Tuesday, February 10, 2015

Taj Mahal - India's famous monument to love

[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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