Our journey to the Taj Mahal: the rules of the road are “Allah, luck, and a brake”

“In India, everything’s possible” said our driver as a biker approached us head-on on the highway on the way from New Delhi to the Taj Mahal.  It was a phrase he would repeat often throughout the day as an explanation for a lot of behaviors we found risky or peculiar.  Traffic flows throughout Delhi, weaving in and out of bikes and tuk-tuks, honking horns and ignoring any indication of lanes painted in the streets below them.  Men stood on the back bumpers of the local, overcrowded, public transport, hanging on as the vans cruised down the highway.  On the sides of the road we saw a wide variety of lines of work from brick making and farming to an enormous race car course and construction of new cities.

Once in Agra, we weaved through traffic that proved even more chaotic and disorderly than Delhi.  Our driver told us the rules of the road are “Allah, luck, and a brake”.  On the sides of the road, small shops lined the sidewalks, a man bathed in the water spouting from a broken main, horse drawn carts moved heavy objects and a few monkeys played on the rooftops.  We picked up our guide for the day, K.D., an Agra local, who would show us the Taj Mahal and the Agra Fort.

Our first stop was the Taj Mahal.  Just after entering, we ran into a few of our classmates from MIT here in India for India Lab.  Small world!  The Taj truly is a wonder of the world.  The beautiful white marble, carried across India and erected into a beautiful, symmetrical, structure by hand hundreds of years ago, looks just as immaculate today.  Within the white marble stones, scriptures from the Koran and ornate flowers blending the Hindi, Persian and Muslim cultures were intricately inlaid using precious stones to decorate the mausoleum.  The designs and flowers represent the detailed planning that went into building the structure, a representation of the Shah’s dedication to his wife. 

After the Taj Mahal, and a quick stop for lunch where we saw a man sitting on the sidewalk, playing his flute and taming a python, we drove over to the Agra Fort.  The Agra fort was another display of intricate stonework, carvings and inlaid stones as well as an antique air cooling system (hollowed walls that were filled with water).  The fort also revealed a beautiful view of the Taj Mahal across the river.  With her majestic dome reflecting in the river below us, we snapped one last group photo and headed back to Delhi.