One of the new seven wonders of the world, the Taj Mahal is high on everyone’s list when visiting India. Out of everything to see in the country it wasn’t top of our list, but we went and stood in the queue in the dark to be there for the sunrise anyway.
The Taj was built in 1632 by Emperor Shah Jahan, to house the tomb of his favourite wife. The building took nearly 22 years to finish completely and Shah Jahan forbade any of the workers or architects to build anything similar again – with rumours of deaths and mutilations to make sure they wouldn’t!
Shah Jahan was obsessed with symmetry and various buildings on the grounds were built just for this purpose. His wife’s tomb was right in the centre of the building. Ironically, when he died his tomb was placed next to hers, ruining the symmetry of the entire complex. But we guess he’ll never know that!
Now the funny thing is, the front minaret and east face of the building were completely covered in ugly metal scaffolding and no matter how many times people tried to ignore it or say “it’s still beautiful though isn’t it?” – it obviously ruined everybody’s photos. So as a one off, we’ve photoshopped it and can pretend that that’s how it was and nobody will ever know any different.
But for those who get an evil sense of joy when other people’s photos look rubbish..here’s what it really looked like.
“It’s still beautiful though isn’t it?” I guess it is a bit.
Comments (3)
Great!! It is fabulous!!!
The magic of Photoshop! Would have fooled me. 😉 I hope you two enjoyed the rest of your time in India.
We did thanks, such a beautiful country. Although in 5 weeks we barely even scratched the surface. Can’t wait to go back someday.