Agra

The news just said the US mid-west is facing highs of 42 degrees Celsius which i think is 107.6 geez its gone kinda crazy since we left! It actually just started cooling in Delhi cuz it rained for the first time in a while today and yesterday :)

Well herro, we just got back from Agra and I think I can justify sayin we topped Akshardham yesterday. The Taj Mahal was amazing... I don't think it was quite as big as I imagined but it's just kinda awing to see the bright white mausoleum against the otherwise arid dark landscape. The grounds in front are gardens and a pool that leads up to the Mahal. Everything about it just seems kinda perfect. The architecture is symmetrical from every side, not a stone is out of line and each block varies in off-shades of white in a flawless mosaic... I wish you could've seen it, I mean i kinda liked it :) Apparently the gardens were added by the British in place of what used to be a 30 foot ditch full of trees in front of the Mahal. The interior is pretty simple; there's a marble veil around Mumtaz's tomb with Shah Jahan's next to hers. I think by tradition they're sposed to be buried 7 ft in the ground, so the tombs are just over their actual graves. I thought it was kinda funny that the Taj is sposed to be the perfect symbol of love cuz apparently Mumtaz was Jahan's third wife and he also had hundreds of concubines... seriously hundreds. we also went to the Agra fort and right in front of Jahan and his queens' living quarters was a courtyard for his hoes... It's still pretty romantic though cuz i figure Mumtaz was his bottom bitch which mean somthing for a pimp with dat many hoes :) 

I didn't mention, in the Taj the doorways and some walls had simple flower designs and Qur'an verses. I thought they had been painted on but each was inlaid into the marble using semi-precious stones that he had imported... like the verses were made of Onyx. The family that makes the glue they used and inlays stone in marble still makes the same marble designs and we visited one of their workshops. It was crazy to see the work it takes to chisel out the marble exactly and inlay tiny pieces of stone to make the designs. The stones all reflect light in strange ways and th emarble the family and the Taj Mahal used is translucent so the Mahal looks different by time of day. We went around lunch so the marble glowed kinda yellow with the sunlight but during a full moon for example, it can look blueish. It was just amazing to see.

I won't ramble as much about the Agra fort. It was interesting to actually see the fort of the Mughal empire. My mom told us stories of Akbar when we were little, and there're a lot of tales about Shah Jahan, and even last year in AD we read about Aurangzeb, and this fort served all of them. Hmm what were the highlights... The queen's air conditioning system was funny but sad. On the side of her room is a mesh stoned wall. Behind the wall they have a thin waterfall and 15 women would stand behind using huge fans to cycle cool air and a fine mist through the queen's room. There was a chamber of mirrors which just had thousands of tile sized mirrors throughout which Jahan also built for Mumtaz. He really liked his bottom bitch, it would've sucked to have been his other two wives. Their tombs are under the red sandstone East and West gates to the Taj Mahal... Basically you just walk through where they're buried to go see Mumtaz's crazy tomb with Jahan next to her. Apparently Jahan had planned to build a black Taj Mahal across the Yamuna river (which forms the southern boundary of the Mahal) from the original. Aurangzeb was Shah Jahan's fourth son and in order to become kind, he killed his 3 older brothers and imprisoned his father. So right when Jahan began construction of his black tomb across Mumtaz's, he wound up imprisoned by his son in the Agra fort till he died... Remind me to show you, there's a cool picture of me and Sweta in the commons courtyard of the Agra fort :) We also visited a carpet factory since Agra's famour for its rugs. I could tell you so much more, which I will when I get home, but it's 1:40 am so I'm gonna call it a night... Oh and we saw Akbar's tomb but I'll just tell ya about that. Goodnight tara :)

-Sanj