5 February 2014 / leggypeggy

Dazzled by the splendour of the Taj Mahal

Agra, Agra Fort, cenotaph, Fatehpur Sikri, fountains, gardens, gates, India, marble, mosques, overland travel, plants, Prayaan India Overland, Rajasthan, rivers, sandstone, Taj Mahal, travel

A long view of the Taj

India’s Taj Mahal, with its glistening white marble exterior, is probably one of the world’s best-known and most-loved sights.

It’s so dazzling, so beautiful and so elegant that it’s sometimes a stretch to remember that it’s a mausoleum and a tomb.

Mughal emperor, Shah Jahan, had the Taj Mahal started in 1632 to honour the memory of his beloved third wife, Mumtaz Mahal, who died the previous year while giving birth to her 14th child.

The main structure took 17 years to complete and is considered the greatest achievement across the whole range of Indo-Islamic architecture.

It’s a wonderful mix of solids and voids, arches and domes, and intense colours. White marble against a deep blue sky, flashes of precious and semi-precious stones, hues of lush plants in the surrounding gardens, even the reddish gravel on the paths work together to showcase the Taj’s ever-changing moods.

I think it’s fitting to record the names of some of the people who helped to create this fabulous complex. Ustad Ahmad Lahori was the main architect. Ustad Isi Afandi prepared the site plan. The stylish calligraphy is attributed to Amanat Ali Khan Sharazi, while Ran Maj from Kashmir designed the gardens.

Surrounded by colour

Thousands of masons, stone-cutters, inlayers, carvers, mosaicists, painters, calligraphers, dome builders and other artisans came from all over the empire, as well as Central Asia and Iran. After finishing the white marble centrepiece, the workers stayed on for another five years to build a mosque, a guest house, the main gateway on the south, and the outer courtyard and its cloisters.

The Taj sits on 17 hectares of gardens that are divided into four parts. Unusually, the tomb was placed at the back of the landscape rather than in the centre, which is why visitors approach it across a wonderful and long vista.

It’s that long view that really emphasises the Taj Mahal’s beauty and form. Instantly you can see its four matching minarets, its symmetrical design, its many arches, its brilliant white colouring, and the crowds who flock to visit.

We were allowed to enter the Taj, but not allowed to take pictures and, unusually for me, I complied.

Once inside the main chamber, we trooped along with the crowd and were able to walk around the cenotaphs of Mumtaz Mahal and Shah Jahan. An exquisite octagonal marble lattice screen encircles both cenotaphs. It’s highly polished and decorated with inlays of precious stones representing flowers.

Mumtaz Mahal’s cenotaph is on a platform in the exact centre of the double-storied tomb chamber. Shah Jahan’s cenotaph, built more than 30 years after his wife’s, is larger, but no more beautiful.

Cenotaphs are empty tombs, and the actual graves are in a lower tomb chamber (crypt) that is not open to the public.

As we approached the Taj, we walked through the magnificent ornamental gardens, surrounded by the main gate, the mosque, the guesthouse and a sort of viewing platform near the middle.

The garden, called the Bageecha, is laid out symmetrically with white marble water channels, studded with fountains and lined by cypress trees. There are said to be 64 flowerbeds with 400 plants in each bed. The channels used to have colourful fish.

The magnificent southern gate, the Darwaza

The enormous and majestic Darwaza, or southern gateway, is a three-storey red sandstone structure with an octagonal central chamber. It’s 150 feet long and 100 feet high. The main arch is inscribed with verses from the Koran, written in Arabic calligraphy. The script gets larger as it goes up the wall, giving the verses a uniform appearance to the untrained eye. The many domed pavilions on top are Hindu in style and signify royalty.

The mosque and guesthouse are twins, built identically. I have to confess that I’m not sure which is which in my photos. Poor John can’t remember either (unusual lapse of memory for him). Judging from the scaffolding, one of the two was being maintained/repaired when we visited. Both have been built with the same stunning sandstone as Fatehpur Sikri.

The mosque, I think

The guesthouse, I think

The Taj Mahal complex sits on the Yamuna River, and the water channels used to be, and probably still are, fed by the river. Across the river you can see the beginnings of another mausoleum/tomb. We were told that Shah Jahan wanted to build a black marble mirror image of the Taj Mahal. His son put a stop to that.

Poor John reckoned that the son didn’t want his dad to squander the money on yet another monument, but from what I’ve read, the son totally supported the construction of the original Taj, so maybe he thought two monuments were overkill.

Not allowed

Speaking of overkill, I was stunned to see all the items that aren’t allowed into the Taj Mahal compound. Good grief, I can accept the need to keep out explosives, but toys and books? I think I might have had a guide book in my backpack. Bad Peggy.

P.S. It was grey and hazy on the day we visited, so the sky isn’t as blue as it could be. Frankly, I’m surprised it looks as good as it does.

P.P.S. Next stop Agra Fort, which is just a few kilometres from the Taj.