In Peru, I took pictures of doors. In India, they weren’t worth the pixel space. In India, I found artistic expression in the signs. Well, sort of. They are at least better than the doors. On the other hand, “Thank you, Lady Bird.”
Building in Old Delhi
Aromaz
Red Pleasure
Ganpati city
Omaxe Condos
Clarks Shiraz
Crash Courses
Coca Cola
No Favorites Here
Elephant in front of Maharaja Motel
Ice Cream Cone
From a Truck
Joe Sign Maker
Vodaphone
Haldiram's
Politicians?
Unfortunately, I have no photos that were taken to illustrate how Indian women (or men) dressed, so I’ve had to crop a few people out of pictures taken to illustrate something else. But, I promise I have some great photos of women’s clothing in Bhutan.
Located on the grounds of a Maharaja’s palace in the Himalayan foothills about an hour’s drive from the airport in Dehradun, the destination spa of Ananda-in-the-Himalayas was my final stop before returning home. I spent three days being pampered, meeting new friends, resting up from my treks, and dining–not just eating.
The spa’s reception area is located in the palace.
Guests are transported from the palace to the spa facilities further down the mountain by golf cart. In contrast to the classic elegance of the palace, the spa buildings are very “New Age.” Each room has either a palace or a valley view.
The view from my room of the palace
A twin-bedded room at Ananda
In the mornings, I sat on the verandah drinking tea and eating from the bowl of fresh fruit provided in the room.
Peahen from my verandah
Bathroom without the view I had
One evening students from the Ramana Seva Samiti, an Orphanage and Education Centre based in Rishikesh, performed folk and semi classical dances in the Amphitheatre.
Dancers from the Ramana Seva Samiti
Singing
Dancing
This was my first visit to a destination spa, and it was fantastic. Like most of the places I visited on this trip, there were few, if any Americans, but English was the common language, making it easy to meet new friends–in this case, from Saudi Arabia. Amazingly, the first guest I met had a daughter who is about to attend Johns Hopkins for an MBA. Talk about a small world!
Leash laws? Never heard of such a thing. (Maybe if I dig far enough, I’ll find the foot.)
A fenced pig sty? Why, we help keep the streets clean.
Street Cleaners?
We’re resting up for the trip home. It’s a long way on unimproved pathways.
Need a nap? I’ll keep watch, although I do wish you’d stop littering the street.
Just about every city, town, village, and rural hamlet, every place on the globe, faces similar issues when it comes to aesthetics. I’m talking about things like utility wires, trash, and buildings in a state of disrepair or abandoned. I live in a planned community that dates from the early 1960s. All the utility wires are underground; the county picks up the trash; and the civic association works hard to enforce the building covenants. Big cities that have existed for centuries have a tougher problem, but where there’s a will, there usually is a way.
In New Delhi, the wires are underground, but in Old Delhi, it’s another story.
I never quite figured out the trash system in New Delhi, but I think there was a collection point across the street from my hotel. There certainly wasn’t any curbside collection of either trash or recycling. On the other hand, given the number of people living in the city, it wasn’t bad. Small towns and villages were another story. Gathering places like markets and bus stops were heavily littered. Heaps of garbage were commonplace.
Garbage pile in some small town on way to Agra
Dealing with structural decay isn’t an easy problem. Just think of those old abandoned barns you see along the road; the old, neglected home you wish you could afford to buy and restore to its former glory; or even the abandoned storefronts on Main Street waiting for urban renewal or just a turn in the town’s economy. In India, the problem seemed worse, perhaps because most of the buildings were made of concrete and didn’t seem to be all that old.
Just so you don’t think every building is in need of repair or lacking in style, here are a couple of new office buildings in New Delhi.
In the narrow, crowded streets of Old Delhi, most retail establishments are small-scale, family affairs. One can buy just about anything from the stall-like store fronts.
Note the clocks and watches to the left of the leather jackets.
