Happy Birthday, Birthday Girl!

There's so much that I need to catch up on, but I had to take a minute to wish our beautiful princess a happy birthday! She announced today that since it was her birthday, we should all call her "birthday girl." Tomorrow, Livi, Olivia, and Eve-a are fine (Eve-a from Wall-E), Saturday for her party we're back to "birthday girl." After that, well we'll find out on Sunday.

Here she is turning 14 today. She disappeared with the iPad and I found her "watching" her music....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lIobi5VkAWI

Taj Mahal and the Agra Fort

While for some the Taj Mahal is the highlight of a trip, for us it was more like the icing on the cake. It's a truly magnificent building, made with marble and detailed with precious stones inlayed into the stone along with writings from the Koran. It was built as a tomb for Shah Jahan's third wife Mumtaz Mahal, it took 22 years to complete. Mumtaz died giving birth to her 14th child at the age of 38...something tells me her story would be really interesting to hear....

Soon after the Taj Mahal's completion, Shah Jahan was deposed by his son Aurangzeb and put under house arrest at nearby Agra Fort. Upon Shah Jahan's death, Aurangzeb buried him in the mausoleum next to his wife, the only assymetrical aspect of the building complex. Some myths say that the Shah was planning to build a mirror image of the Taj opposite the river from the Taj Mahal to be his tomb (in black marble), but his imprisonment prevented that...

taking it in



not a backdrop...

the 4 minarets around the main building are amazing. they look perfectly straight when looking head on, but are actually designed to slightly lean outwards to give the appearance of looking straight, and will fall outwards if there is any structural issue. They used to be open to the public to climb, but a few people committed suicide from the top and stopped that part of the tour.

verses of the Koran inlaid in the marble, the calligraphy gets larger as you go up to give the illusion that it's the same size. you've got to appreciate the symmetry of the taj mahal!

The next stop after the Taj Mahal, is naturally the Agra Fort. Don't feel too guilty for the Shah that was imprisoned there. While no where near the life he must have been living, the beautiful fort with a view of the Taj Mahal in the distance was really not too shabby of a place to spend your days. Playing parchessi with your concubines overloooking the river....

restoration

view of the Taj across the river, in the rainy season this whole area is covered by the river

I'd like to think we were on our best "sweet" behavior

What better stop after an awesome lunch of Tandoori chicken than a jewelry store teeming with history from hundreds of years ago...I wish I could remember what it was called and how old all of this was...

Koran with gold writing

picnic basket

perfume bottles

the elephant that toured the US

I loved this bracelet...didn't even ask the price

While oogling the amazing jewelry, we tried to make a reservation at the Oberoi for a sundowner. We were really unhappy that it was booked, but it was actually quite fortuitous. We ended up on the other side of the river from the Taj, admiring the view at sunset.

Amy came back to Chennai with us and had some fun hanging out with the kiddos while I was at work. Livi did her best to entertain and make her feel at home.

our gardner selvam gave Livi a big bunch of flowers after he saw her crying when I was leaving for work.

Saravana Bhavan! We had to make a stop with Amy.

While Indians love children, one unfortunate side of their attention is cheek pinching...Oscar got pinched before I intervened and I told him to hold his cheeks when I took Livi to the bathroom...

 

Jaipur and Fatehpur Sikri

We'd finished the festival, but there was still plenty to see in Jaipur. Sunday took us to the City Palace and Jantar Mantar.

largest silver vessels in the world used to carry water from the Ganges River to England in 1901

gorgeous peacock gate, one of 4 respresenting the 4 seasons and Hindu gods (this one is summer and Vishnu)

spring and ganesha gate

 The amazing and surreal Jantar Mantar, an observatory built in the 1700s. It has been inscribed on the World Heritage List as "an expression of the astronomical skills and cosmological concepts of the court of a scholarly prince at the end of the Mughal period".

scorpio

I have no idea what I was looking at but it was cool

for tracking the North Star...somehow

The next day we headed to the Taj Mahal, stopping at Fatehpur Sikri along the way. Built during the second half of the 16th century by the Emperor Akbar, Fatehpur Sikri (the City of Victory) was the capital of the Mughal Empire for only some 10 years. The complex of monuments and temples, all in a uniform architectural style, includes one of the largest mosques in India, the Jama Masjid.

the old market area

A little taste of the local paparazzi