Word: jahan
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Visitors to the Taj Mahal all confront the same eternal mystery: How could the people who fashioned the world's most serene monument to love also build on its doorstep one of the ugliest, filthiest and most cacophonous cities in existence? If the heartbroken Shah Jahan's mausoleum for his wife Mumtaz Mahal is everything India should be--spiritual, awesome, peaceful--Agra, with its choking traffic, litter-strewed dirt roads and throngs of grotesque beggars is everything it unfortunately still is. "This not what I expected," says Camilla, 22, a psychology student visiting from Sweden. "Not at all. I mean...
...marble." The palace stands in a landscaped garden heavy with jasmine, frangipani and bougainvillaea. Formal water gardens enclose regal cupolas and elegant archways. Inside the fortress, a black-and-white-tiled courtyard hints at a sumptuous past. In 1623, the palace served as a refuge for the young Shah Jahan, future Mughal Emperor, after he revolted against his father. Legend has it that the galaxy of semiprecious stones?rubies, onyx, jasper and jade?laid into its marble interior so impressed the prince that he later copied the idea for the tomb he built for his wife in Agra...
...spend much of my time hanging out with Afghans, watching Indian movies with the local mujahedin in Kandahar, eating what they eat, sleeping where they sleep, now dressing as they do. In Kandahar, I live in the Noor Jahan hotel, room number two. It's the one where a lot of local commanders, their bodyguards and other dubious characters come looking for Mick. Michael is too difficult for them to remember. A month ago, when I was quite ill with a stomach flu, they were constantly there, believing that it was good manners to visit with a sick friend...
...trouble begins even before you enter the mausoleum that Emperor Shah Jahan built for his second wife, Queen Mumtaz Mahal. The crowds are huge (the site attracts 40% of the tourists who travel to India). And because authorities have banned fossil-fuel vehicles in the area, visitors must rent electric cars or carts drawn by horses or camels to get close to the mausoleum, even as flies swarm around the animals and the dung they scatter across the potholed roads...
...cars or carts drawn by horses or camels. Despite fixed rates, overcharging is the norm. The drivers are rude, the hiring and negotiating shambolic. Flies swarm the animals and the dung they liberally scatter across the potholed roads. When you reach the entrance to the mausoleum that Emperor Shah Jahan built for his second wife, Queen Mumtaz Mahal, hawkers touting miniature Taj Mahals, bottled water and postcards, add to the chaos. You may shake them off, but you won't escape being stung at the ticket counter. Foreigners are expected to pay $20 rather than the 40 fee for Indians...