Jaipur Observatory

We had a fascinating visit to the Jaipur Observatory.  Jai Singh II built five observatories back in the late 1600’s to early 1700’s.  The Jaipur Observatory was the last one he built and it was the largest, and some say the best one.  It took six years to build the Jaipur Observatory and it was completed in 1728.  It’s made of marble, brass and masonry.  It has several dozen solar instruments including lots of different sun dials which measure time and positions of celestial bodies.  Some are wild looking, sort of like modern art, and they are remarkably precise. 

I can see at least six of the astronomical instruments in the first photo.  Each one has a different function.  I included close-ups of a couple of others in the next two photos. This visit was really exciting and really very unexpected. I could have spent all day here. It was like Disneyland for me.

Below is a sun dial and the largest astronomical instrument at Jaipur Observatory. This sun dial stands 90 feet tall and measures time accurately to within two seconds. 

I got almost all of the sun dial in the first photo, but it’s really a big structure.  The sun finally came out and we could read the time just to the left of Vicky in the second photo.  The third photo was an information plaque about this instrument.  All the instruments had similar information about their functions.

Dairy Discovery Visit

We were in the middle of a long travel day, by bus ride, when our guide suggested a ‘discovery’ stop at a dairy.  It was raining so I wasn’t thrilled about walking around a dairy in the mud.  Nonetheless, I went along with the group, not expecting to learn too much new about the dairy business.  Our guide kept making a point that this dairy used ‘everything’.  I wasn’t surprised to hear that as I expected that they needed to utilize everything to make ends meet for their business.  He said they sold milk, made their own bio-fuels to provide their own power, sold cows, and so on.  Again, nothing new.  But then he got to the manure.  I had just assumed that they sold the manure as fertilizer, but I was wrong.  They collect the manure and do some processing of it which was not a huge surprise.  You can see this in the first photo.

But the manure end product turned out to be ‘incense sticks’.  Our guide and the dairy guide walked us through the whole process.  They gather and do some curing of the manure.  Then they add sweet basil leaves, sandalwood leaves, plus spices together in a ‘secret’ formula.  Our guide said that one guy came up with the secret formula and it’s very valuable, sort of like the ‘Coca Cola’ formula.  At any rate, they make the mix and shove it into little tiny plug holes and later push it out and let the sticks dry before selling it.  You can see a couple of women working in the barn doing this in the second photo.  You can also see the manure incense sticks on the trays.  Our guide said the whole barn would be full of women working except for the fact that it was raining that day.

I was really quite impressed at that point.  India has quite a malaria problem so they burn lots of incense to ward off the mosquitoes.  I figured that was why it might make sense to have some sort of manure incense product.   At that point, I thought the dairy tour had been worthwhile from a ‘discovery’ point of view.  The ‘discovery’ had only just begun.

We got to the last shed complex and our guide started talking about the recycling of the cow’s urine.  Once again, I thought it would be for fertilizer.  Once again, I was wrong.  We got to the last area and he pointed out the large kettle of cow’s urine being heated up over the fire.  You can see this in the third photo.  I thought that seemed kind of silly and I couldn’t figure out the how and why of what they would do with cow’s urine that would require it to be heated and cooked.

After cooking the cow’s urine, they ran it through some sort of condensing apparatus.  I didn’t understand that either, but what the heck.  You can see this in the next photo.

Next, we went inside the building.  Inside, we were at the other end of the condensing, at the bottling stage.  You can see this in the next photo.  At that point, I was thinking that they must use the cow’s urine for house plant fertilizer which also seemed a bit silly to me.

Finally our guide told us that the cow’s urine was used to make a human vitamin supplement that was sold in liquid and tablet forms.  He said it was for good health and to honor Mother Cow and Shiva or something like that.  You can see these in the third photo.  He said that it was considered a very healthy daily vitamin supplement.  I turned to Vicky and said, “Trust me, if they ask for volunteers to try it, I’m not volunteering”.  They didn’t ask for volunteers and also did not offer any to us.  We thanked the dairy guide and got back on our bus.  We drove off in the rain to keep on traveling.

