Day 120 Tuesday November 30th Taj Mahal and Agra Fort

We are now in the state of Uttar Pradesh at Agra, a town whose modern economy is entirely dependent upon one building-the Taj Mahal, the building many consider to be the most beautiful in the world:
“A teardrop on the cheek of eternity”; “the embodiment of all things pure”, (Kipling); “it makes the sun and the moon shed tears”. All the more so because of the love story that created it and the poignancy of what followed.
The Mughals moved into this area in the 16th century and it goes: Babur; Humayun; Akbar (the Great); Jehangir and then his son Shah Jahan. The Taj Mahal was built by Shah Jahan as a memorial to his 3rd wife Mumtaz Mahal who died of septicemia while pregnant with their 14th child in 1631. The Shah was heartbroken (they were said to go everywhere together). The building took 20,000 people 22 years to complete but, not long after it was completed and Mumtaz’s body moved there, Shah Jahan was overthrown and imprisoned in nearby Agra Fort (which he himself had built earlier) by his son Aurangzeb (who had already killed his two brothers as he navigated his way to the throne). Shah Jahan spent the last 13 years of his life looking at the mausoleum to his beloved wife through the window lattice of his own fort. Now they lie next to each other in this beautiful building.
In the afternoon we visit Agra Fort, Shah Jahan’s prison. Not only did he build the Fort but he also had built the famous Peacock Throne, thought to have cost more than the Taj Mahal to build and with a current value estimated at more than $1bn-if only it could be found. Lonely Planet: “At 2m tall the throne was reached by silver steps and stood on golden feet set with jewels and backed with gilded representations of peacock’s tails inset with diamonds. It was said to weigh 230kg and, among the many precious stones used, was the celebrated 191-carat Koh-i-noor diamond-once the world’s largest known and later acquired by the British and placed amongst Queen Victoria’s Crown Jewels”. Well we didn’t see The Peacock Throne, that idiot son of his moved it and now it’s lost in Persia somewhere.
The Fort’s great to visit anyway but it’s heartbreaking to look out the window at the Taj Mahal from here the way that Shah Jahan had to see it for those last 13 years.