India etiquette

Here in India, it is common to receive an invitation on the day of the affair. I am not talking about, "hey, why don't you come by for pizza tonight"... I am talking about "Please come to our wedding tonight"!!!! No joke. We have been invited to a dozen weddings since we arrived, and the invites never happen more than a week in advance. Our last invitation came the morning of the wedding. Last night at 6:15pm our doorbell rang. I opened the door to see Andrew's friend, Nihal, with a stack of birthday invitations. I opened it, to find that the party was today at 11am. AND, the rsvp was for "before 7:00pm tonight". Can you imagine? So, basically you are getting 44 minutes to decide if you can make it, and then 15 hours to go buy a gift. And it's not like there's a 24 hour Walmart nearby... OR ANYWHERE IN INDIA!!!!!!

Andrew had a great time at the party!

Spice Route Sleeper...

While we were up in Delhi, we had dinner at the Spice Route restaurant - ranked in the top 10 worldwide!! It was an amazing atmosphere with terrific food. Poor Lauren fell asleep at the table before we even ordered our food. She slept through the entire meal. Must have been the cozy pashmina they wrapped around her!! I love how we just go ahead and have the waiter take a family picture anyway...

Agra Fort

If you were to list the surviving structures, that had a profound role in shaping the history of India , probably Agra Fort tops the list. In other words , if you make a who is who of the Mughal Emperors, more than half a dozen Emperors - Babur, Humayun, Akbar, Jehangir, Shah Jahan and Aurangzeb - lived in the Agra Fort.
The Agra Fort is not a mausoleum. It is a completely different feeling than exploring the Taj Mahal. It was a strong hold , the administrative headquarters, the royal palace , the court , and even a bazaar .... all boiled into one giant imperial ball. It gives a close view as to how the Mughals lived, what their living rooms looked like, how magnificent their private gardens and mosques were. Walking around Agra Fort is like visiting the private homes and courts of the bygone emperors. And it is very easy to get the feel of their daily life in the grand and ordinary corridors of their living quarters.

Built originally prior to 1500 as a brick military fort, it received a major face lift in 1565, when Akbar commissioned a project which took 4,000 workers 8 years to complete. By 1573, the Agra Fort had been transformed into a majestic red sandstone structure - with 70 foot high outer walls, 2 moats (one wet moat filled with crocodiles, and one dry moat filled with lions, tiger and leopards), an enormous drawbridge and zig zag corridors with portholes to spew hot oil on invaders! Akbar's son, Jehangir, ruled the empire next - followed by his son, Shah Jahan (who built the Taj Mahal for his beloved wife, Mumtaz) and finally, Aurangzeb, who took over power from his father Shah Jahan and placed him under house arrest in the fort until his death in 1666. Each ruler added his own flare to the fort.

It is amazing how the red sandstone has maintained it's color through all of these centuries. This fort was built, of course, long before anything but hand tools were available. So each piece of sandstone was chiseled perfectly and then interlocked, one piece at a time. No cement or mortar... just interlocking pieces - imagine that? 2.5 kilometers in circumference... that is a LOT of sandstone!

Within the walls of the fort, the common areas and living quarters flow into one another seamlessly. Many areas have a great view of the majestic Taj Mahal.
The attention to detail and the symmetry everywhere is startling. In the main palace area the marble is all inlaid with semi-precious stones. The small decorative cavities you see all over the walls are to hold candles. Don't forget... it would be hundreds of years before electricity was invented!!

This kid asked to take a picture with Pat and was so surprised when Pat picked him up!!!

This is beautiful example of the Persian style gardens the Mughals were fond of. On three sides of the garden are arched chambers each with a panoramic view of the garden. These are the storied rooms where the ladies of the royal family lived. Once the garden had the best grapevines known. Now the garden is planted with green and red creepers alternatively giving it an amazing geometric pattern of its jigsaw like features.

The kids really enjoyed the tour as well. Andrew said it was "almost" as great as the Taj Mahal!! For them, I think it was like a giant playground...


And there were loads of monkeys... and you know what kids don't love monkeys?
So it was goodbye Agra Fort... goodbye Agra. It was back off to Delhi!!

Built for love...

The Taj Mahal is the symbol of eternal love. The story is that this beautiful structure was built by one of the most powerful emperors in the history of India for the memory of his most beloved wife. Emperor Shahajehan had built many architectural marvels in his career, but Taj Mahal is the zenith. The world heritage site and the seventh architectural wonder of the world, Taj Mahal is different from the rest. The emperor loved his wife Mumtaz dearly. At the age of fifteen, the prince who would be called King of the World met a refined and highborn young girl at a bazaar within the walls of the royal palace in Agra. Court poets celebrated the girl's extraordinary beauty. "The moon," they said, "hid its face in shame before her." For both, it was love at first sight. Five years would pass before the auspicious day chosen for their wedding, and from that moment, they became inseparable companions. When in 1631, she died giving birth to their 14th child; Shahajehan lost the will to live. It was then he decided to build a mausoleum for his beloved which the world would remember. And indeed the Taj Mahal is mesmerizing!!!