Soon after we got back on the bus, our guide stood up laughing and asked us if we would like a piece of candy from the dairy.  He had opened up several bags of hard candy that morning on the bus and since he was laughing, we all called his bluff and said sure, give us a piece.  Vicky and I both took two pieces.  It looked like candy.  We popped a piece in our mouths.  It looked like a Ricola cough drop.  It didn’t taste bad but it was not very sweet.  I identified the primary flavor as black pepper.  We all were curious and asked our guide what was really in the candy.  He was still laughing and said he would read the ingredients.  He read black pepper, salt, sweet basil, three uncertain ingredients, and oops – “juice”.  While we were at the dairy, he had referred to the cow’s urine as juice.  So yes, we ate a cow urine vitamin supplement.

I want to cover and conclude this incident and put an end to it right now with complete finality:

1.       I did not KNOWINGLY consume a cow urine vitamin supplement.

2.      As soon as I was certain that the ‘candy’ contained cow urine, I threw the other piece away (as did Vicky).

3.      Our tour guide duped us into consuming the cow urine vitamin supplement.

4.      The worst part of this entire incident is that now I’m starting to sound like Barry Bonds.

Nahargarh Ranthambhore

India was often times a difficult country to visit.  I do not, however, want anyone to think we were suffering while we were in India.  I have already stated that many times when we were out in the country, accommodations were difficult to obtain.  For reasons of safety and cleanliness, our tour company was obligated to feed us and board us at high end places since there wasn’t anything available in the middle range.  I have also pointed out that these were often times former fort/palaces.  That was the case when we arrived at the Ranthambhore area. 

You can see our hotel, the Nahargarh Ranthambhore, in the first photo.  It was at the end of a dirt road off of a gravel road off of the local highway.  There wasn’t anything right around it, but once there, we didn’t need anything else.  It was built in the style of the traditional Rajput hunting palaces.  Our guide said that the owner took down a palace somewhere else and built this place using most of the old palace materials.  It had courtyards, fountains, marble everywhere, a fabulous bar, gardens, a pool, excellent facilities, and even gold inlay work in the lobby.

You can see Vicky in the courtyard where our room was located in the second photo.  It was raining hard at the time so I was standing under the walkway across the courtyard.  Our hotel room was to the left of Vicky.

You can see the inside of our room in the third photo.  Actually, you can only see about half of our room.  Vicky is in the back having tea in our raised sitting room.

Ranthambhore Tiger Preserve

We spent a couple of days in the Ranthambhore area.  The main attraction was the Ranthambhore Tiger Preserve or National Park.  The park was the former hunting preserve of the Maharajas of Jaipur.  The park is bordered by two major rivers but also has many streams, creeks, and six man-made lakes.  The park is over 500 square miles and has an incredible variety of vegetation and land formations.  We saw large Savannah grassland areas, massive rock formations with steep rock escarpments, flat and rolling land areas and elevation changes that were probably around 1000 feet.  The vegetation was also a wild mix.  We saw dense forests, high grasslands, bush areas, and plants from palm trees to cactus to banyan and mango trees.  Our time in the park was called game-viewing drives, but we saw very little variety of game, especially large game.  We saw large numbers of birds though.  The park also has the old Ranthambhore Fort which dates to the 10th century.  It’s fallen on hard times but was still interesting to hike around and see.  I bet there were plenty of big battles fought there and quite a social life back in the days. 

The main focus on our game drives was to see a tiger, of which the park supposedly has about 35, and a leopard, of which the park has about 40.  We never saw either one.  We did, however, get stuck in the mud in an area where our guide said they knew a tiger and two tiger cubs lived.  We had to get out of the truck and stand in the woods while the guides got the truck out of the mud.  I wasn’t too worried as I figured that I wasn’t the oldest or the weakest of the group.

I will only include this one post from Ranthambhore Park.  These are a few of the animal photos that I took in the park.  The first one is a Sambar deer that is grazing in the shallow edge of a lake with lots of water weeds on the water and a stork on his back.  The second photo is a Chital or spotted deer.  The third photo is a Nilgai or Blue Bull antelope.

