We drove to Agra yesterday. Our first stop was the Johadi's Palace. He was a Mogul Emperor. He had 12 wives and over a thousand concubines. Can you imagine Valentine's Day.
Today we went to the Taj Mahal. It is a mausoleum named for Shan Jahan's favorite wife. She was married at age 18 and bore 14 children by the time she died at age 38. On her death bed she made the Shah promise to take care of their children, to not remarry, so their kids were first priority, and to construct a memorial. It took 22 years to build and was completed in 1653. You would think that this was a big waste of money, but the construction employed 20,000 people and thy were well paid. Sounds like our infrastructure projects. Our guide Ali said there were two types of people, those that have seen the Taj Mahal and those that haven't. Foreign tourists pay 800 rupee ($12) and Indians pay 20 rupee ($3). He has probably told that joke thousands of times. Unfortunately I am missing the marble store ( a good thing) and Agra Fort. By now all the forts, which is where the Emperors lived, mosques, and temples are starting to look the same anyway.
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