a building that is identical to the Mosque but was used as a guest house.

The Taj Mahal and the Mosque beside it.A view of the Taj Mahal from inside the guest house.

Having a guide was great as he was able to explain many of the details that would pass you by if you did not know them. If you are ever lucky enough to visit then get a guide I would recommend it.

At the back, the north side, the king started to build another Taj Mahal, this one was to be in black.

However, the King's son imprissoned the King to stop it from happening as it would bankrupt them. The king lived in the Agra Fort for the last eight years of his life. It was not a jail he still had splendid apartments.

My gudes, Ali, showed me how the showers worked in the apartments.

We spend over an hour there just walking around and hearing about the story. You just can't stop taking pictures though.

After that we went to Agra fort, it is massive and most of it is till used by the Indian Army so you can only access a small part of it. It has two moats around it, a dry one and a wet one. Thy dry one would have had many tigers in it and the wet one would have had crocodiles in it. Thankfully both are now empty. Many people, prisoners and criminals mostly would be hung at the castle and end up in one of the moats afterwards.

It was never successfully breached as far as my guide knew. The only way in was through the front door and it was long and thin and you would have boiling oil poured on you if you went that way.

After driving round and seeing all the sights that I wanted to we went for lunch. Now I had a small worry at lunch as I had read a story, in the Lonely Planet, of a food poisoning scam in Agra that happened. The restaurants would slip something in your food and you would need a doctors help. Your meducal insurance would then be heavily billed for it. Hopefully I'll be ok.

After all of that I have come back to the hotel and am relaxing in my room. I've found a channel showing the football. I've watched the Man City game and I am now watching the Arsenal game.

I may even have a beer later.

I am so glad I got to see the Taj Mahal.

I'm going back to delhi tomorrow morning and then back to Madurai for my last few days.

TTFN.