Saturday, 3/21-
What a day! After staying up until early morning, 5 am came sooner than anticipated. I ordered breakfast to make sure I got to eat before we headed off for the Taj. The car was supposed to leave at 5:30 but that's not what happened! Mackenzie was still drunk from the night before and decided to take watermelon and coffee to the front desk to change money. Then wanted her passport so she went back for it....Brian found her eating eggs like we weren't waiting for her. At the same time, Daniel didn't set an alarm and therefore Brian woke up him and told him to get ready. I totally felt like the mom. It was hilarious. We get in the car which is a whole other situation lol. Everyone passes out on the 2+ hour drive to the Taj. As we drive through the city of Agra where the Taj and Agra fort are, there are water buffalo walking the streets. The city is built up around the monuments and its pretty easy to see that the only reason some people are there. We pick up our tour guide for the day, Chancal, who turns out to be an actual archaeologist who's home from his work near Pakistan because a few of his team were killed. Crazy. We arrive at the Taj and get our tickets to go in. There are four gates- one for each direction at the Taj. As we stand outside and are told the stories about the ingenuity to build the gates and the actual mausoleum and I'm just shocked. I can't imagine all the craftmanship that went into the monuments. As we walk through taking pictures Chancal tells us about how the Taj Mahal came to be. In the simplest way, the queen on her death bed asked her husband how much he loved her. He couldn't explain how much he loved her so he told her that he would show her. He almost bankrupt himself building this testament of love. Oh to be loved like that! One of the craziest things in India is that you can touch basically anything you want. So we got up to the Taj and walked through to see where the queen and king were buried and you can touch the walls on the way in and all around the outside of the building. They only thing that was blocked off was the actual tombs. Chancal told us that sometimes the line wraps around the building twice but that there was a festival that day and so we were lucky that we basically got to walk right up. You have to put booties on your shoes before walking around. He also told us that they will be closing the area with the tombs down in order to preserve it. People also like to sit around these monuments- its relatively cheap for locals to get in and "crazy expensive" to get in for foreigners. We finish walking around and taking pictures then head back to the car. After that we head over to see how they craft the marble with the semi precious stones and then they try to sell us a bunch of marble pieces that were incredibly expensive. We stopped for lunch at a spot that was definitely the spot for this tour group and saw other rotators there who came up separately. Next up was the Agra fort. Its big. And Red. But not the Red Fort. The architecture here is kind of out of control. The symmetry and precision that they were able to achieve is incredible. It's all uniform and you just kind of look at it like how in the world did you make that with nothing. There were many wings of the fort that related to different wives and would be decorated in different styles based on the wife's preference. They had so many wives and I really don't know how they kept the "happy wife happy life" going. We were all pretty tired after that so we headed back to drop Chancal off then headed back to the hotel.We all slept again and tried to pass the time quickly. It's not a short drive. Cleaned up a bit then headed to Cyber Hub for dinner again. Had dinner at Soi 7 which was actually a place that brewed beer but then also had asian food. Kind of random. After that we headed down to the wine bar and shared a bottle of wine. Called it a decently early night as we were all exhausted.
What a day! After staying up until early morning, 5 am came sooner than anticipated. I ordered breakfast to make sure I got to eat before we headed off for the Taj. The car was supposed to leave at 5:30 but that's not what happened! Mackenzie was still drunk from the night before and decided to take watermelon and coffee to the front desk to change money. Then wanted her passport so she went back for it....Brian found her eating eggs like we weren't waiting for her. At the same time, Daniel didn't set an alarm and therefore Brian woke up him and told him to get ready. I totally felt like the mom. It was hilarious. We get in the car which is a whole other situation lol. Everyone passes out on the 2+ hour drive to the Taj. As we drive through the city of Agra where the Taj and Agra fort are, there are water buffalo walking the streets. The city is built up around the monuments and its pretty easy to see that the only reason some people are there. We pick up our tour guide for the day, Chancal, who turns out to be an actual archaeologist who's home from his work near Pakistan because a few of his team were killed. Crazy. We arrive at the Taj and get our tickets to go in. There are four gates- one for each direction at the Taj. As we stand outside and are told the stories about the ingenuity to build the gates and the actual mausoleum and I'm just shocked. I can't imagine all the craftmanship that went into the monuments. As we walk through taking pictures Chancal tells us about how the Taj Mahal came to be. In the simplest way, the queen on her death bed asked her husband how much he loved her. He couldn't explain how much he loved her so he told her that he would show her. He almost bankrupt himself building this testament of love. Oh to be loved like that! One of the craziest things in India is that you can touch basically anything you want. So we got up to the Taj and walked through to see where the queen and king were buried and you can touch the walls on the way in and all around the outside of the building. They only thing that was blocked off was the actual tombs. Chancal told us that sometimes the line wraps around the building twice but that there was a festival that day and so we were lucky that we basically got to walk right up. You have to put booties on your shoes before walking around. He also told us that they will be closing the area with the tombs down in order to preserve it. People also like to sit around these monuments- its relatively cheap for locals to get in and "crazy expensive" to get in for foreigners. We finish walking around and taking pictures then head back to the car. After that we head over to see how they craft the marble with the semi precious stones and then they try to sell us a bunch of marble pieces that were incredibly expensive. We stopped for lunch at a spot that was definitely the spot for this tour group and saw other rotators there who came up separately. Next up was the Agra fort. Its big. And Red. But not the Red Fort. The architecture here is kind of out of control. The symmetry and precision that they were able to achieve is incredible. It's all uniform and you just kind of look at it like how in the world did you make that with nothing. There were many wings of the fort that related to different wives and would be decorated in different styles based on the wife's preference. They had so many wives and I really don't know how they kept the "happy wife happy life" going. We were all pretty tired after that so we headed back to drop Chancal off then headed back to the hotel.We all slept again and tried to pass the time quickly. It's not a short drive. Cleaned up a bit then headed to Cyber Hub for dinner again. Had dinner at Soi 7 which was actually a place that brewed beer but then also had asian food. Kind of random. After that we headed down to the wine bar and shared a bottle of wine. Called it a decently early night as we were all exhausted.
You actually make it seem so easy with your presentation but I find this topic to be really something which I think I would never understand. It seems too complicated and extremely broad for me. I’m looking forward to your next post, I will try to get the hang of it!
ReplyDeletecar removal brisbane in Australia
Simply want to say your article is as surprising. The clearness in your post is simply great and i could assume you are an expert on this subject. Well with your permission allow me to grab your feed to keep updated with forthcoming post. Thanks a million and please continue the enjoyable work.
ReplyDeletecar disposal ipswich in Australia
Thanks for sharing. We pay our customers instant cash up to $9,999 without any waiting time. It is our policy to not let customers wait for their money. We also provide free towing services, so customers save even more money when dealing with us. This strategy has been a great success with our customers in Queensland. Through this, we gained a lot of goodwill from our customers.
ReplyDeletefree car removals adelaide in Australia