School Visit

Our tour company, Overseas Adventure Travel, supports schools in the countries that they do business.  We have visited at least one school on each trip that we have taken with them.  We bring along school supplies to donate to the school, things like pens, pencils, and paper.  In India, the school was in a small town called Khilchipur.  This was a very rural area of Ranthambhore.  The school was a grammar school started by the man who is the principal.  He charges a small amount of money for the kids to attend.  Even though public grammar school is free in India, this man charges students to attend his school because he found that students have far greater attendance if their parents pay money for them to attend.  The school was very small and very simple.

In the first photo, some students are in the school yard and we are seeing the entire school yard in this photo.  They are doing morning yoga, actually sitting in meditation learning Sanskrit.  The man in front of the class is the teacher.

The second photo was taken in one of the small classrooms.  There were no desks, no pictures on the walls, a few well used books, and a chalk board for their teacher.  The students just sat on the floor in their designated space and listened to the teacher at the front of the class.

The third photo was outside just adjacent to the school yard (upper right in first photo).  At one time, this structure was the stable or barn area used to keep animals.  Now it is occupied by the pre-school class.  Vicky borrowed the instructor’s workbook and started teaching class.  No one seemed to mind.

Town of Khilchipur

After visiting the school, we decided to walk around the town of Khilchipur.  We drew large crowds of very curious people.  Both children and adults would come up to us and stare and watch us.  Some asked for pens and pencils (word traveled fast), some asked us to take their pictures.  We felt like movie stars in a paparazzi frenzy.

The first photo is just a random photo of one of the typical streets in town.

The second photo was typical of many of the houses that we saw in town.  The houses were very neat and clean.  It appeared to me that most of the ‘work’ of the house was done outside the house.  In this photo, the woman of the house is preparing food on the right side of the picture.  They had a small fireplace/stove for cooking outside of the house.  The man of the house was making iron tools which I presume he does for a living.  We saw others who made clay cups and other things, so that their home is both a home and a business.

The third photo was another street scene and I included it to show the pigs.  We saw where these pigs live at their owners house.  The man who owns these pigs keeps them for a living.  He gets paid to have them run around town eating garbage all day.  He locks them up in their cages at night to keep them safe from predators.  We often heard the terms ‘garbage pigs’ and ‘food pigs’ in India.  If you are going to eat pork, you want to make sure you get a ‘food pig’ and not a ‘garbage pig’.  How do you tell the difference?  How would I know, I’m the guy who got sick, remember?

India Miscellaneous

This is just a miscellaneous few bits of information.  The first photo was our first day in Delhi, shortly after arriving at our hotel.  I put the timer on the camera and took our photo.  We were given flower lays and bindis at least a handful of times in India.  A bindi (pr. Bin Dee) is the red dot on our foreheads.  A bindi represents the mystical third eye.  It’s placement is a major nerve point on the human body and seat of concealed wisdom.  For those purposes, both men and women might have a bindi.  The bindi is also a symbol, somewhat like a wedding ring, for married women to wear.  It’s a red color because red brings good fortune.  That is very traditional.  Today, the bindi has become more of a fashion accessory and we saw different colors and also such things as sparkles included in the bindi.  Those smiles are the smiles of two people who just got to India and were really happy and excited about it.

The Indian people were very friendly to us.  Many people spoke English and lots of them wanted to try out their English by speaking to us.  People also seemed to like to have us take their photo with our digital cameras and then come and see themselves in the photo.  I just included this next photo because there were many friendly people and many people who wanted to try out their English with us at this stop.  This was at the Raj Ghat in Delhi which is a national shrine of the cremation site of Mahatma Gandhi.  He was cremated here in 1948 on the banks of the Yamuna River.  Only today, the river is half a mile away due to floods and course changes.  There were many school groups visiting the day we were here and many of them really flocked to us.  In the case of this photo, I liked their school uniforms and they seemed to be having fun.  I just stopped a fair distance away and took out my camera and they instantly started to pose and wave to me. They had some great smiles.

