1 of the 7/21 Wonders of the World

Apologies for the recent paucity of posts. My parents win the parents of the year award for braving the dirt, smells, food and every other obstacle thrown their way to come visit me and Lindsay here in India. Anyway, this past weekend, we went to Delhi and the Taj Mahal in Agra and it was a great trip. I think Lindsay is going to write about Delhi, but I wanted to write briefly about visiting the Taj Mahal.

At 6am on Sunday (Mother's Day for those scoring at home), we took a 2 hour train from Delhi to Agra. After being scammed by a faux train attendant for about $10 and then witnessing a hilarious German man with a Thai girlfriend get into a fight when his scam artist boarded the train to try to extract more money, we were in good spirits and started the day off with a good laugh and basically no sleep.

When we got to Agra, we were all excited, for sure. As one of the 7 (or 21 depending on whether you're an ancient, medieval or natural kind of guy) wonders of the world, there's obviously considerable hype. I'm a bit of a skeptic when it comes to these kind of sites, but as far as the Taj was concerned, this one lived up to the hype.

It's hard to describe exactly what the Taj Mahal is like, but it basically dominates Agra, a "town" of 2 million people. You can see it from almost anywhere in the city and it is a massive building. It took 20,000 people 20 years to construct it (and you wonder why India took a bit longer to become a "modern" economy) and is completely symmetrical. It is constructed entirely in white marble and looks like a different color depending on where the sun is.

From a distance, you are really struck by how big it is, but when you get up close, there are all sorts of semi-precious stones (onyx, turquoise, lapis et cetera) in-laid into the marble to form really cool designs. You can also stand in the center of the back, and given the symmetry, see straight through to the center of the entrance, which is about 300 yards away.

I'm realizing now that the blog isn't exactly the best way to describe this, because it's one of those rare things that was actually better than what I pictured. But this was unquestionably the coolest thing I've seen in India and maybe anywhere else in the world too.