The Taj Mahal was very disappointing. It's not as big as you think it might be and so far off from any sense of good proportion I don't know what the fuss is about. No, actually it was really beautiful, despite the pollution and/or early morning dawn mist from the Yamuna River on whose banks it sits. I won't even begin to describe in words the beauty of this mausoleum.... some have tried and one poet said "a tear drop on the face of eternity" (Rabindranath Tagore is such a romantic sap). Built by Emperor Shah Jahan in memory of his second wife Mumtaz Mahal who died giving birth to their 14th child (ouch), the building was begun in 1631, the year of her death, and was not finished until 1653, requiring 20,000 people to complete at today's cost of $70 million USD. The white irredescent marble inlaid in glowing colored stones displaying motifs of flowering jasmine, roses, and ornate sanskrit caligraphy is both incredibly simple and delicate and also powerful... massive but weightless. Agra itself is a dirty, traffic clogged, overpriced, tourist nightmare with only the Taj Mahal and maybe the Agra Fort worth seeing. I got out of there as soon as I could... although I could have stayed at the Taj Mahal all day long. L'Amore.
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