The cow in the third photo is a ‘holy cow’.  Not all cows in India are holy cows.  The whole business about holy cows was a bit confusing but I’ll explain what I heard about it.  The Hindus apparently believe that cows are a holy animal or sacred because a cow is or could be a reincarnation of a human soul.  Respect for all animals is a main theme of the Hindus.  But of course, not everyone in India is a Hindu.  Traditionally, India households have or had a cow and a dog.  These are part of the family, somewhat like our pets – and we wouldn’t kill one of our pets.  Also, Indians believe that they all have four mothers: Mother India, Mother Ganges (river), Mother Cow, and their biological mother.  Cows provide milk for yogurt, butter, oil, and other basics.  Cows also provide power for plowing fields.  Our guide said that only a few cows in India are actually “holy cows”.  During our stay in India, we only saw three ‘holy cows’ and you can see one here.  Our guide said that a cow only becomes a holy cow when a Hindu holy man deems it so.  It might be because of the date of a cows birth and some monumental event or something.  But at some point, a Hindu holy man deems a cow a holy cow and that’s what it takes.  The holy cows that we saw were very clean and prettied up with painted horns and pulling wagons.  My guess is that a holy cow can make someone some money, but I never heard all the ramifications around holy cows.

Indian Truck Stop

We spent quite a bit of time traveling from town to town through farming country on our bus.  One constant on those narrow highways were big trucks, which always had the right of way.  Another common site along those country highways or roads was ‘truck stops’.  While most people in our country know what truck stops are; the truck stops in India were a bit different.  They do cater to the truckers but they are still different.  Truckers in India spend long hours on the road but they don’t have our style rest stops or other places to pull over and rest.  They also don’t have big trucks that contain sleeping quarters inside the truck.  So small restaurants cater to the truckers by providing them some space to park.  They also provide the truckers with a place to take a nap and of course, provide them with food and beverages.

You can see a typical Indian truck stop in the first photo.  I took this picture just a short way from the road that we were driving at the time.  They have tables and chairs on the left, but they also have beds or cots for the truckers as you can see on the right side.  The beds are simple structures of wood with woven strips of cut up rubber tires.  I’m not sure what the purpose was for the boards on top of the beds.

Our guide said that most truck stops served complete meals but we just had some naan and tea.  In the second photo you can see the guy in front making some chai tea.  We had some and it was quite good.  This place used buffalo milk.  We also tried the naan which the two guys in back were making.  You can see some dough and flour on the table to the left of them and some finished pieces on the right.  They are looking into the oven to check on the naan that we ate.  It was also very good.

Owning a truck was a common and popular business in India and the Indian truckers celebrated their success and good fortune.  My brother Mike is in the trucking business in California so I thought I would include a truck picture that I took at this truck stop.  My brother is very proud of his trucks and takes excellent care of them, but I would have to say that my brother and his crew don’t know beans about glorifying their trucks.  You can find a hint of the way the Indian truckers do it in the third photo. I have to say, however, that this guy not only wouldn’t make a ‘top ten’ on the decoration scale in India, he wouldn’t even rate honorable mention.  Oh this guy is okay with what he has, but many of the trucks had this much permanent decorations plus maybe double that amount in fresh flowers on their trucks.  This guy was really on the skimpy side.

Indian Trucking

As long as I’m on the subject of trucking and trucks, I may as well send a few more truck photos.  These photos are a dime a dozen in India but what kind of report would this be if I didn’t throw in a few more truck photos.  I don’t know that the truck in the first photo had the biggest load that we saw, but he was in the running.

The truck in the second photo didn’t have too big a load but he wasn’t running on empty either.  I put the second photo in so that you could see the size of a rural highway.  A big truck takes up most of the highway.  You will also notice that the dirt shoulder on either side of the road gets frequent use – by everyone else on the road getting out of the way of big trucks.  Size matters on Indian roads and the big truck always wins.

As I said in the last post, my brother Mike is in the trucking business.  He hauls fuel or gasoline.  I’m sure that my brother thinks he’s running an efficient operation and watching his costs.  I want him to look at the fuel hauling operation in the third photo to see what a real super efficient, low cost fuel hauling operation looks like.

