Our group of ten gathered after breakfast this morning to load our tour-van to make our way toward Agra, India. The drive from Delhi to Agra took four hours, but on our way out of Delhi we made one final stop to take pictures of the beautiful Lotus Temple, a B’hai Temple which welcomes people of all faiths to pray together in the same place. The temple has approximately 15 million visitors each year, double the number of visitors at the Taj Mahal.
After arriving in Agra we checked into our hotel, the Jaypee Palace Hotel and Convention Centre. We had lunch and then went and visited Kalra’s Cottage Industry, manufactures of hand knotted silk and woolen carpets. We had a tour of the manufacturing area that provided an explanation of how the rugs are made by the local artisans. The Cottage Industry is a cooperative that sells rugs produced by over 2,000 individual rug makers located in and around Agra. To encourage preservation of the hand tying art, the government of India subsidizes the coop by not charging sales tax and covering all shipping cost for the rugs all over the world. This was a stop we were looking forward to as we wanted to replace our living room rug and were hoping to find something on this trip. We found the prefect rug for our living room at a reasonable price, and it should be in Huntsville several weeks before we return from this trip. Can’t wait to see how it looks in our house!
From here we visited the Agra Fort, a UNESCO World Heritage site, where Shah Jahan (the builder of the Taj Mahal) was imprisoned for the last years of his life, peering dolefully out at his masterpiece through his prison cell window. The palace within the fort was the main residence of the emperors of the Mughal Dynasty until 1638 and one of the finest Mughal forts in India. The imposing red sandstone fort combines both Hindu and Central Asian architectural styles. Walking through courtyard of this palatial fortress, we were amazed by the scale of what was built here well over 400 years ago.
When I was in the fourth grade, the class had a requirement to write a report and give a presentation on a topic randomly assigned to each student. The idea was to teach us how to use an encyclopedia to learn about specific places or things. For my topic, I was assigned the Taj Mahal. Because of what I learned researching that report, visiting the Taj Mahal has been a life-long goal and was one of the events in my life that made me want to travel and explore different places. After 57 years of waiting, I got my first glimpse of the Taj Mahal…what a thrill. First, we were able to view the Taj Mahal from the Agra Fort, and after visiting the fort we moved to the Mehtab Bagh (moonlit garden) situated on the left bank of the Yamuna River opposite to the Taj Mahal to view the beautiful structure at sunset.
Here are a few more pictures from our day in Agra, India.
Tomorrow we will have a sunrise tour of the Taj Mahal and then drive to Jaipur, India
Don & Kully's World Cruise on Viking Neptune 
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