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| at Taj Mahal (1999), one of the true (man-made) wonders of the world! |
(1999). I had this business trip in Mumbai for 2 days and had
experienced India for the first time. Mumbai,
and the rest of India have so many interesting historical monuments and wide
variety of things to do or places to visit.
In Mumbai, I stayed in Taj Mahal palace
hotel, a huge hotel built in early 1900s with several hundred rooms. (Of interest - In 2008, a terrorist group
attacked this same hotel which left almost 40 people dead, and total 167
including other parts of Mumbai).
My trip in Mumbai was primarily for business so I only did a quick tour. But I took the opportunity to know the country
better so I extended my stay to about a week. My primary tour objective was of
course to “verify my history book”, and see if Taj Mahal was for real ;). I took a plane to New Delhi instead of the long haul train
ride. Delhi is to the north of India and
shorter train ride to Agra and Jaipur.
The area of the 3 cities is more popularly known as the ‘Golden
Triangle’ as it forms a triangle in the map.
Tourist will almost always follow this path in different sequence, but
the same 3 cities anyway - with Agra as
the highlight, as it’s where one would find one of the famous wonders of the
world - the Taj Mahal.
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| Women in traditional clothes walking the streets with their 'packs'. |
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| I just have to try it ;) Elephants were used by Asians, Greeks, Romans, Carthaginians in their ancient battles - and with primitive weaponry then these magnificent animals (sadly) represents a good 'tank force'. |
Like any newly renovated cities in Asia,
New Delhi was
quite neat and spacious (I am not sure today). It’s still in India, so the
temperature was at 39s or 40s (Centigrade). Lots of
things to see and visit, but back then, given my limited time, I’ve decided to just breeze through this
city, and focus on the more interesting ones…
It was just day 3 or 4, and I was already fed up with curry food. Unfortunately, there was only one McDonald’s
in the entire Indian state (at that time), it was somewhere in Delhi, but
nowhere to be found. Argh! And so I
tried hard to swallow some more curry food, and then headed for the station
that will bring me to Agra. The train place
was a nightmare, no signs on which train to ride, hundred or so people
scattered everywhere – some are lying in the dirty floor, dogs-cats-&-rats
running here and there, a familiar foul smell emanates from ground-holes and
wash-rooms, and there was always this weird feeling that I was being closely
watched and will suddenly be mugged (my imagination at least haha). I spent 2 hours waiting for the train,
carrying my pack on my shoulders the whole time for not wanting dirt to stick
on it.
Luckily, I got a (not-so-) executive-class ticket so ride was
bearable. I slept on the train bunk-bed
with my boots on, using my pack as my pillow.
I went straight to Taj Mahal – my primary objective. True to the letters
of my travel and history books, it was
really there! (Of course!) Traveling
hundreds of miles to see an object you were merely browsing in a postcard or
guidebook offered an instant feeling of ‘completion’. It’s somehow similar to climbing where you
spend most of your time sweating out, then there’s that small moment of triumph
and joy as you start taking pictures of yourself standing in that summit goal.
So it was something like that. I spend a
few hours taking pictures, taking more pictures, and yes… taking some more
pictures. There is so many shot-angle
opportunities and subject-background combinations that you can easily lose off
a roll of film (this was a way back before digital cameras became the norm). The structure was made of marbles and some
ornamental colored stones. Everything
was built symmetrically… interior designs, doors, windows, minarets…
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| far and away, it's difficult to get a perfect shot with no people in your frame |
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| Like lake Pinatubo (but maybe for a different reason), the color of Taj Mahal seems to vary throughout the day (or depending on the weather). |
As I entered the monumental monument – I was asked to leave my shoes
before we could take a peek at the queen, rather, the queen’s tomb. Ah, there
she was, the reason for this great splendor!
If the emperor wanted a lasting symbol of his love – this piece truly worked
for him.
There is just one thing that seemed to be out of place... Apparently, after
the king’s death, it was decided to bring in the king’s sarcophagus lying
beside the centered piece of the queen.
A tolerable interior glitch anyway.
The place was enormous just to be a simple mausoleum. It was built in the 1600 by Emperor Shah Jahan
for his wife Mumtaz. I learned that it
required a labor force of 20,000 (from India, Syria, Persia) working for 22
years. As with other majestic
architectural wonder, some dark legend persists – it was rumored that the
workers’ arms were cut off so as not to repeat the same architectural feat (a
dark piece of history that was never proven).
Outside, as I took my last (photo) shot, and did my ‘last look of awe’, I concluded that Taj Mahal was indeed a wonder. And all that cost and many sacrifices for the
king’s dear and beloved queen. And of
course, for us – the queen’s modern visitors.
After Taj, every other wonders somehow became ‘secondary’ and like a
visitor-in-a-tight-schedule, I went on hopping from one site to the next. The next destination was the desert city of
Jaipur or the Pink City. I’ve visited
the Fortress Palace in Amer, then there was this City Palace
tour, and the Jantar Mantar art exhibit
displaying gigantic instruments used in observatories, possibly to tell
the positions of Venus and Saturn planets.
I did my tour in a fast-forward manner as I was running out of time. I soon crossed out the primary items in my
to-visit, or to-do checklist and veered home.
I missed my ‘normal’ food so much, so finally, I waved my good-bye,
ditch out my remaining curry-flavored potato chips, and boarded the plane that
will take me back home…
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| loving the ride. I almost did a Camel ride as well (in Jaipur I think) but noticed that the poor dude was in bad state. |
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| Maybe I took this shot in the Monkey's Temple in Jaipur (I may have mixed my travel photos) |
The Black
Messenger?
As the Suharto crisis in
1998 when I was in Jakarta in the middle of the chaos, my friends back home got
worried when they heard the news of a train collision in the north of India, an
accident that killed 280 (but rumored to be a lot more). They said that I am a disaster magnet. Luckily I was a hundred miles off that route
when I was taking the train to and from Agra. But 2 years later, I was at risk of being
stuck in Northern Pakistan (tribes were connected to the Taliban), a few days
after the 9/11 incident. 4 years more, I’ll
be in Caucasus during the Beslan school hostage crisis, it ended in a military
siege killing more than 350 . Late the
same year, I was in Argentina when a disco house burned down and killed 194
people. I swear – these incidents have
nothing to do with me. =)
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