Abhaneri Tent Camp

We are on the road from Jaipur to Agra.  The area between these cities is farming country.  The primary crop is mustard and many of the fields were in full bloom.  Wheat was probably the second most planted crop and we saw lots of wheat as well.  We also saw orchards including guava, mango, and papaya.  The farmers all seem to have tractors and the farming operations look to be very well done and prosperous.  The crops looked very even with few weeds and good growth.

There wasn’t much in the way of accommodations (hotels and restaurants) in this area, or at least we didn’t see any of them.  We stopped in the area of Abhaneri which is a small village.  Abhaneri was an important village in ancient times, like back in the 8th to 10th centuries.  The town was supposedly founded by Maharaja Chand in the 8th or 9th century.  Today, it is mainly an agricultural area but does still attract tourists.  I would guess it attracts tourists primarily because it’s on the road from Jaipur to Agra, where the Taj Mahal is located.

At any rate, we spent the afternoon, night and the next morning at a tent camp.  It was quite pleasant accommodations by our standards, but then, we don’t require a palace.  We still felt a bit like royalty from a bygone era and you can see why in the first photo.  They greeted us by throwing flower petals on our heads and giving us flower lays and a bindi (third eye spot).  You can see Vicky getting greeted in the first photo.  You can get a better sense of the cabins and layout in the second photo.  And of course, you can’t have royalty without a Queen who you can see in the third photo resting in front of our tent.

Abhaneri Camel Ride

Our first order of business after stowing our gear in our tent was to go for a camel ride.  We got to ride for an hour and it was very pleasant.  We rode along paths and roads right out in the farmers fields.  It was all dirt roads.  We saw the farmers working out in the fields and the kids hollered and waved to us as we passed them.  We eventually ended up in a small village where the whole town seemed to come out to see us.  It was a small village and we were definitely the center of attention.

You can see Vicky in the first photo just after mounting her camel.  You can also see the farm land in the background though these were not my best pictures of the crops.  You might also notice the camel had designs shaved into its hair.  Our guide said the design shaving is just to make the animals look pretty or decorative.  You can also see the necklaces around the camel’s neck. 

In the second photo, Vicky has arrived at the small village.  The village was very simple but very colorful.  The third photo is just a photo of me on my camel.

Camp Activities

We are still at the Abhaneri tent camp.  We might have been out in the country but we weren’t sitting around with nothing to do.  Before dinner, we asked if we could check out the kitchen facilities.  Our guide said that the chef was from Nepal and was an excellent cook.  He offered to give us a cooking demonstration.  You can probably guess who couldn’t resist jumping into the kitchen and getting a little flour on herself, as you can see in the first photo.  The chef is on the left and our tour guide is in the middle.  After our cooking lesson but before dinner, we were entertained by some of the local farmers.  They were musicians and dancers and both the music and dancing was very entertaining.  And yes, Vicky couldn’t resist getting in on the dancing either as you can see in the second photo.

The next morning after breakfast, we played some cricket.  Our guide said that in India, cricket is not a sport; it’s a religion.  A couple of the locals were recruited to pitch and catch.  We all got to take a turn with the bat and play in the field.  I was busy working on my journal that morning so I arrived late to the cricket game.  I was the last person to bat.  The guy before me got 15 to 20 swings with the bat.  I got up and the first pitch was a roller, so I golfed it back up the middle.  My second pitch was over the wicket and I wacked a home run over the fence.  That was the first home run of the game.  Then they brought in the local talent.  His first pitch to me hit the wicket and it wasn’t sticky.  I dug in.  His next pitch was up and I hit a long walk-off home run into the middle of the neighboring wheat field: game over.  You can see my follow through on that swing in the last photo.

Ancient Step Well

Abhaneri village is still considered to be a tourist stop.  The main reason is its ancient step wells which were apparently only made in India and mainly this area of India.  Step wells, or ‘baoris’ were a unique invention by the locals for ‘harvesting’ rain water.  This area was known for a scarcity of water, so they invented the concept of step wells.  It’s really just a really big well that has steps on the sides so that people can walk down to the water level and get their water.  The other main tourist attraction in Abhaneri is the Harshat Mata Temple.  We visited the temple but it was nothing compared to the step well next door to it.

