Top views to Visit Taj Mahal or Click best Photos of Taj
Top 9 views to Visit Taj Mahal or Tips for Taking Best Photos of The Taj Mahal
That said, the Taj is at its most alluring in the relative quiet of early morning, shrouded in mists and bathed with a soft red glow. As its vast marble surfaces fall into shadow or reflect the sun, its colour changes, from soft grey and yellow to pearly cream and dazzling white; it's well worth visiting at different times. This play of light is an important decorative device, symbolically implying the presence of Allah, who is never represented in anthropomorphic form.
The moods of the Taj vary from dawn to dusk. The Taj Mahal or the Crown of Palaces looks milky white in the soft light that characterizes early morning, while the afternoon sun makes it glisten bright and dazzling in the overhead sunlight, almost looking like a jewel against the opaque blue of the skyline and then comes a moonlit Taj breaking into the night sky, majestic and simply beautiful in a sense that cannot be put into words. It is at this time that it shines like a pearl.
A visitor to the monument may very well stand agape at this spectacle, the romanticism and sheer majesty of the structure unbelievably true. Its sensuous appeal was never more heightened as on a full moon night. The dome is what is highlighted, while the other aspects of the structure, though separated, each facet with its individuality intact, is nevertheless united in look, the balance is so perfect. The rows of cypress trees offset by the green carpet of grass complete the picture of idyllic proportions, resplendent in royal dignity.
The Taj Mahal, for which even the course of the river Yamuna is said to have been diverted, can best be described in the words of the Noble Laurette Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore,
Day View
Night View
Top 9 views to Visit Taj Mahal:-
Taj Visitors
The Taj Mahal attracts from 7 to 8 million visitors annually, with more than 0.8 million from overseas. Most tourists visit in the cooler months of October, November and February. Polluting traffic is not allowed near the complex and tourists must either walk from parking lots or catch an electric bus.
Celebrities Visiting Taj :
Innumerable visitors have remarked on the immateriality of the mausoleum: A glimpse -
Even specific associations made by Shah Jahan's poets, like the comparison of the Taj to an insubstantial cloud, were echoed unknowingly by later visitors.
After the British 'discovered' it in the late 18th century the Taj Mahal became a must on the itinerary of every traveller to India, and the visitors and their comments have made cultural history in themselves.
One of the most enduring responses to the Taj was the perception of its otherworldliness and immateriality. The Western viewers recognized spontaneously, despite coming from different cultures and without having read the contemporary Mughal texts, the intention that it should represent an edifice nor of this world. The building itself conveyed its message, speaking directly through its forms and materials.
“... and, 'after hearing its praises ever since I had been in India', felt that 'its beauty rather exceeded than fell short of my expectations'. The central hall of the mausoleum to him 'about as large as the interior of the Ratcliffe [sic] library at Oxford where he had studied. He did not, however, like ledorneand the minarets: 'the bulbous swell of the former I think clumsy, and the minarets have nothing to recommend them but their height and the beauty of their materials'.___Reginald Heber (1783-1826). Anglican Bishop of Calcutta [Saw the Taj on 13 January 1825]
The most famous statement is perhaps that of the wife of Captain Sleeman, when after their visit to the Taj in January 1836 her husband asked what she thought of it, she answered, 'I cannot tell you what I think, for I know not how to criticize such a building, but I can tell you what I feel. I would die tomorrow to have such another over me.
In the previous year Fanny Parks had expressed a similar sentiment: 'And now adieu! -Beautiful Taj - adieu! In the far, far West I shall rejoice that I have gazed upon your beauty; nor will the memory depart until the lowly tomb of an English gentlewoman closes on my remains.
Another female traveller, the perceptive Ida Pfeiffer, who came to Agra from Vienna in January 1848, was the first modern observer to voice the idea that the mausoleum was meant not only to be a magnificent burial for Mumtaz Mahal but was also to testify to the glory of Shah Jahan: 'Properly speaking the Sultan's memory is more perpetuated by this building than that of his favourite, for everyone who saw it would involuntarily ask who created it.
