A tour of India’s golden triangle: Immortal beloved

AGRA, India — It was the loveliest sight on earth for the loneliest man alive.

We are in a room at the Muasamman Burj, an ivory tower with a marble balcony, at the Agra Fort in Uttar Pradesh, India. From here, one can see the Taj Mahal in all its stony immaculate glory through the fog and greens, behind a curtain of dusk, a river nearby, the most beautiful marker ever built for a dead wife. Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan had it constructed for his beloved missus of 19 years, Mumtaz Mahal, who died giving birth to their 14th child. Our group (composed of tour operators, travel agents and their clients, plus a few journalists) is standing on the same spot where the man responsible for the Wonder spent the last eight years of his life after being deposed and imprisoned by his own son, Aurangzeb. Shah Jahan’s only request, based on apocryphal stories, was that he be allowed a view of the Taj. He could see it there somewhere in the morning mist and in the violet evening: a spectacular rock of love.

The erstwhile emperor had gone broke building the Taj Mahal, says our guide Vinee. The logistics alone must’ve been a mathematical horror: the outsourcing of materials (translucent white marble, semi-precious stones), the mounting cost of construction, motivating the 20,000-strong staff, etc. — 22 to 23 years of management headache.

All for love, yeah. The guide shakes his head, “And then afterwards he wanted to build a Taj Mahal in black marble for his own tomb.”

A reverse Taj Mahal? That would have been really cool. The poet Wallace Stevens was damn right: “Death is the mother of Beauty.”

And Travelling is the uncle of Enlightenment.

Dhesu India and Destinations Unlimited (headed by CEO/president Criselda Medalla) recently invited The STAR and another publication on a tour of India’s Golden Triangle. The triangular trek involves travelling on a comfy bus to Delhi, the capital territory; to Jaipur, the Pink City (the setting for The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel ft. Judi Dench); and then to Agra, the site of the aforementioned Taj and the fort. The package also includes hopping on a SpiceJet plane to Nepal to see the hippie paradise city of Kathmandu and — if we were blessed with a clear day — the reverential Himalayas. (More on Nepal, Bhaktapur, thangka paintings and cannabis incense in another article.)

“Delhi, Jaipur and Agra are the most popular destinations for first-timers to India,” explains Puneet Saluja, managing director of Dhesu India Tours & Travels, who has been in the industry for 18 years. “India is incredible; it’s always been incredible. The musts for every tourist are — see the Taj Mahal, ride an elephant up to Amer Fort, and try Indian food. And with our new prime minister, included in the top five of his agenda is promoting tourism.”

India is now offering visa-upon-arrival privilege to 43 countries, including the Philippines, and is expected to generate an upswing in tourist arrival by 25 percent.

The Golden Triangle, Puneet adds, is the appetizer so to speak. The country boasts historical places, pilgrimage sites, beaches, deserts, mountain resorts, Mumbai for Bollywood, Khajuraho for the Kama Sutra temples, and Kashmir, which Saluja cites as paradise on earth (— cue Jimmy Page’s gigantic riff while Plant sings… I am a traveller of both time and space). The colors, the culture, the food, and the lavish weddings with the groom making his entrance on a white horse, the doll-like bride arriving on a doli, the lighting of the sacred fire as the raga band plays on. What’s not to like?

No wonder a lot of the great artists I admire — from The Beatles to John Coltrane to Kula Shaker, or even that sourpuss thinker Schopenhauer — were deeply influenced by Indian music and philosophy, dreaming to take that trippy, long-and-winding road toward reaching artistic nirvana. Who knows what kind of fire India will put into the belly of a simple tourist?

Well, I’m not talking curry here.

LEARNING THE TRIANGLE

We arrived in Delhi three nights ago on a foggy, early winter night. “It’s the sudden fall of temperature,” explained Vinee. “Sometimes the dense fog would last eight to 10 days.”

During the ride toward Lotus Temple in New Delhi, a Bahá’í house of worship shaped like a flower, we would get an impression of India as a land of many dichotomies.

Tales of quirky maharajas of old with their gold Rolls Royce and secret Swiss accounts (as told by our guide), in contrast to telltale signs of struggle and daily resilience in some of the poorer, more densely populated areas (as seen from the bus window).

The grayness of smoggy, rush-hour traffic (5,000 new cars are added every day to Delhi roads), in contrast to the many-colored saris, turbans, spices and tika powders in the marketplace (yellow is the symbol of knowledge).

People who cling to the ancient wisdom of the gurus of Hinduism with its three branches (Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism), in contrast to people who embrace the futuristic tenets of information technology (there are about six million people currently working in the I.T. industry).

Old Delhi was founded by a Moslem king; New Delhi was founded by the British. What’s ironic is that New Delhi has more old monuments than Old Delhi. Vinee said, “New Delhi even has sites that are 5,000 years old.”