The Chand Baori (the Great Step Well) was built in the 8th or 9th century according to our local guide.  It was not like anything that I had ever seen before.  We were fortunate in a way in that the water level in the well was extremely low which enabled us to see almost to the bottom of it.  The design was such that people could walk down to the water, no matter how low the water level.  There was also a substantial building structure on one side of the step well and the entire well was surrounded by verandas and one level of structures on the other three sides.  We also saw marvelous carved stone statues and figures at this place.

The first photo is the back side of the step well.  The green on the bottom is the water which was obviously covered by water weeds.

The second photo is the front side of the well and again, the green on the bottom is the water level.

The third photo is more of a close up of the main building at the step well.  It really must have been spectacular back in the 8th or 9th century.  I thought it was pretty spectacular to see in the 21st century.

Arriving in Agra

As we were coming into the town of Agra, I was a bit disappointed.  I shouldn’t have been, but I kept thinking that for some reason, the home city of the Taj Mahal would be a bit nicer with less garbage, maybe something along the lines of Jaipur.  It wasn’t.  It wasn’t any worse either.  It was just more of typical India.  It was very crowded and busy, trashy, and the traffic was constant stop and go with lots of sitting still and waiting.  People in Agra seemed to wear more Western clothing and seemed to dress nicer.  The fruits and vegetables all looked good.  The drivers in Agra could honk their horns as well as the rest of the people in India.

The first photo was on the road into town.  This could have been taken any place.  Any vehicle was always used to carry people, in addition to whatever else it was used for.  This tractor and wagon was about as full as it could get.  Several people had already exited by the time I snapped this photo.

The second photo was a side street from the street that we were on when entering Agra.

The third photo was just an area along the side of the road.  All these photos were typical of India but just happened to be our introduction to the city of Agra, home of the Taj Mahal.

The Baby Taj

Our first stop In Agra was the tomb of Itmad-ud-daulah.  Our guide referred to this tomb as the Baby Taj Mahal.  It was sort of a draft of the Taj Mahal.  It was also a Mughal tomb and was built 32 years before the Taj Mahal.  Our guide said that they tried out some building techniques in constructing this tomb and that they used some on the Taj Mahal and discarded others.  This was the first white marble tomb built in India.  Before this tomb, they were all red sandstone tombs.  It was also built symmetrically, like the Taj Mahal, and was also very beautiful.  One amazing thing was that we had this whole place practically to ourselves.  I would guess that there were less than 20 other people here when we were and this place was very large, especially with all the grounds.  It is also located on the Yamuna River, just a meter and a half upstream from the Taj Mahal.  It includes extensive outbuildings, gardens, walkways, and water courses. 

You can see the tomb in the first photo.  It’s primarily white marble with inlaid work.  As nice as it looked from here, I thought it looked better and better as we got closer.

You can see one of the ‘other’ buildings in the second photo.  The tomb was white marble with inlaid sandstone while the surrounding buildings were red sandstone with inlaid marble.  The third photo shows the main tomb with one of the surrounding buildings to see the contrast in building materials.

Since I said that the closer I got, the better it looked, I will try and explain why.  These photos are simply closer photos of the tomb.  The first one is one of the entrance arches.  You can see that the entire building is decorated, mostly with inlaid work.  In the top center, you can see that some of the decorative work is chiseled carving of the marble.  The decorative work was on the floors, walls, arches, ceilings, roof eves, and everything.

The next photo is just a close-up photo of a section of the wall.  It is white marble with inlaid stone and minerals.  They used dozens of different stones and petrified wood for the inlaid pieces.  All the inlaid work was done by hand with chisel and mallet.  I think this next photo gives a good indication of the quality of the workmanship.  The inlaid work was semiprecious stones including cornelian, jasper, lapis, lazuli, onyx, and topaz. 

We got to go inside this tomb and it was decorated beautifully.  Also, we could stay as long as we wanted and we could take pictures.  This tomb had carved marble lattice windows which allowed good light inside.  The last photo is a close-up photo of the ceiling inside the tomb.  It was beautiful mosaics with semiprecious stones and painting including gold leaf.  

