[Saturday, February 7]
Today started with coffee and pastries at 6 AM to that we could leave for the Taj
Mahal at 6:30 AM for the early
morning light. It had rained
overnight at about 4 AM and there was a misty morning light on everything in
the complex. We saw monkeys while
waiting in the cue to enter; green parrots in a large tree by the location to
pick up the audio guides.
It was quite crowded, but in a fun way – lots of families,
many said they had come for the weekend from Dehli. We walked all around the monument. Fascinating that the marble is so dense, it’s not
porous. It’s twice as dense as the
marble from Carrera. Never been
cleaned – no algae or lichen grow on it.
The monsoon rains clean it and make it shiny. The exterior has inscriptions from the Koran – inlayed in
the marble around the door openings.
They script gets progressively larger is it gets higher, so that it
looks symmetrical as your eye rises to the top. The tomb is inlayed with lapis lazuli, turquoise (from
Tibet), carnelian, jasper, malachite and other semi-precious stones.
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