enMovimiento: September 2011

It's impossible to catch the mistic atmosphere of the Taj Mahal in a camera. Pictures seem always sooo flat...but I tried my best and here you have a more detailed portrait of my visit to the Taj.

In Agra there's the Taj everywhere: from the rooftop of your restaurant you see it, from the fort, from the river, it seems to be the sentinel of the city.

But there are other really nice views than the Taj from the postcards

THE POSTCARD TAJ (Viewed from the front. If you want to make a video of the Taj, which now a days is difficult to controll though, security personel is there to make sure you only show it from this perspective)

THE POSTCARD TAJ

THE TAJ FROM THE FORT

THE TAJ FROM THE CITY

(taking a capuccino in one of the nice rooftop cafés)

THE TAJ FROM THE SIDE

(with the morning light the white marble gives it a pale rose colour)

curved shadows in the niches

The white marble is finely ornated with precious

stones inlays and the voult with the islamic diamont-shaped motif "tree of life"

This must have cost a fortune!

"Tree of life"

Watermirror of the Tag

floor with geometric islamic design

the David's star was also a motif

in islamic architecture

stone inlay work in the side mosque building

THE TAJ FROM BEHIND

(Unofficial view of the Taj from the river)

It’s funny to be here….I’ve read and heard so many things about Chandigarh, the city that Le Corbusier designed from scratch in the 50’s, the perfect city, the summit of modern architecture…and now I’m here, it’s soo hot and wet…it’s night, we got to the train station from Delhi and have to take a rickshaw and find our hotel. On the way to the hotel we just see green, big avenues…you actually can breathe in this city after crowded Delhi.

On the rickshaw

Despite of the modern block buildings being in a bad condition, you can tell that there has been urban planning here, first there’s the buildings that have been planned all with the same height, with a commercial zone down, rows of parking lots for cars and bikes, avenues, parks, lakes…everything very organized (for Indian standards of course), which is common in Europe but not in other Indian cities.

Delhi streets

Chandigarh streets

Amsterdam bicycles everywhere!

shopping arcades

nice house from the 50's

The bad thing is that all blocks look pretty similar, they seemed to copy the same balcony type all over the place, so that at a point it’s boring.

But I still love it! Here you can see that the theories of Le Corbusier were brilliant and work, despite of the plan being a little too quadratic. "A city needs enough air, sun and space".