Taj Mahal from across the Yamuna River

Our second stop In Agra was directly across the river from the Taj Mahal.  Prior to going to India, I didn’t even know the Taj Mahal was on a river.  Most pictures of the Taj don’t show the river.  Our guide said that the builder of the Taj Mahal planned to build a Black Taj Mahal on this location across the river, identical to the Taj Mahal but with black marble instead of white marble.  Eventually, his son killed his brothers and put his father, the builder of the Taj Mahal, in prison at Fort Agra.  So the black Taj Mahal was never built, but the building site is still here.  The gardens are very extensive and symmetrical but it was primarily a great opportunity to see the Taj Mahal from another angle and with practically no other people present.

I liked the first photo because it made me think about what it was like for people back in those days to be travelling along and all of a sudden, see the Taj Mahal sticking up from out of the foliage.  I really enjoyed my first view of the Taj Mahal from here.

The second photo shows the Taj Mahal with the river in front of it.  The river was at low tide when we were there and it was close to sundown.

I zoomed in to take the third photo.  You can again see the river in front.  I also was amazed to see so many people at the Taj Mahal.  Also, the foundation level of the Taj is red sandstone with inlaid white marble, while the tomb itself is white marble with inlaid stones, much like at the Baby Taj.

Taj Mahal

The Taj Mahal was certainly one of the highlights of India.  It was built by the Muslim or Mughal emperor, Shah Jahan.  He built it for his wife and it was described as a tribute to their love.  Shah Jahan built it for his third wife after she died during the birth of their 14th child.  Construction started in 1632 and took over twenty years to complete.  The whole place is some 3230 square feet with many outbuildings, gardens, reflection pools, flowerbeds, walkways, and trees.  The tomb is spectacular but there’s much more to it than just the tomb.

To put the Taj Mahal in perspective size wise, I’ll give some measurements.  The raised platform that the tomb sits on is 186 feet square.  The top of the main marble dome is 213 feet high.  The four minarets are 186.5 feet high.  It is really a big structure and as we got closer, it seemed to grow in size. 

We were supposed to get up at 5:45 in the morning and be here before sunrise.  I was so sick, I couldn’t get out of bed at 5:45.  Fortunately for me, Agra had socked-in fog on this morning.  We didn’t meet to go to the Taj until 8:30.  I rolled out of bed at 8:20 and was the last one to climb into our bus.  I was very ill but still enjoyed the visit.  The day was still foggy and hazy when we arrived, so these photos were not taken under ideal conditions.  I took most of my photos from a sitting position.  The good news was that it was not very crowded compared to the prior evening when we could see the Taj from across the Yamuna River.  

The Taj Mahal also got more interesting as we got closer to it.  I want to show more than just the typical photos.  In the next photo, you can see some of the tremendous amount of detail work on the building. 

The next photo is even closer to the wall.  You can see some of the sculpted bas relief work chiseled into the marble.  In this photo, the chiseled work is flowers.  You can also see some of the inlaid stone work.  The exterior of the Taj Mahal used yellow marble, jasper, jade, and agate for inlaid stone.  The interior of the tomb used lapidary work with both precious and semiprecious gemstones.  I’m squinting in the photo because even on a somewhat foggy day, the glare off the white marble was intensely bright.  I’m also wearing coverings over my shoes which is required of everyone wanting to wear shoes and have access to the main platform.  We could have gone barefoot but our guide said it might be too difficult to find our own shoes afterwards.

The last photo is one of the four minarets.  I included this photo because if the minaret looks like it doesn’t stand straight in the photo, that’s because it doesn’t.  The minarets were built at a slight angle to square and lean outwards from the tomb.  That’s in case of collapse (a common event in the 1600s), the hope was that they would not fall on the tomb.  Our guide said that India, and the Taj Mahal, has four leaning towers versus the one in Italy.

Primitive Farming

We have now left Agra.  We took a train from Agra to Jhansi and then boarded another bus.  These photos were taken on the road between Jhansi and Khajuraho.  It was mostly flat farmland which all looked very good and productive.  The monsoons just ended so they had plenty of water and things were growing well.  I want to point out that these photos were really exceptions for the farmers.  Most Indian farmers had tractors.  I only saw a couple of farmers using more primitive techniques.  In the first photo, this guy was plowing using oxen.  I also got a photo of him doing the actual plowing but I liked this one better.  His family had just brought him some tea and food.