On the way to the old city, situated inside a gray wall, we would pass by the site where Mahatma Gandhi was cremated: a huge open garden, his ashes were later scattered over the Ganges. Indian boys played cricket in a nearby field; a new religion, Vinee observed. Ancient Bodhi trees stood like sentinels along the streets. We saw the imposing Red Fort (a “copy” of the one in Agra) built by Shah Jahan, transferring the seat of power from Agra to Shahjahanabad in 1638. He lived in the palace with his family surrounded by 25,000 soldiers, managing an empire comprising of Delhi, Mumbai, Bangladesh, Burma, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Our guide pointed out, “The wall was built with red sandstone, a local stone from Northern India. That’s the natural color, unpainted.”

We passed by the house of parliament and residence of the president. One of the last landmarks we saw in the capital before heading for Jaipur was the India Gate, an Arc de Triomphe-like war memorial built in 1921. For us on this Dhesu tour, it was the gateway to something else.

Another India, a rather more cheerful one. Weddings unfolding left and right the moment we get there. An India that’s pink to the gills.

HILLS LIKE PINK ELEPHANTS

Why is Jaipur (located in the state of Rajasthan in the north) called “India’s Pink City”? In 1876, the Prince of Wales and Queen Victoria visited India on a tour. Maharaja Ram Singh of Jaipur ordered the whole city to be repainted to welcome the guests. They tried white at first, then afterwards a green shade. Both looked unimpressive. Pink was suggested by a holy man since the color denotes hospitality. The pinkness never left with the royals.

There are seven gates that lead to the city and its 800-year-old fortress called Amber or Amer Fort. The Hawa Mahal or Wind Palace looked dazzling in the mid-morning sun, one of the landmarks along the way. “This was specially built for the royal ladies in medieval times when women weren’t allowed in the open,” informed our guide. “There are 1,053 windows, measuring 1.2 meters wide.” Imagine a row of peeping Janes. Eyes without faces. 

“Look at the marigold flowers to your left, the symbol of purity,” said Vinee. “Right there is the famous Lake Palace.” We saw a marble edifice jutting out of the manmade lake, merchants congregating near lakeside.

At the base of the fort, tourists in pairs ride elephants uphill toward Amber or Amer Palace, an enjoyable 20-minute backride aboard the leathery, sometimes sneezing beast. What you will see at the top is a palace complex built with red sandstone and marble consisting of the Diwan-e-Aam (Hall of Public Audience), the Diwan-e-Khas (Hall of Private Audience), the Sheesh Mahal (Mirror Palace), and the Sukh Niwas where climate was made cooler by those ingenious Indians: water was made to drip like curtains as the desert winds blew toward the palace. Much appreciated during the dead of summer. 

“Like air-conditioning,” said one of the tourists. Rudyard Kipling, it is said, spent a lot of time here.

And up there, pointed Vinee, is where the maharani (the first wife, the main rani) used to throw rose petals to welcome the maharaja (the raja of rajas, the big boss man).

“Hindu architecture,” described our guide, “features human forms, elephants, flowers, gods — all around. This is in contrast to Islamic architecture which depicts flowers or chapters from the holy Koran, nothing else.” You can also see interwoven geometric and calligraphic shapes and forms.

Our next stop was the Maharaja City Palace, a palace complex that boasts clusters of courtyards, gardens and buildings. We were told by Vinee that it now houses a museum, but the greater part of it is still used by ceremonial royals as residence.

The palace had been rented out for a wedding, transforming the maharaja digs into a matrimonial wonderland of red, saffron and orange, dazzling on this Indian winter day. The venue will set lovebirds back by how much? Roughly around $50,000, we were told. As Karl Pilkington would say, “That’s mental!”

A few of us would end up crashing an authentic Indian wedding ceremony right at our hotel, so we experienced what’s it like to be inside a vortex of love, lavishness and much, much dancing.

From Delhi to Jaipur to Agra, what a weird and wonderful trip it has been — from bouts of Delhi belly, to swoons at the sight of labyrinthine gardens or Amer Fort across the water, to triumphant bazaar raids by our tour group’s most indefatigable shoppers. (“Oh my God…. I love that color!”) And it’s now late afternoon in the third city of the Golden Triangle and we are currently staring into the Taj Mahal.

Humanity can be divided into two, according to Vinee. Those who have seen the Taj and those who haven’t. We walk toward the most beautiful marble memorial in all of India, mulling over old gods, doomed kings, palaces of wind, and a love that won’t ever allow oneself to forget.

“It’s a great moment,” our guide concludes. “You are now included in the better half of the world.”

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Tour arrangements were done by Dhesu India through Destinations Unlimited in the Philippines. India and Nepal package for Feb. 22 to March 02, 2015 can be booked through the following agents: Royal Class Travel in Ortigas (tel. 721-0993, email jdy_chua@yahoo.com); Richfield in Binondo (353-1977, richfield_travel@yahoo.com); Great Wall in Binondo (242-2522, greatwall_88@ymail.com); and Airlink  in Pampanga (0917-2559668, 0922-8341020 and 0918-9018759, airlinktravel_2020@yahoo.com). For information, visit http://destinationsunli.com.Photos by Igan D’bayan