Day 2 in India: The Tomb of Akbar, The Taj Mahal, and more Traffic News
First off, I need to apologize for my jet-lagged ramblings of yester night…clearly Moscow was to the east of us and Warsaw to the west as we flew southward to Delhi. My apologies and deepest gratitude to the astute editor who picked up on the geo-faux-pas. We began our tour with a visit to Akbar’s tomb.
Akbar was a great ruler whose marriage brought together powerful ruling families and conciliatory religions. There is some very interesting artwork carved into this elaborate tomb…representing Islam, Christianity, Judaism…check out these pictures.
So what’s with Akbar? Akbar was the grandfather of Shah Jahan, who later commissioned the Taj Mahal. A bit of history from a web archive I found…“There is no other monument in the world, which can match the beauty and grandeur of the Taj Mahal. Set amongst the serene ambiance of a well laid out garden the massive marble structure of the Taj is awe-inspiring. The Taj Mahal was built in the 17th century by Shahjahan- the fifth Mughal emperor, in memory of his beloved wife, Mumtaz Mahal. Shahjahan loved his wife so much that after she passed away in 1631, he decided to immortalize their love in the form of the Taj Mahal.” On a more peculiar note, Mumtaz died on May 22; the Taj took 22 years to build, using 22 thousand workers; The main entrance has 11 arched wings on each side (total 22), and Jahan himself died on August 22nd…weird, huh? This is according to our tour guide…
In truth, The Taj is more spectacular than I imagined. It was designed by a Persian architect who was only 19 years old, and Jahan had the architects hands chopped off afterwards so that he would never design anything more spectacular, ever. To the east of the Taj is a mosque for prayer, and to the west an identical twin to the mosque which functioned as a “carriage house”. Some set of quarters. It deserves to be one of the seven wonders of the world…it is awesome. It said that the ultra white, super hard marble, which contains crystals that reflect light, is most impressive by the full moon, when the whole Taj lights up the surrounding area with its natural reflectivity. It is said to be equally impressive by dawn, when the orange glow makes the Taj shimmer like a “Taj Mirage”. I will forever remember this visit as one of the most impressive architectural feats I have ever seen. Not only is it bigger in real life…it actually defies the imagination. So, now back to reality and the trip home…
I really wish I hadn’t foreshadowed the traffic thing yesterday….because it almost got us killed today. Yes, helplessly strapped in to our Toyota Minivan, we experienced Indian Road Rage first hand. Our driver, young, brash, and not only short on temper, decided to school us in Delhi-Driving, with horns blasting and brights flashing incessantly at anyone who was in his way…which is everyone, and everything (cows, sheep, and non-living objects included) Buses? Motorized rickshaws (a.k.a. “Tuk-Tuks”)? Pedestrians? Mere targets for an over zealous cross-town weave fanatic. To make things much, much worse, it turns out that my assessment of yesterday’s traffic “guidelines” is indeed just that…they are guidelines, not rules. In fact, there are no rules for driving here. It is a cacophony of automotive discord, animated by gasoline, shrouded in a thick coal-burning haze, punctuated by total disrespect for human life. Not that I mean this to sound harsh or anything….but, Holy Cow, Batman!
On the return trip our driver clipped a car, clearly damaging the front left fender…and then he sped up to get clear and outrun his victim-mobile so they could not identify our license plate. Hit and Run? Yes, all of a sudden we’re going from 50kph to about 150kph (roughly a hundred miles an hour) in vehicle not designed to do so, on roads not built for speed, with pedestrian patterns that suggest it is merely a matter of time before someone dies. The driver was furious, the victim-car chasing us for several miles, horns blazing, pedestrians scurrying, tuk-tuks veering off the road…I simply couldn’t believe this was happening. I get all the way over here, 16 hours of flight time, 7500 miles,…to do what…die in a bad Bollywood movie? Then the victim car overtakes us, and tries to slow us down by weaving strategically in front of us, but our deftly insane driver faked out the victim car and accelerated past it, producing the Indian equivalent of “The Bird”. Were it not for our trusted Board Chairman and his veteran combat sense of command, we surely might have died just a few hours ago. With a look and a tone that left no room for error or misinterpretation (no matter what language barrier existed), the driver was advised to slow down…and simmer down. He slowed, but went on simmering. His dark skinned knuckles were white hot on the shift knob, veins pulsing in his neck and on top of his shifting hand. Occasionally he would shout out obscenities, and expletives…I don’t speak Hindi, but I know a curse word when I hear one. About an hour later he was at it again, in downtown traffic, when he clipped a bicyclist before bifurcating a crowd of fifty, sending people scurrying in all directions around the car. The bicyclist was ok, as we spun around inside the car to see, and the crowd, with shaking fists in the air, returned their decisive lack of approval. Please understand that traffic here is chaotic to begin with, so that what may seem excessive in terms of road rage in New York or LA disappears into the local traffic context here – not so with our driver today. Needless to say, we fired him when we got home.
That’s all for now….stay tuned 
Chris