So much I had heard, on all sides, of this extraordinary edifice, that I had fully prepared myself for a disappointment; but when I stood in presence of the noble pile, I could not help feeling that, had fifty times as much been said in its praise, and had it been but one-half as exquisite, I should have allowed that all these rhapsodies had fallen short of its real magnificence. It appears absurd to attempt a description of such a structure. I am fully sensible of my own utter inability to the task, but I fear this would be deemed an insufficient apology for passing over it.___Thomas Bacon. [Vsited the Taj Mahal on 28 December 1835]
Samuel Bourne, the photographer, first visited the Taj in spring 1863, and described it for the readers of the British Journal of Photography. For him it was a dream taking material form, a fantasy, a caprice of imagination transformed into marble.
Edward, Prince of Wales, who visited India in 1875-76, observed that it was a
commonplace for every writer 'to set out with the admission that it is indescribable, and
then proceed to give some idea of it.
EB Havell (1861-1934), Principal of the Calcutta Art School in the early 20th century and a promoter of Indian nationalism, declared the Taj to be the personification of 'Mumtaz Mahal herself radiant in her youthful beauty... India's noble tribute to the grace of Indian womanhood - the Venus de Milo of the East.
Heinrich Wolfflin (1864-1945), a Swiss Art-Historical luminary envisaged the building as 'On a white marble terrace an immaterial light shell like the apartments of the blessed, whose foot does not touch ordinary ground.' He saw in 'the feminine shy grace of the Taj the true spirit of India'.
Lord Curzon (1859-1925) saw the Taj first in 1887 and found it a 'snow-white emanation starting from a bed of cypresses, and backed by a turquoise sky, pure, perfect and unutterably lovely'. After he became Governor-General and Viceroy of India in 1898 he made 'the Taj his obsession' and visited Agra annually to supervise its restoration. The lamp of Egyptian 'Saracenic' design that he commissioned for the tomb chamber was to hang there as his 'last tribute to the glories of Agra which float like a vision of eternal beauty in my memory'.
The German philosopher Count Hermann Keyserling (1860-1946) commented similarly on the Taj when he saw it during his stay in India in 1911-12: 'A massive marble structure, without weight, as if formed of ether, perfectly rational and at the same time entirely decorative, it is perhaps the greatest art work which the forming spirit of mankind has ever brought forth.'
The celebrated Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) devoted two poems to Shah Jahan and the Taj Mahal. For him it was, famously, a teardrop on the cheek of time _
You knew, Emperor of India, Shah-Jahan,
That life, youth, wealth, renown
All float away down the stream of time.
Your only dream
Was to preserve forever your heart's pain.
The harsh thunder of imperial power
Would fade into sleep
Like a sunset's crimson splendour,
But it was your hope
That at least a single
eternally heaved sigh
would stay To grieve the sky.
Though emeralds, rubies, pearls are all
But as the glitter of a rainbow
tricking out empty air
And must pass away, Yet still one solitary tear
Would hang on the cheek of time
In the form
Of this white and gleaming Taj Mahal.
You could not maintain Your grief forever, and so you enmeshed Your restless weeping In bonds of silent perpetuity.
The names you softly Whispered to your love On moonlit nights in secret chambers live on Here As whispers in the ear of eternity.
The poignant gentleness of love Flowered into the beauty of serene stone
Taj Mahal Impressions :
Taj Mahal impressions consist of the things that people have said after experiencing the magnificence of this outstanding monument. From awe to delight to sheer ecstasy, impressions of Taj Mahal depict each and every conceivable feeling. Some of the famous sayings about Taj Mahal are as follows:
'You know Shah Jahan, life and youth, wealth and glory, they all drift away in the current of time. You strove therefore, to perpetuate only the sorrow of your heart? Let the splendor of diamond, pearl and ruby vanish? Only let this one teardrop, this Taj Mahal, glisten spotlessly bright on the cheek of time, forever and ever.'
Rabindranath Tagore
'There are two kinds of people in the world. Those who have seen the Taj Mahal and love it and those who have not seen the Taj and love it. I would like people to watch my Taj Mahal and fall in love with it,'
Bill Clinton
'It appears like a perfect pearl on an azure ground. The effect is such I have never experienced from any work of art.'
British painter Hodges
'I cannot tell what I think. I do not know how to criticize such a building but I can tell what I feel. I would die tomorrow to have such another over me.'
British officer, Colonel Sleeman's wife
'Did you ever build a castle in the Air? Here is one, brought down to earth and fixed for the wonder of ages'
American novelist, Bayard Taylor'
'If I had never done anything else in India, I have written my name here, and the letters are a living joy.'
Lord Curzon, the British Governor-General