Taj Mahal and Return to Delhi

The Taj Mahal and return to Dehli

We’d sorted out a local guide, Ali, to take us to the Taj Mahal – good move he sorted out the tickets lessened the queuing and gave a really good tour of the Taj Mahal, his only fault was a love of taking cheesy photos…

What can you say about the Taj, it is simply beautiful. 

It has also got to be the most photographed building in the world. Built as a memorial, taking 22 years to build, the quality of the craftsmanship is astonishing.  All of the script you can see is not paint but inlaid stone, so well done you can’t see the joints.  Its also very clever, the 4 minarets are angled outwards by 5 degrees so that if there is an earthquake they will fall away from the tomb.  The writings slowly get bigger as they goes up the height of the walls so that it appears to be the same size from ground level.

We got there at 6am to miss the crowds and it was a really good plan by the time we left there were long queues to get in.  That said inside in never really felt overcrowded, apparently on a busy day 25000 people go through the gates.  Not a bad earner at 750INR each.  This is the only place we’ve been to so far where we saw many foreign tourists, everywhere else has been filled with Indian visitors.  I like the fact that they are very proud of their country and its history.  We’d had a quick look at Gandhi mausoleum yesterday and it was packed with Indians still paying their respects to the hero of their nation.

The drive back to Delhi was just as chaotic, our driver, Hannish, got stranded in the middle of a junction and had to pay a 100INF fine for his troubles, a bit unfair in the circumstances.

 He stopped to buy us some fruit on the roadside we think it was called unrood – or something similar.  The seller cut it and filled the cuts with salt which promptly burnt our lips – obviously an acquired taste.

After 5 hours on the road we got back to Delhi and asked Hanish, to take us to a good restaurant somewhere in New Delhi before the airport – He took us to a KFC…. It was packed with Indians.  This is the posh part of Delhi but still as chaotic and untidy as the rest.

Delhi airport is an oasis of calm and efficiency, such a contrast to the rest of the country.

Sights and sounds of India, well the sound has got to be the car horn, closely followed by the moped horn, lorry horn….  As far as sights are concerned there is so much beauty and so much squalor where ever you look I think the only thing you can say is that there will be a contrast in every direction you look in.  The other thing is that there are so many people you are never alone, never out of sight of another person.  Even looking across fields, look again and you will see people toiling somewhere.

Long trip ahead – overnight to Singapore and then transfer on to the plane to Hanoi – after today we are going to be knackered.

More cheese and a cracking traffic cops hat..