We have had a nice early morning this morning to go and see the Taj Mahal and our guide was basically the most annoying person known to man - although he did know his stuff, giving us a pretty thorough tour of Agra, while telling us all about the Culture and the art.
Here is our first official photograph with the Taj Mahal. It was breathtaking.
We then took a trip to meet the direct ancestors of the artists of the Taj Mahal. There might not be too many of you out there interested in this type of thing, but I thought I would share it with you anyway. The Taj Mahal is decorated and was designed very cleverly and mathematically calculated so that the design appears to all be the same size all the way up and down and is inlaid with precious and semi precious stones from the area. Read more
here.
When we met the ancestors, we got to see how they worked to create this look and how difficult it actually was. We purchased some of the smaller versions of their work, as they weren't cheap. But the versions that we did purchase we split and each took one of a pair, so that later in life perhaps our ancestors will be able to track the other half down.
Here are some photos we took of our day in Agra:
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| stone being carved |
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| Taj Mahal and retired temple |
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| Scoring the plates on the right, ready for the precious stones and the finished product on the left |
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| Taj Mahal behind all the smog |
Later in the evening we popped back to the Taj again to get some more photos from behind, on the other side of the river and then on route to see the black Taj we met some lovely little girls who we had our photograph with.
