Even though we’re home, I haven’t told you about the second part of our trip. We didn’t have many chances to write in India, when our days were busy from end to end; but now that we’re back at work, well, gee, I have all the time in the world! Not.
We flew from Bangalore to Delhi on an evening flight in the middle of the second week, taking the local five-star airline called Kingfisher. I’d heard of it, but until I went to India I didn’t realize that Kingfisher was also the name of a popular beer. Airplanes and beer: Both enterprises are owned by the same company.
Delhi is the capital of India. It’s also called New Delhi, but not by anybody over there, so let’s dispense with that. Delhi is both a city and a state. We didn’t see much of it except for a lot of traffic, but we did get the sense that it’s less crowded than Bangalore. We stayed in a neighboring city called Noida and saw little of it as well. Our days were planned to the hilt.
The first day we met with a company. The second day we traveled to Agra, a five-hour trip through the countryside. We passed villages, palm forests, and fields of sugar cane and mulberry. Mulberry is used in the making of silk; silkworms feed on mulberry leaves and produce the threads that are made into fabric.
Agra is the location of the Taj Mahal, one of the Seven Wonders of the World. That’s why we were going. I figured the Taj Mahal was out in the middle of nowhere, never dreaming that Agra was a full-blown city.
We drove into town on a sunny Friday afternoon, passing all kinds of street activity. Agra is a vibrant city that, unlike Bangalore, invites you out into it. We didn’t go, but instead found our hotel—a Sheraton. The man who greeted us outside should be doing commercials for the hotel; he was perfect in a bushy mustache; turban; red, white, and gold uniform; and even those Aladdin shoes with the curled-up toes.
We toured a couple of forts after we arrived. One, the Agra Fort, had a view of the Taj Mahal. I should first tell you the story of the man who built the Taj, if you can endure my cryptic version.
This man and his wife had 14 children, and with the 14th the wife knew she was going to die. She asked her husband to make her three promises: (1) not to remarry; (2) to take care of the children; and (3) to build a memorial to her like the world had never seen.
It took 20,000 workers 22 years to complete the Taj Mahal. It sits on a bank of the Yamuna River, within sight of the Agra Fort (or Red Fort). The man who built it was eventually imprisoned in the fort by one of his sons, and he could look out and see the Taj Mahal in the distance.
We planned to see the Taj on Saturday morning, arriving before sunrise--meaning that we would leave the hotel at 5:00 a.m. There were plenty of other people with the same idea. I’d been told we would ride a donkey cart part of the way, but in fact it was a bus. We were let off near a high wall with a gate. The women had to line up on the left and the men on the right. In a little while the gate opened and all of us had to go through security, which was the reason the men and women had been separated. The women were patted down in a curtained area by a female security officer—more of that whole thing about women being covered up, I suppose.
But let’s get to the best part. There are grounds and walls and structures on the property, but they pale when compared to the real thing. To see the Taj Mahal, you pass through an archway in a high, thick wall—a different wall from the one we’d entered from outside. This second wall with its arch is exactly opposite the Taj Mahal, and the moment you enter it you see the Taj, which looks like an apparition coming right out of the sky.
The Taj Mahal is made of translucent marble, which means that its color changes with the light. The sun hadn’t risen yet, and the sky was gray. So was the Taj. I got chills.
It dominated the landscape, and I couldn’t take my eyes off it. I took dozens of pictures. At first the whole building seemed undefined. I kept trying to adjust the focus on my camera to bring in the detail, but only the changing light would do that.
In the sunlight the Taj Mahal was yellow. Some days it looks blue or green. We went inside it, to the one small room that was open. It was almost dark. There were the tombs of the man and his wife, and the details of hand-carved marble on the walls, flowers and leaves put in one petal at a time. Guides shone tiny flashlights on the marble, and the flowers lit up.
They say that when you enter the archway to the Taj Mahal, if you stare at one spot the Taj will seem to come toward you. I tried it, but mostly I just stared at the whole thing—stared until we had to leave, turning again and again for a last look.
The Taj Mahal was the highlight of my trip to India. I hope you like the photo.
And now we are home. The trip back was very long, as expected. We hit turbulence coming off the Atlantic that lasted until we reached northern Ohio. The plane landed at 4:15 p.m. on Sunday. I’d had the same clothes on since Friday, as we left our luggage in Delhi and I’d forgotten to take a clean outfit to Agra. It was good to be back in Cincinnati, on the ground, and to have my suitcase in the same city as I was.
This is the last entry for my India trip. Thanks for reading my blog!
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