Rock Stars at the Taj Mahal

I’m not super into “sight seeing” in general. They tend to not make much of an impression on me (as I generally don’t know the cultural, historical, etc. context that helps to make the site so great) and the strongest impressions I get are generally of the throngs of tourists and all the touristy stuff that rises up around the sites.

So I wasn’t all that revved up to see the Taj Mahal. Particularly since we’d just spent two days looking at “sites” in Hampi, would have to wake up at 4am to catch a train to Agra, spend all day in the truly blistering heat and then take a late train that wouldn’t get us home until midnightish. But how can you go to India and be in Delhi for several days without seeing the Taj Mahal??

So we went to see the Taj Mahal.

And it was friggin’ fantastic! I loved it. You know how a lot of things, such as sites, end up being a bit of a let down? The Taj Mahal was the opposite. It was stunning on so many levels. I think the part that was most amazing for me was the intricate details EVERYwhere. The whole joint is made of white marble and is intricately carved to an insane degree. And, so I’ve been told, Indian marble is the hardest marble around (much harder than that “soft” Italian marble.) Then there is also precious and semi-precious inlay allllll over the place in incredible detail. I won’t go into the process, but it is insanely delicate and time consuming. We actually got to go see a workshop where they are still doing marble inlay the way it has been done for hundreds of years. Then there are also the marble screens. They took one single slab of marble and carved it into a screen with intricate patterns. I won’t keep trying to describe it for you though – I can’t possibly even come close to convey some of how awesome it was.

And then there is the fact that Damen (our friend we had picked up in Delhi) and I were very exotic and our whole party was treated like rock stars.

So about being exotic – people wanted to take pictures with us. The first was a small group of guys who I thought were asking me to take a picture for them. Not exactly - they wanted to take a picture WITH me. Then we sat down in the shade to bask in the glory of the Taj for a few minutes and whole families (like 20 people) wanted to crowd around me and Damen to take a picture with us. One young girl asked if she could take the picture with her kissing me on the cheek! It was quite amusing but we ended up having to sort of flee because we couldn’t walk more than a few feet without someone else approaching us for a photo. They also really liked shaking hands (because that’s what us crazy, exotic white westerners do.)

And as for rock star status – I have decided that Sweet Pea’s family is connected with the Indian mafia. Now this could be because I’ve been reading the Godfather, but it all fits together. Everywhere we go there are “friends” who want to do us a kindness. This kindness in Agra was a car (with a cooler of drinks) and driver picking us up at the train station, guides for a morning at some sites outside Agra and then for the Taj Mahal in the afternoon, rooms at a 5-star hotel owned by this “friend” so we could rest during the heat of the day. We showed up at the hotel after our morning site seeing and were immediately greeted by a group of about 4 different people. One person gave us cool towels, another gave us each a rose, a third put a little red dot on our foreheads and the fourth had some juice for us. Then they took us up to a set of rooms (why one room when we could use two?) that were on the second to top floor and had a view of the Taj Mahal and Red Fort. Wowza. They also had lunch for us in an empty dining room with about 6 watiers and later (when we rested in the evening before our train) sent up mango lassi and samosas to snack on. Also, it seemed that everywhere we went there were about 5 people waiting to wait on us and each person we spoke to seemed to know the details of our day better than we did. We definitely felt like rock stars.