Agra & the Taj Mahal, UNESCO World Heritage Site

SGang Gwaay (Ninstints), the ancient Haida village on the coast of British Columbia in Haida Gwaii (the Queen Charlotte Islands) and L’Anse aux Meadows at the northern tip of Newfoundland where Norse settlers first landed in North America over 1000 years ago – these are examples of UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Canada.

World Heritage Sites are natural and cultural sites of global significance designated by the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). Other examples include the Pyramids of Egypt and the Great Wall of China as well as national parks such as Yellowstone in the US and the Mountain Parks of BC and Alberta.

India too has its share of World Heritage Sites. Probably its most famous is the Taj Mahal but there are many more including the Agra Fort, the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus train station (formerly Victoria Terminus) in Mumbai and the most recent addition to the list for India, the Jantar Mantar in Jaipur.

I spent a couple of hours at the Jantar Mantar, which is where you can see the astronomical observatories built in India during the early 1700's by Sawaii Jai Singh. Jantar mantar means literally 'calculation instrument'. The observatory in Jaipur consists of odd shaped devices of varying sizes used in ancient times for measuring time, predicting eclipses, tracking stars' location as the earth orbits around the sun and ascertaining the declinations of planets (amongst other things). They are amazing and still surprisingly accurate.

It amazes me how much ancient cultures (and more recent too) understood about the sun and the stars, the constellations and the movement of the planets. Indian culture (and many others) are strongly influenced by the heavenly bodies that adorn our night sky – they influence the dates of special events (such as weddings) and some would say, life itself. If you find this surprising remember that the sun and moon have huge effects on the movement of the oceans through the tides…so why not us too?

In Agra I visited a couple of the UNESCO World Heritage Sites. I got up early on my first morning in the city to see the morning sun on the Taj Mahal and on the next I was up to stroll around the Agra Fort pretty much on my own (at least for the first half hour).The Taj Malal, often thought as a temple, is in fact the tomb of Mumtaz Mahal, the wife of the great mogul emperor Shah Jahan.

The Agra Fort is where Shah Jahan was imprisoned by his son Aurangzeb when he took over as emperor. Shah Jahan lived out his days in the Fort which allowed him a view of the Taj, and of his beloved wife Mumtaz Mahal.