I never managed to capture a photo of a butcher shop, but they existed.
There are also lots of vendors, mostly selling fruits and vegetables, but eggs were also a popular item.
I don’t remember seeing an 18-wheeler on my entire trip. There were lots of trucks that were closer in size to a dump truck, but rarely anything much larger, and they were usually on major roads. Nor were there many (if any) box trucks, the type of truck that we would see delivering supplies to small retailers or office buildings. Delivery vehicles within urban areas favored maneuverability over horsepower. Most had only two or three wheels–not 18.
I’m taking a break from reporting about the “tourist sites” to discuss the ambiance of visiting Delhi. Two things stood out, in part because they were so different than DC–noise and pollution. Maybe if I were comparing it to the noise of New York City at rush hour or the pollution of Los Angeles on a hot, summer day, I wouldn’t be so critical. But, both Delhi and Washington are capital cities, even if they differ dramatically in size.
Since I’ve already noted one of the effects of air pollution, namely the lack of a blue-sky, in some of my earlier posts, I’m going to focus on the major cause of noise pollution–humans with access to a vehicle horn. In Delhi, there are many more modes of transport than there are in most American cities, and when drivers of these widely disparate types of vehicles are sharing the same small space, they seem to feel the need to make their presence known. They honk when overtaking, they honk when sitting still, they honk if someone or something is in their path, they honk if they want to change “lanes”, they honk to acknowledge they see someone else wants to move ahead, they honk to inform someone else they are approaching, etc., etc. Hopefully, you’ve got the idea. They like to make a lot of noise. I think the noise has become so ingrained, they have to honk because without all the honking it would be too quiet.
Here is a gallery of photos showing the various types of transport.
In addition to being noisy, traffic in Delhi is chaotic, although probably no more so than most third-world countries. Even if there are lines on the road to indicate lanes, which isn’t often, they are generally ignored. On the major three-lane highway around the city it wasn’t unusual to have four vehicles abreast, plus motorbikes and rickshaws. Traffic lights are scarce and, if there isn’t a traffic cop around, often ignored.
One evening while we were sitting in rush hour traffic going nowhere, I heard a thump. Traffic in the three oncoming lanes thinned to reveal a woman laying in the road. Two men rushed from the curbside, helped her to her feet, and essentially carried her to the sidewalk. The hit-and-run driver never stopped.
Pedestrians cross streets wherever and whenever they want. No one seems to think anything of it. It’s amazing I didn’t see more accidents.
I really did see the Taj Mahal in person, and here are the photos to prove it.
Shah Jahan’s favorite wife Arjumand Banu Begum, to whom he had given the title Mumtaz Mahal (Exhalted of the Palace), died on 17 June 1631 after thirty hours of gruling labor. This was her fourteenth child in nineteen years; on average, one child every 16.3 months. Mumtaz Mahal was just 38 years old.
While her life was short, more than 375 years later the tomb under which she rests has to be on any world traveler’s short list for “Places to See Before I Die.” It was on mine, and it didn’t disappoint. Unfortunately, my photographic abilities do.
Work began on the tomb in 1632 and was essentially complete in 1643. Work continued for another ten years on the remainder of the complex—gardens, mosque, guesthouse, gates, etc. By the end of the 19th century, after years of neglect and looting, the mausoleum was greatly in need of some TLC. Lord Curzon, who became Viceroy of India in 1899, initiated a mammoth restoration project that lasted until 1908. Almost a century later the white marble was covered with grime emitted by vehicles and nearby coal-fired power plants. In 2002, multani mitti, a mixture of soil, cereal, milk and lime that had once been used by Indian women to beautify their skin, was used to wash away the effects of industrial pollution. Moreover, vehicles powered by internal combustion engines were banned from the immediate area.
The tomb is just one component of a large complex that sets the stage for this beautiful structure.
Taj Mahal Site Plan
From the main entrance all one sees is a lawned forecourt surrounded by a red sandstone colonnade, other gates, and the Main Gate or darwaza, which rises to a height of 90 feet.
