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Well we have done it!! Christmas at Taj Mahal was something we had dreamed of back in England, and it was worth all the planning and hard work!
Christmas morning had finally arrived…we awoke to xmas jingles from our ipod, threw back the curtains….to be greeted by the blazing sun over the green lawn in front of our chalet, and parakeets and budgies flying around! Oh and the temperature being a nice warm 24C! Not that we are trying to make you jealous or anything.. :p
We had our xmas meal at a renowned South Indian restaurant (recommended by our guide as a ‘safe’ place!), which we thoroughly enjoyed, despite it being a rather unconventional christmas lunch, with uttapams and dosai, washed down with freshly squeezed watermelon and pineapple juice, and finished off by a rather moorish icecream sundae – absolutely sublime!…. However it couldn’t have been more different from our traditional British xmas meal last year – in a cottage in snowy Cotswolds with the fire blazing, mulled wine, and turkey and all the trimmings!!
Fully fed and watered we finally set out for the Taj – being a foreigner meant that we had to pay an exorbitant 75 TIMES more for the entrance ticket than the locals (750 rupees = about 10 pounds, whereas the Indian nationals were only paying 10 rupees!). However one advantage of our foreign faces was the fact that we were moved straight to the front of the massive entrance queue, where bags were searched more thoroughly than even at airports. To our great surprise, we were told we couldn’t take in any food, ipod, playing cards (!), and believe it or not, our teddy-bear mascot, poor old Pudsey… 🙁 He was really gutted to miss out on the Taj poor thing…He was even dressed up in native style wearing his orange turban for the special occasion!
We had high expectations of the Taj, and as our guidebook put it ‘the reality never fails to overwhelm all who see it’. The building is absolutely beautiful with the luminiscent shimmering marble, however being a bit jaded by all the magnificent Moghul monuments we have seen of late, it was a little smaller than we thought it would be… Nevertheless it was a most romantic monument for us to spend xmas day with – as some of the tacky tourist t-shirts put it ‘the greatest erection by a man for a woman’. :p
The Taj Mahal is regarded by most modern visitors as the utmost symbol of ‘eternal love’, built by Shah Jahan for his favourite wife Mumtaz, and who was devastated by her death. However, the reality (as revealed by recent research) is a somewhat less poetic and different vision – one more revealing the emperor’s megalomania than his love for his dead wife. A recently discovered ancient Sufi text in the possession of Shah Jahan’s father’s library, was found to contain a diagram corresponding to the exact layout of the Taj Mahal complex. The diagram in the ancient text is of the Plain of Assembly on the Day of Judgement, and the Taj is positioned at the exact point of God’s throne. Given that the emperor’s remains are now enshrined within it, the inevitable conclusion that he was rather full of himself! It is also interesting to learn that far from spending his old age gazing whimsically to the tomb of his beloved wife (as the popular belief goes), the Moghul’s most decadent emperor expired at the age of 74 after a protracted bout of sex and drug taking, and actually died of an overdose of narcotics. Despite finding out all of this, we still had a great day and this will be one xmas we will always remember!
Merry christmas everybody! Have a great time!!!
