India 🇮🇳 ~Agra ‘The Taj Mahal and Agra Fort”

• April 10, 2018
• By Pen
• 0 Comment

We got up at 3:30AM to get on the train from Jaipur and made it to Agra, in about four hours. (Sleeper trains in India offer fresh clean sheets for the longer train rides). The big guy and I did not gets seats next to each other, but at least this time we were in the same car!

Looking forward to seeing the Taj Mahal!

Seeing the Taj Mahal, up close and personal was on my bucket list ✅ It really is just as beautiful as any picture I had ever seen of it, before visiting. The grounds are well groomed, too. I especially was intrigued about the reason behind the building of the Taj Mahal. It’s a real, but tragic love ❤️ story.

We entered and exited from the West Gate, to enjoy the self-touring of the Taj Mahal.

The lines to enter historical sites, in India, are segregated.

The Taj Mahal

Inside the Mausoleum

It’s a good plan to stay at a hotel close by, and get up early, to be at the gates when they open. The Taj Mahal is a popular place to visit, especially by the locals. We enjoyed a beautiful morning wandering around and taking pictures. It was peaceful and relaxing.

History of The Taj Mahal

The Taj Mahal is an ivory-white marble mausoleum on the south bank of the Yamuna river in the Indian city of Agra. It was commissioned in 1632 by the Mughal emperor, Shah Jahan, to house the tomb of his favorite wife, Mumtaz Mahal.

The Taj Mahal of Agra is one of the Seven Wonders of the World, for reasons more than just looking magnificent. It’s the history of Taj Mahal that adds a soul to it’s  magnificence; a soul that is filled with love, loss, remorse, and love again. Because, if it was not for love, the world would have been robbed of a fine example upon which people base their relationships. An example of how deeply a man loved his wife, that even after she remained but a memory, he made sure that this memory would never fade away. This man was the Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan, who was head-over-heels in love with Mumtaz Mahal, his dear wife. She was a Muslim Persian princess (her name Arjumand Banu Begum before marriage) and he was the son of the Mughal Emperor Jehangir and grandson of Akbar the Great. It was at the age of 14 that he met Mumtaz and fell in love with her. Five years later in the year 1612, they got married. Mumtaz Mahal, an inseparable companion of Shah Jahan, died in 1631, while giving birth to their 14th child. It was in the memory of his beloved wife that Shah Jahan built a magnificent monument as a tribute to her, which we today know as the “Taj Mahal.”    The construction of Taj Mahal started in the year 1631. Masons, stonecutters, inlayers, carvers, painters, calligraphers, dome-builders and other artisans were requisitioned from the whole of the empire and also from Central Asia and Iran, and it took approximately 22 years to build what we see today. An epitome of love, it made use of the services of 22,000 laborers and 1,000 elephants. The monument was built entirely out of white marble, which was brought in from all over India and central Asia. After an expenditure of approximately 32 million rupees, Taj Mahal was finally completed in the year 1653.
It was soon after the completion of Taj Mahal that Shah Jahan was deposed by his own son Aurangzeb and was put under house arrest at the nearby Agra Fort. Shah Jahan, himself also, lies entombed in this mausoleum along with his wife

The Agra Fort

The Agra Fort was a very unexpected experience. For some reason it felt like a Fort I have seen in movies (more like an Arabian Fort) but it had the feel and a look. I totally imagined Arabian horses with all their dressings, carrying Arab riders through the cobbled streets! The early sunlight also made the whole place just pop!

History of Agra Fort

Agra Fort is a historical Fort in the city of Agra. It was built in 1573 and was the main residence of the emperors of the Mughal Dynasty till 1638, when the capital was shifted from Agra to Delhi. The Agra Fort is a UNESCO World Heritage site. It is about One abs a quarter miles, northwest of its more famous sister monument, the Taj Mahal. The Fort can be more accurately described as a walled city.

Click on the link below, to view all the photos of Taj Mahal and Agra Fort:

https://picsbypen.smugmug.com/Places/AsiaLife/IndiaRajasthan/Rajasthan/Agra/Agra/