Darwaza or Main Entrance to Taj Mahal
The surface decorations of the darwaza provide a hint of what is to come.
Calligraphy and Herringbone Stonework on Darwaza
The Darwaza is topped by a line of chhatris.
Chhatris atop Main Gate
Once inside the main gate, the mausoleum sets at the end of a long reflecting pool which is just one of four pools that create the chahar bagh, a four-square garden design symbolizing paradise that originated in Persia. The lawns were added by Lord Curzon, replacing what probably was a more natural assemblage of trees and flowers that after several centuries had been transformed into a jungle.
Center of Chahar Bagh and Taj Mahal
The Taj Mahal stands on two bases: a sandstone terrace topped by a 313-square-foot marble plinth. Since the tomb sits on the raised marble platform at the end of the gardens with only the river behind it, the only backdrop is the sky. Unfortunately, when you visit in early April when it’s been months since a pollution-cleansing rain, the sky is not very blue.
Note the red sandstone base beneath the square marble plinth
At each corner of the platform are 137-foot-tall, ornamental minarets, which were built at a slight tilt away from tomb. Some say the tilt was designed to insure the towers would fall away from the tomb in case of an earthquake, but it’s more likely the tilt was intended to compensate for the human eye’s optics. That is, as in railroad tracks, parallel lines viewed from a distance tend to appear as if they are approaching each other.
The central structure is a square with cut-off corners. The four identical faces have a vaulted arch in the center and have been decorated with carved flowers inlaid with semiprecious stones, pietra dura scrollwork, and quotations from the Quran created using jasper inlay.
Corner of Taj Mahal
Chhatri atop Taj Mahal
According to one source there are 22 different Qur’anic quotations on the Taj Mahal.
Calligraphy Inlay
Geometric designs, especially in a herringbone pattern, are used extensively to demarcate space on the exterior.
The main dome is really two domes—an outer shell that is 200-feet high and an inner shell that is only 81-feet high. The four large chattras balance the dome which is higher than the minarets.
The inside of the mausoleum is spectacular. Finely-cut marble screens filter the light. Tiny flowers composed from 43 different types of inlaid semiprecious stones decorate the raised cenotaph. A single one-inch flower has 60 pieces. Some of the gems used are: yellow amber from Burma; lapis lazuli from Afghanistan; jade from Chinese Turkestan; cornelian, agate, amethyst, jasper, green beryl, chalcedony, onyx and coral from different regions of Indian subcontinent. Unfortunately, no pictures are allowed inside mausoleum, so the best I could do is this column.
Flower Inlay
To see and appreciate the stunning artistry of the Taj Mahal’s interior, check your local library for Taj Mahal, photography by Jean-Louis Nou, text by Amina Okada and M. C.Joshi, NY: Abbeville Press, 1993.
At the end of my tour, my guide and I spent some time sitting on the steps to the mosque on the west side of the Taj Mahal. As the sun descended, the sky became bluer, and the marble began to glow. I wished I could stay longer, but the gates would be locked before sunset.
West Face of Taj Mahal in the late afternoon
On the other hand, it was full moon, so the gates reopened after dark to let about 40 people enter each half hour for a 20 minute visit. My travel agent had managed to get one of the coveted tickets in the 9:30 p.m. time slot. Security for these visits was extraordinary, and while you could take a camera in, you could not take a purse, tripod or remote control. At 9:30 the moon was only about 90 degrees above the horizon, so with the atmospheric haze the dome did not shine like in the photographs. This was my best shot.
Now, to return to my initial question: Is the Taj Mahal “the most beautiful building in the world”? As long as symmetry, proportional harmony, grace, and elegance are used to determine architectural beauty, the Taj Mahal will be among the most beautiful buildings in the world. When buildings made of glass and steel are eliminated from the list, the Taj Mahal is THE most beautiful.