After a day exploring New Delhi, we dedicated today to a day trip to Agra to visit the much-anticipated Taj Mahal, the “baby” Taj that the Taj Mahal was modeled after, and the Agra Fort. Since the “high speed” Gatimaan Express train that takes only about an hour and half had now been in operation for a few years, we decided to use that to get to Agra to then meet our driver and guide at the Agra train station.

Our guide, Tushaar, recounted the famous story (and potential myth since it has various iterations) of the Taj Mahal. An emperor of the Mughal Empire in the mid-1600s, Shah Jahan, had three wives, two of whom he wed for political reasons, and one of whom he wed out of love, which was very revolutionary at the time. This favorite wife, Mumtaz Mahal, was a Persian princess who was extremely intelligent and beautiful, and oftentimes consulted him in major decisions he made. She even accompanied him in battles that he fought. She bore him over a dozen children, and unfortunately, died during giving birth to their fourteenth child. They often times talked about what he would do if she were to die, and he eventually told her while she was alive that he would have a great palace built to bury her, where he’d eventually join her. This eventually became a reality. The emperor was devastated that the love of his life had died so tragically and abruptly, so he followed through on his promise and commissioned to have built what would eventually be known as the Taj Mahal, or in Arabic, “the crown palace,” to be the mausoleum to house the remains of his favorite beloved wife.

Rumor has it that it took over 22 years and the labor of over 20,000 men to build this lavish palace, designed in shades of white, beige, grey, and purple marble, and inlaid with jewels on the interior and the exterior, both local (such as the shiny brown Star of India), and foreign (cousins of emeralds and rubies). The technique used to inlay the semi-precious gemstones is unique to the city of Agra, requiring hand-chiseling of the marble to them insert the unique shape of each unique, custom shaped gemstone. And because the emperor did not want the technique to be copied, since he wanted just one unique palace to be the memory of his beloved wife, he chopped the thumbs off of each of the 20,000 workers to ensure they’d never flee and build something similar elsewhere (other iterations of this story claim that he blinded each of them and performed other variations of torture, but this is what our guide told us). The estimated cost, in today’s dollars, for what it took to build this embodiment of undying love and marital devotion, is about $830 million USD. I wonder if that amount discounts the cheap or even free slave labor that Shah Jahan probably used to get this masterpiece done.

Like many works of art and architectural masterpieces, the Taj Mahal is so much more in person than it is in photographs or textbooks. In photos, it looks very bright white, but in person, if you look closely at the minarets, the domes, and the walls, the marble ranges in color from white to beige to grey to even subtle shades of purple. And if our guide never pointed out the gem inlays and the method used to create this type of art, I probably would never have thought much of it and would think it was mass created. The technique employed to inlay the gems is so painstaking and takes years of studying and practice to get correct. After we walked through the grounds of the Taj, our guide took us to one of the family-owned businesses that still uses this same technique to make crafts such as framed marble inlays, tables, jewelry boxes, and table tops. I tried to chip away at the marble myself for a few minutes, but the workers got worried that I was ruining their work, so they immediately took the pointed instrument away from me. The method is called parchin kari (literally meaning “inlay” or “driven-in work”), a decorative art that uses cut and fitted, highly polished colored stones to create images. The stones are glued one by one, and stability is achieved by grooving the undersides of the stones so that they interlocked like a jigsaw puzzle. It’s hard to imagine anyone back in the U.S. being this devoted to a craft to learn a technique as intense and difficult as this one. You truly have to love this to do this.

The Taj is so grand and awe-inspiring, and it’s a romantic, sweet thought to think that a man was inspired to have this built in honor of his wife. Although, I do think at the same time it may have been even more romantic if he chose to have it built as a place to live with his wife while she were still alive, especially given that she bore him so many children. The other thought I have is that although he may have done this out of “love,” a lot of sweat, toil, and literal blood went into this, given that 20,000 men worked day in and out to have this built (and even got blinded or had their fingers chopped off after – what a reward!), and if we factored in real wage living costs into this, $830 million USD may actually be just a fraction of what this palace is truly worth. That is a chilling thought. People’s livelihoods changed all because of a crazy emperor’s obsession over the death of his wife, so everyone else has to “pay” for her death.

I don’t usually say I have favorites, but since I’ve been wanting to see this building since high school when I studied art history (and of course, because the U.S. is racist, and Advanced Placement Art History completely skips over all of Asia in favor of Western European and American art, I had to read about the Taj Mahal and Persian art in general on my own), I can honestly say that this really blew me away and is one of my all-time favorite buildings I’ve ever seen, next to Falling Water, the Frank Lloyd Wright home in Pennsylvania, and the Hearst Castle in San Simeon, California. It inspires me to want to see even more Persian art… how can I get there?

