Thompson Travelers

This monument built to remember a great love story is so well known around the world. I’ve seen so many photos of it that I wasn’t expecting to be too impressed. I was wrong…it is absolutely breathtaking when you see it in person.

The Mughal emperor, Shah Jahan, fell in love with his fourth wife, Mumtaz Mahal, when she was sixteen years old.  After they married, they were never separated.  She was carrying their fourteenth child when she had a bad dream of her unborn baby crying.  Believing this to be a bad omen, so she made her husband promise her that if anything happened to her, he would build something to show the world how much he loved her.

Sadly, she died during childbirth.  It took 22,000 artisans over twenty years to complete the Taj Mahal.  This became the final resting place for both the wife, and the emperor.

Over 15,000 people come daily to visit this beautiful site, with so many people taking selfies!

Several generations later, this process of inserting semi precious stones into white marble is a skill unique in this world to this city of Agra, where the descendants of the original artisans that created the Taj Mahal still work at this craft.

It takes painstaking skill to carve and polish the stones this small, which are then imbedded into white marble.

You can only find this fine detailed work here.  It’s forbidden to photograph any of this beautiful work, but I talked the sales person into letting me take one photo.  This beautiful table…a mere $225,000, and they will ship for free.  It’s another one of those “you have to see it in person” to appreciate how absolutely beautiful this all is.