The Taj Mahal, Agra, India. 

 

Commissioned by Shah Jehan (1592-1666) in 1632 as tomb for Mumtaz Mahal; the complex completed by 1653 shelters also the emperor’s tomb.

 

One dazzling aspect of this place is that the scale is grand but the design elements are relatively few and can be enumerated by a child of ten.

 

 Their relatively small and friendly number pulls this immense grandeur inside the amazed and thirsting enclosure of an ordinary human mind.

 

There the whole hangs in beauty, it seems, for years and years.

 

 

These photographs on a hazy-chilly morning in December 2010 are, still and all, a faint simulacrum of the beauty of this place.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The interior contains the tombs in a vault below ground floor, open at the ground floor.  In deference, no photos can be taken of this area. 

 

The interior is highly decorated and dimly lit.

 

 

 

 

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The Yamuna River