We awoke to our first full day in India together this morning, here in New Delhi, where the humidity today was at 85 percent, and the temperature, depending on the time of day, was anywhere between 85 to 92 degrees Fahrenheit. I’ve never been a fan of humidity and dislike it when people rave about how good it is for one’s skin; I don’t care how good it is for my skin if I am stifling for air to breathe and get through the day. Who cares if you have great skin if you can’t breathe and die?

I can’t say more things about how intense and overwhelming the traffic has been. We took advantage of Uber in the city and also did quite a bit of walking, which apparently is not “normal” here for people who are not of lower classes. Upper class people get driven; lower class people walk. Since we’re foreigners who are visiting this country on holiday, by default, we are “upper class.” “Autos” or motorized tuk-tuks kept stopping to ask us if we wanted a ride, and when we said no and that we wanted to walk, they gave us befuddled stares and said we didn’t need to walk if we could get a ride. There are dotted white lines along the roads to indicate different lanes to drive in, as well as a double white line in the center of the ride to denote traffic going in opposite directions, but none of that mattered since there was absolutely no semblance of any order whatsoever. The dotted lines sometimes didn’t exist, and they didn’t really need to since no one really saw them or paid them any attention. A road was simply a road to drive a vehicle or walk on. Our own Uber and auto drivers would drive across the double-white line into oncoming traffic to then make turns. Autos along the road would almost drive into each other before swerving at the last minute to avoid each other. The autos, which at best could fit three passengers plus the driver, would stuff in as many as six or even people into the backseat. And we haven’t even gotten into the fact that it wasn’t even just auto and cars along the road; there were also pedestrians walking in all directions, with and against the traffic, plus cows and the occasional goat. We even saw chickens coming from who knows where and walking into the streets. Somehow and quite luckily, I didn’t see one chicken fatality.

Although New Delhi is the capital of India, it felt far less like a government city today and more like an enlarged rural area. The roads are paved, but if they weren’t, I wouldn’t have thought anything of it given how overwhelming and chaotic the traffic flow was. The crowds, the humidity, the frenzied traffic and total disorder: this is actually kind of how I imagined India to be. Although I will say that contrary to what others have warned me about (because it seems that everyone has an opinion on India and its lack of cleanliness), it’s nowhere as dirty as people have told me it was; I’ve seen similar if not worse levels of filth and trash in places like Cambodia, Vietnam, China, Brazil, and even parts of South Africa where the slums are.

After a seven hour flight to London, a four-hour layover at Heathrow, and another nine hours from London to New Delhi, all I wanted was to just teleport to India and get this trip started. Luckily for us (and especially Chris because he’s an Uber addict), Uber is readily available in pretty much every major city in India, so we “ordered” an Uber to pick us up from the airport late tonight to take us to our hotel. As we rushed through security and had our e-visas cleared quickly, I took a deep breath and realized… wow, the New Delhi international airport is redolent of cardamom and rose water. Yep, that’s it. Now, I know for sure that I am truly in India. All these beautiful spices and flowers are going to surround me for the next ten days (as well as the smell of sewage and garbage and fragrances of human and cow and dog and goat pee and poo, but.. we’ll get into that later).

Unfortunately, although English is technically a national language of India… well, guess what: not everyone knows how to speak it. So we experienced massive communication issues trying to tell our driver where exactly we were, and Chris couldn’t understand him, so we waited over an hour for this guy to show up when he ended up cancelling. We eventually did get another Uber who took us on a smooth ride to our hotel… in the midst of an endless sea of “autos” (really, motorized tuk-tuks), scooters, and lanes that have dividing lines but really are not real lanes because no one is following anything, even the double white dividers in the middle of the road. I’ve seen some really orderless traffic in China and in the middle of Vietnam, but New Delhi truly takes the cake for the level of insanity and complete chaos.

I must have really terrible luck when it comes to fire drills with customers because when I remember the times when really bad events have happened at work, they always tend to be around the time when I am about to leave for vacation or when I am actually on vacation but am still incessantly checking e-mail (which means that the person backing me up has to deal with the drama, which is not great). It happened today again while I was in transit to JFK with Chris and his parents. We got stuck in ridiculous rush-hour traffic (which… I guess starts at 2pm now on a Wednesday during summer time?!), so it took almost two hours to get from the Upper West Side to JFK. As we were stuck in traffic with my phone in my backpack, which happens to be in the trunk, and my computer is obviously packed away, I could feel my Wesoo buzzing on my wrist because my customer is not only calling but texting me, and she never does this unless it’s an emergency. As soon as we got through security and go to the lounge, I had to make three different calls while also Slack messaging four different people to get the problem resolved.  My head hurt. And I downed the glass of red wine that Chris got me in two gulps. I had just enough down time to resolve everything before I could pack everything away and get ready to board our flight.

Please don’t let anything bad happen at work while I am out. The last thing I need is a pile of crap waiting for me when I get back.