A New Wonder (The Taj Mahal)

Activity level: 🌶️🌶️🌶️

Modes of transportation: 🚗👟

We woke up and packed up early enough to get breakfast at the hotel, which was pretty decent. Our driver picked us up and we started the long drive to Agra.

It took us a couple hours just to get out of Delhi, and traffic was crazy as always.

About an hour in, Sarah noticed a nickel-sized bug crawling on her pants. She freaked out a little which she realized it was a cockroach. Eric took a napkin and grabbed it, and it was all good. (Flashback to three days ago in Hanoi which Eric assured Sarah that the big ones aren’t bad since they’re often alone, it’s the little ones you need to worry about). But Eric insisted this lone little guy must have flown in.

That is, until we noticed another one about 10 minutes later on the seat. If seeing one is bad, seeing two is really bad. So Sarah basically lived in fear until we stopped for a break about 2.5 hours in, where we got some masala chai.

When we got back into the car, there were a few really small ones on the seat, which is extremely bad. But we couldn’t do much, so we wiped them off and kind of just went with it.

Sarah waiting for the next cockroach to come out

Eric took a nap, and Sarah fended for her life for the remaining 2 hours. We picked up our guide in Agra, and he guided us to the restaurant, which, once again, was fairly touristy. It wasn’t as good as the one from the previous day, but it was still pretty decent (we didn’t like that they suggested the most expensive thing on the menu immediately, but what can you do).

After lunch, Eric asked our driver if he could do something about the bugs, and Ritan said of course. He said he’d go clean the car while we were in the Taj Mahal.

We got dropped at the Taj Mahal entrance and walked to the gates. Our guide, Anand, definitely knew his stuff, but he was less chatty than our guide yesterday. He gave us all the good info about the entrance gate, before telling us that we could hire a photographer (but only if we liked their pictures). We’re glad we didn’t, because he was a photographer himself. He got all the good spots, and he knew exactly how to get the best shots.

Even the entrance is amazing!
You can start to see the Taj as you walk through the gate.

The Taj Mahal was insane! The workmanship of all the tiny details was incredible. It took 20000 highly-skilled workers 17 years to build and decorate. It looks very cool in photos, but it’s truly magnificent and ornate in person. It’s also a huge testament to love, so it was extra special being there on our honeymoon.

We loved the symmetry of the whole thing. They built a mosque on one side, so they had to build its mirror image on the other (they called it a guest house, though nobody ever stayed there). The four towers in the corners make the whole thing look complete and majestic. Our only regret is that it didn’t have its original colored glasses inside that lit up the inside like a kaleidoscope. Unfortunately, those didn’t make it, but there were still little holes for them.

Precious and semi-precious stones are in-laid into the marble makeup the artwork throughout the entire structure. Some marble flowers appear to be embossed but are really cut out of the stone too.

Keeping aside its sheer beauty, size, and perfect symmetric design of the Taj Mahal, what really makes it a wonder of the world is that the artwork is all cut into the marble and in-laid with precious and semi-precious stones. The gemstones include carnelian, jade, lapis-lazuli, and onyx. The inside is even more magnificent, but no photos were allowed. Fun fact: the original designers of the Taj Mahal planned ahead and made exact replicas of the tombs to display on the first level (they knew people would want to visit, but they wanted to keep the tombs undisturbed).

Monkeys were all over the grounds.
It’s hard to get a sense of the sheer-size of the building—it received an average of 40,000 visitors per day!

On the way home, Sarah asked our guide if we could try a more local restaurant, so he gave us a recommendation of a place he really likes. This was definitely the move, since that restaurant was so good. Our waiter was so friendly and let us try a little of everything for fairly cheap. We’ll need to write them a review!

We may have ordered too much.

We got shuttled into a pretty cool marble shop, where we looked at the amazing hand-made pieces. Many of them had even the same stones and style as the Taj Mahal, which was very cool to see.

Checking out some of the modern gem work

From there, we headed back to the hotel to chill and work on the blog. By the way, there were definitely still a few roaches in the car.

Hopefully we get that sorted out!


So slight update: we tracked the cockroaches into our hotel. There were about 6 small ones and 2 medium ones we had to kill. We got in touch with the company, who said they’ll resolve it. In the meantime we’re moving hotel rooms at 11pm.


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