In the second photo, this woman is driving the oxen to turn the wheel on the well.  It turned the water lift and brought up the water from some thirty feet down inside the well.  It also brought up lots of frogs but they just jumped back down into the well.  The water then flowed right into an irrigation ditch and out into the farm field.  You can see the water falling out of the buckets in the center of the photo.

We were driving down the highway when our guide asked us to look out into the farm fields.  He asked us if we could see the wells out in the fields.  We told him that we could.  He asked if we could see the pumps on the wells.  We told him that we could.  He then asked us to remember them.  Later, he asked if we had seen the water pumps anywhere since we had seen them in the fields.  You can see one in the truck in the third photo.  When the farmers need to take a crop to town, they undo their water pump motor on their well and put it into their home-made trucks and go to town.  These trucks didn’t go very fast but it looked like they got where they were going and didn’t have to carry it.

Khajuraho Temples

Our next stop was the small village of Khajuraho.  It’s industries includes farming, mining, and tourism.  The village has about 15,000 people and I think about 1,000 of them were always trying to sell us something.  Khajur means date palms, so the city is the ‘garden of the dates’ and there are still some thick date palm stands around the town.  The area was an important area for the Chandelas Rajputs back in the 9th to 12th centuries.  Khajuraho was the Chandelas religious and cultural center and also their capital for a brief period.  The founders of Khajuraho claim, through legends, to be descendents of the moon. 

The main tourist attraction are the temples that the Chandelas constructed mostly between the years 950 and 1050 AD.  There were originally 85 temples but only 22 stand today, although there are still more large mounds that haven’t been excavated.  Each temple took 20 to 25 years to construct.  Our guide said that one reason the temples were constructed here was that the stone was here.  These temples have granite platforms or bases and the temples are build of sandstone which came from a quarry 15 miles away.  The temples were built with all inter-locking stones and used no mortar.  These temples are a UNESCO world heritage site for their archeological significance.  The temples were dedicated to Shiva, Vishnu, and Jain patriarchs.  The dense forests surrounding these temples evidently hid them which protected them from Muslim conquerors in later centuries who probably would have destroyed them all.  

The first photo is a frontal view of one of the temples, which doesn’t show its depth.  The second photo shows a different temple, but from its side.  As impressive as these temples are from a distance, they keep getting more impressive as you get closer, such as in the third photo.  The complexity and the extent of the sculptures just kept getting more pronounced with every step towards each temple.

Erotic Stone Carvings

We are still at the same Khajuraho temple complex, which is the western complex.  These temples are perhaps most famous for their erotic stone carvings.  People come from all around the world to view these temples and carvings.  The interesting thing is that no one seems to know WHY the Chandelas carved these erotic scenes on their temples.  There are many theories.  One theory is that this was the center of tantric mysticism which regards sex as an important part of human development and the attainment of the ‘Absolute’.  Personally, I’m not even sure what that means.  Tantric also includes such things as yoga and so forth as part of this whole business.

Our time at these temples was short, maybe about two hours.  Since we didn’t have much time, I didn’t get many pictures, perhaps only a couple thousand.  Anyway, I will only be sending this one email of photos of the erotic stone carvings.  Mind you, these are only some of the X-rated stone carvings.  We saw plenty that were XXX-rated.   

Those who know Vicky and myself know that we are the type of people who “when in Rome, do as the Romans do”.  After two hours here, I suggested to Vicky that we should try and emulate some of these erotic stone carvings, to try and better understand the spiritual significance.  She didn’t say “no” but she stared at the carvings and looked very thoughtful.  At some length, she said that she didn’t think I could physically attain the ‘positions’ in the carvings.  I then asked her that IF I could attain the positions, would she consent to give them a try.  Again, she looked very thoughtful.  After awhile, she said that if I could prove to her that I could attain these positions, she would revisit the idea.

PS.  I start my new tantric yoga class on Saturday morning.