India: Photos and Words
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During our stay in New Delhi, we frequently walked over to Connaught Place and
neighboring Janpath Road, where many of the shops in New Delhi are located. During one of
our first visits to Connaught Place, I walked in to a music store with Tom and his cousin
to look at the sitars. Having played guitar for several years, I had always wondered what playing a sitar would be like. The store clerks were only too happy to assist in taking the sitars down from the wall so I could play them and hear what they sounded like. I was astounded by the fact that due to the currency exchange of dollars to rupees, I could purchase a student-model sitar for only about US$65. I impulsively made the purchase, disregarding the fact that this was early on in the trip. I walked out of the store, sitar in case. At this point, Tom's cousin asks me to open the case to take another look at the sitar. I was surprised to see another sitar in the case, noticeably more ornate and detailed than the beginner-model sitar that I had purchased! Between fits of laughter, Tom's cousin explained to me that while I was making the payment for the sitar, he went around to the back and gave the man packing the sitar a ten rupee bill if he would switch the student-model sitar for a nicer, intermediate model! This picture is of one of the side streets off Janpath Road, showing many of the street vendors hawking their wares. |
| A girl selling fruit on Janpath Road. I asked the girl if I could take her picture. She said I could if I would buy a couple of oranges. They were delicious. |  |
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One of the road trips we made was south to Jaipur and Agra,
where the Agra Fort and the Taj Mahal are. The Agra Fort took four generations to build,
starting with Akbar. During the hot summers, the king had the rooms in the Agra Fort air
conditioned by continuously running cold water down the hollow walls. The Taj Mahal was built by Emperor Shah Jahan over the period of seventeen years, using 20,000 artisans. This picture is a close-up of the black onyx work on the front of the Taj Mahal. Much of the detailng here consists of agate, jade, onyx, jasmine, corlinian, and turquoise stone inlays, as well as other semi-precious stone, which can be found all the way around the exterior as well as the interior. The artwork all the way around was both beautiful and intricate, and we were flabbergasted by the amount of work and detail throughout the Taj Mahal. Due to the scaffolding on the exterior for refurbishing and cleaning, several workers told me repeatedly not to shoot close-up pictures of the Taj Mahal. However, due to the extended time that I had been in India, I had these curious occasional lapses where I would forget my command of the English language. I consequently could not immediately understand what they were saying. However, some of their message may have unconsciously sank in, as all of my close-up pictures do not include the scaffolding. |
India:
