Incredible India - Day 8-9: Discovering Mahal's Taj

Finally. For a week we have been travelling through North-East India, crossing around 1500kms by bus and train. For a week we, well at least I, had been longing for this day. For a week we were feeling great, right today at least five of us got sick, with regular toilet visits as a consequence... Finally, the day came. TAJ MAHAL would be checked of the infamous bucket list! One of the world's most beautiful buildings!

Look at this picture! Watch me enjoy this moment! Be jealous! 

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Early morning we got on the same bus as the day before and left for 250kms west, straight to Agra. The highway was amazing, or at least it looked like it. It took us no less than four hours to get to Agra, without traffic jams whatsoever. The bus was simply incapable of driving faster...

Once we got to the, very touristical, city of Agra, we decided to go straight to the Taj Mahal, which is located right outside the city. A law states that no non-electrical vehicles are allowed within a one km. radius of the site. Also, upon entrance everyone has to go throught a metal detector, like in airports, and all bags were checked. Therefore, I was unable to take any pictures with the flag, as national flags are not allowed inside the site. Could someone please explain me why? 

Just a bit more to the right, no move to the left. A bit up. yes Stop! Don't move! Click! Got it!

Ah, hello beauty!

Entering the site is something peculiar. An immense entrance gate/building keeps the Taj Mahal (meaning Crown Palace) blinded from your sight untill you walk inside the walls. An amazing and gracious colossal white palace rises up in front of you. A nice garden is in front of it, a river behind it and it is flanked by two other beautiful buildings. The left building is a huge mosque where the builders used to pray during their work. Yes, a whole mosque has been built just so that the builders wouldn't lose time to pray outside the site's walls. It is still in use today, by the way. 

Did you know that the Taj Mahal is build symmetrically, meaning that from whatever side or angle you look at it, it will look exactly the same? Actually the whole building is symmetric, except for the tombes in the very centre.

We took the time to take a ton of pictures, from every possible angle. Then we went in, which was a bad idea as there were so many people going in and out at the same time that it was not really worth the effort of almost suffocating in order to get inside a huge empty hall, with merely two tombs in it.

The details of the marble building outside, as well as inside, are amazing though. The flowers designed on the walls will light up when the moon hits the right spot. The four towers on each corner of the main site are built slightly bending over to the outside so that, in case they would collapse, they would fall away from the Taj and not towards it. A lot more info can be found in the links above. I will just leave you with some pictures; For the touristical info and visitors, visit this website: Visit Taj Mahal. Prices vary from €0,3 for Indians to €9,00 for tourists.

Taj Mahal is a dish, best served fresh.

A tower, with the river on the background

When we had finished the tour and quickly bought some souvenirs right outside, we had lunch in a bad and ugly restaurant. Which is were even more people started getting sick. We finally managed to convince our guide and driver to stop at a souvenir shop, but they didn't really understand we were looking for a real bazar. Not some expensive shop selling useless stuff and we ended up losing another hour and some Roepies to more rubbish than we woud've wanted.

As it was already past 4PM, and we still had some four hours of driving back to do, we decided to do a quick hop off/take picture/hop on at the Fort of Agra and headed back to Delhi whereas we arrived only around 10PM, leaving us no time whatsoever to do any souvenir shopping at all. A real pitty to be honest, as most of us really wanted to buy at least some useless piece of fake art that would end up on, near or in the chimney.

Once we had all gotten to the hotel, we had a midnight dinner and after some chitchatting everyone went to bed. Some of us were really starting to get sick and no one wanted to make things worse for the trip back. Which happened anyway as the following day Hans, among others, didn't manage to get up for breakfast as he felt to sick to eat or even think about food at all. After breakfast, we checked out of the hotel and in groups of four or five we all took a taxi to New Delhi Airport. Here we said goodbye to our guide, Rajat, and our Afghan friend, whom for whatever reason had joined us to New Delhi and Agra this past two days. We had to show our airplane tickets and passports, just to get into the airport. Tight security, but this also implicated that way less people were inside the building, making it bearable to check in at ease.

It took us, we were checking in seperately so this was not the problem, more than 1,5hours to go from starting the queu for the check-in, until the passport check into the tax-free zone. So luckily we got there on time. Timing is really a thing Indians have a problem with.

A nine hour flight, with some half a dozen bathroom visits, another hour waiting for our luggage and two and a half hours in a bus brought us back to Coventry. I went straight home, paid another visit to the bathroom and went straight to bed as it was already 11PM, UK-time, and we had left the hotel at 10AM, Indian time. There is a 4,5hrs time difference between both.

I would like to thank the following people, and will surely forget some - sorry for that!-:

• Coventry University: to give us the opportunity of visiting a new, unknown country for a reasonable price. Great engagement!
• Global Leaders Programme -team: for organizing the whole trip and helping out whenever we asked for it
• GLP-Trip India Spring 2014-group: for being the people you are, as this trip woudn't have been the same without you
• Lovely Professional University of Jalandhar: for receiving us and putting together this whole trip.
• Raving Rajat: our guide and companion, whom we have started to call our friend, for being our guide and helping us around for the past ten days
• Honorable companion Hans: for undergoing and accepting my presence in the rooms we shared during these past ten days.
• And last, but not least: any Indian, Bangladeshian, Afghan, English... person we met during the trip and made it the experience it was. 

Thank you all and cheers, see you in another life.

#IncredibleIndia is over and out. Back to the books, exams and coursework deadlines are coming up! 

Greetings from a (very) white and Sunder Taj Mahal!

No flag, so another original action is a must.

If Hans doesn't succeed his exams, he will always have another option.