The Taj Mahal

When I was little, I drew a picture of a huge rainbow surrounded by several hearts. At the bottom, I posed the question: "What color is love?" (many of you might remember this very picture featured in our wedding video...)
Well, yesterday, after a 30 year wait, I finally got my answer. The color of love is the milky marble white of the Taj Mahal. It is the color of all the semi-precious stones in-laid in the intricate designs on the walls of the Taj Mahal, and it is the pinkish glow of the Taj Mahal at sunset. Love is not just one color, it is all of those, and all reflected on the most stunning structure I have ever seen in my life.
The thing about the Taj Mahal is that it is love. It makes you laugh in its enormity, and it brings you to tears. It forces you to respect its magnitude, and it allows you to surrender in awe. You don't just see the Taj Mahal- (although I was wishing I had several pairs of eyes to see it from every angle at once)- you feel the Taj Mahal.
Matt and I spent six hours and took a whopping 100 pictures. But, as Matt said, every photo will be disappointing, compared to the experience of being there. Neither of us expected it to be so overwhelming in its size and its sheer and absolute beauty.
So...yeah, we liked it. A LOT. (We keep laughing about the British couple we shared a taxi with a few weeks back that told us it wasn't that great!)
Some people take a train from Delhi to the Taj Mahal, and after that they go to the Agra Fort and then to a ghost town/fort/palace about an hour away. After all that, they get on the train and head back to Delhi- all in one day. This is when we feel especially lucky to have so much time, because what some do in one day we have been able to spread out into three. The Agra Fort is another attraction in the town where the Taj Mahal is, and definitely worth its own chunk of time to view. The fort, among other things, is where the man who built the Taj for his deceased wife was forced to live out his days imprisoned by his own son. He could only view his beautiful creation from his prison cell for the last eight years of his life. When I heard that story, I understood the famous quote about the Taj: "A teardrop on the eternal cheek of time...".
Today we are in the ghost town/fort/palace about an hour north of the Taj Mahal. We have found a lovely hotel with a terrace ( a great place to read!), and so we'll stay here the night before heading out on a night train tomorrow to Varanasi.
I am going to try tomorrow to find a place where we can upload some photos, since we will have a little time to kill before getting on the train. SO stay tuned, and thanks for reading about my gushing love affair with the Taj Mahal! I actually woke up this morning missing it!