One Year Away

Penny

Take a look at the India album. We have added 4 new Taj Mahal photos!  Enjoy.

The second city that we visited in India was Agra.  We took a 15 hour overnight train ride on a non-air conditioned train to get there (we have pre-booked all of our future rides to make sure that we get air conditioning).  

As most tourists, we went to Agra simply to see the Taj Mahal.  The Taj is a Mughal mausoleum that was built by Emperor Shah Jahan to honor his wife who died while giving birth to their fourteenth child in 1631.  The Taj is a monument of love that took 22 years to build.  The structure is composed of beautiful white marble and inlaid with semi-precious stones representing flowers and Koran scriptures. 

We wanted to be there for sunrise, so we got up at 5 AM and were at the ticket office at 5:30 AM as the sun started to come up.  unfortunately, the ticket office only opened at 6 AM.  Thankfully, we were in the Taj by 6:30 AM and were able to take advantage of the soft dawn light for some pictures.