The Mughals were not only all powerful, but seriously rich. Jahan had become Emperor on his father's death in 1627 and the list of his possessions is unbelievable in terms of gold, silver, and precious gems. It was an age of outrageous opulence, and a time when some of the world's largest and most precious gems were being mined from India's soil. The making of the Taj involved thousands of skilled workers brought from all parts of the Mughal Empire. The beautiful white marble that was mined and brought 200 miles from the west by a crew of 1,000 elephants is inset with intricately cut gemstones. Red sandstone was brought from Fatehpur Sikri, Jasper from Punjab, Jade and Crystal from China, Turquoise from Tibet, Lapis Lazuli and Sapphire from Sri Lanka, Coal and Cornelian from Arabia and diamonds from Panna. In all 28 kind of rare, semi precious and precious stones were used for inlay work in the Taj Mahal. The construction took over 20,000 workers, 22 years to complete! By the time the work was done, Shah Jahan's eldest son, and heir to his throne, was already well into the planning stages of overthrowing his father's power. In 1658, his son declared himself Emporer and imprisoned him in a tower of the Agra Fort, where he spent his days peering across the river at his masterpiece Taj Mahal, where the tomb of his beloved wife lay. He spent 6 years, until his death, held at the Agra Fort. His tomb now lies beside his beloved Mumtaz, inside the walls of the Taj Mahal.

Knowing the history is such an important part of appreciating the beauty of the Taj Mahal. When Prince Charles and Princess Diana came to India in 1992, Prince Charles was too busy with "business" in Delhi (ahhh emm... Camilla Parker Bowles!!) to accompany the Princess on her Taj Mahal visit. This photograph speaks a thousand words about their dwindling relationship... as she sits, alone, at this grand monument, built for love.

AP Photo 1992

This bench is now known as the Lady Diana bench, and is the most popular "photo op" location at the Taj Mahal. We look pretty darn good on it, I think!

A few more photos from our visit... The marble stairs and tunnel leading up to the main platform of the Taj...

Taylor with a group of beautiful young ladies who wanted a photo with her...
And again, Taylor with 2 guys who took her picture with their cell phone cameras!
Pat and Mom marveling at the inscriptions from the Koran...
The sun setting behind one of the 4 pillars...
Inside... no photos allowed (oops!)...
Mom and Taylor trying to look cool (not working in those dorky booties!)...

OK, I seriously need to get some sleep, so more Taj pics and the Agra Fort post to come tomorrow!! Good night :)

Agra Trip - Taj Mahal here we come...

We have just returned from our whirlwind trip to see a little monument you might have heard of here in India - the Taj Mahal. Today I have a bit of what I am calling a "Taj hangover"... it is a small price to pay, I must say!! Bear with me on the blog side of this - there is sooooo much to talk about. I will devote this blog to the trip from Bangalore to the Taj and follow up tonight with an information and photo packed blog of the Taj/Agra Fort tours as well as the link to our Picasa site, where all 400+ (no, that is not a typo) photos from the trip will be!!

So, we were up by 4am, departing our villa at 4:45am for the Bangalore Airport. The ride to the airport is 50 kilometers (30 miles), which takes just under an hour with NO traffic... but can easily take 2 hours or more - so you always need to leave very early and hope or the best.

We arrived in plenty of time for Lauren to catch up with some of the security guards who adore her. Imagine what this conversation is about...

Next, it was onto what I like to call the runway bus, which carts us across runways and to our waiting plane. Next stop... Delhi - which is a 2.5 hour flight from Bangalore - straight north. It is the US equivalent of flying from Florida to NY. Notice the backpacks... continuing my art of light travel, we were able to pack everything we needed for a 3 day trip for 6 people into 3 backpacks!The arrival in Delhi was smooth... with no bags to collect at baggage claim, we were found our waiting driver and it was off to Agra.

Lauren was asleep 5 minutes into the drive...

Agra is about 185 kilometers from Delhi (114 miles), HOWEVER - yes, that is a big however... it is a 4 - 5 hour drive!!! They don't just plop the Taj Mahal down in an easy to get to place, you know. A few pics from the Delhi to Agra journey...h

Yes... those are chickens - can you say, "fresh poultry"?

We arrived at our hotel in Agra at 3pm. Our tour guide was there waiting and said we had about 15 minutes to get checked in and changed, or we couldn't fit in the tour with the day's sunlight. No problem! 15 minutes later we were back in the car. Our hotel was just 1.5 kilometers from the Taj Mahal... and gas powered vehicles are not allowed within a 1 kilometer radius of the monument (to prevent emissions from harming the marble), so in typical India style, we jammed ourselves inside of this battery powered car for the last kilometer...

Hawkers and beggars fill the street in the last few hundred meters before the Taj Mahal entrance. It is absolute pandemonium!!!!!! While we are used to it, to some extent, living in Bangalore... this is honestly times 1000. It is surely my record for saying "no" the highest number of times in 5 minutes - and that is saying a lot since I have 3 kids!!!!

So there we were... at the Taj entrance. A camera and a bottle of water. That is all they allow you to bring in. Our guide was Faizel... and he was great... Here he is leading Taylor and Andrew to the gate...

On the way, I caught a glimpse of the the Taj, peeking over the top of the wall...Taylor's first glimpse was through the arch... here she is pointing it out to Pat...Once you enter the main archway... the view is the one we have all seen so many times...So we made it! We were at the Taj Mahal!!