Nothing Official Here: July 2011

It was another outing on Tuesday July 19th… While we planned to start the travel from New Delhi to Agra at 5am, the driver arrived late and we left an hour delayed. When we reached Taj Mahal, it was almost 11:30am and it was again a wrong time for any interesting photography. By the time we bought entry tickets and collected the audio guides, it was almost noon. It was a cloudy day and moving clouds kept on changing the lighting conditions. As professional photography requires a prior permission, I did not carry my tripod or 70-200mm f2.8L-IS lens. I had to rely on my EFS-17-55 in this trip.

This is the main entrance of Taj. It actually does a great job in hiding the great monument behind it. The walls on both side of this gate further helps in hiding any possible revelation of the Taj.

And once you walk in this gate, you get the visual surprise!

And as you come out of the gate, it reveals it beauty for which it has been famous in the world.

And it was perfect composition Jim provided to document his visit to Taj.

As we started walking towards the mausoleum, we noticed a quite building Naubat Khana.The symmetry of the geometry is very noticeable.

A detouring from the front walking path revealed few interesting compositions of Taj…

And when we reached the second podium, real beauty of Taj was further revealed…

And Jim was kind one more time to pose for me…

Its size and symmetry has made Taj a unique complex…

And everyone would want to get captured in front of it…

After depositing our shoes in shoe rack, we climbed the monument plinth… Even though it was cloudy day, the floor was hot to walk on… It is advisable to keep the shocks on or use the shoe covers…

Instead of walking in the mausoleum, the audio guide suggested us to first visit the Mehman Khana – The Guest House.

While it had a bad smell inside, the views of Taj from there were breathtaking…

Gorgeous entrance to the mausoleum…

Photography inside the mausoleum is prohibited and even though the security guards were not stopping people to take pictures, I did not take any pictures. As there was nothing interesting to see inside and it was stuffy, smelly and drenching, we came out of it from the rear door as soon as we could. The breeze outside was felt as if we entered an air-conditioned area.

River Yamuna was full of (dirty) water but the view was spectacular.

And one of the four minarets of Taj… It is said that the beauty and the visual balance of Taj is due to these minarets.

A view of Mehman Khana from Taj…

We then headed to the exit and on our way back to New Delhi.

Few years back, I had visited Taj with Darshan and Yogesh…

Jim has been here since few days and as we are ahead of schedule for our projects deadlines, on Sunday morning, we managed an outing to a nearby Sun temple in Modhera. It was built in 11th century and was partially destructed during Mogul era . But the remains hint at how beautiful and well planned it was.

When we reached, it was 20 mins past noon time – just bad time for any interesting photography.

This is that famous visual of this Sun temple. Till now, I thought that this is the temple where deities were installed but it is actually an open air auditorium (Sabha Mandap) of the temple.