The Taj Mahal at Agra is all we have heard about it,
and more.

I did not see it by moonlight, it is not open in the evenings anymore, but I did catch it in the softening rays of the setting sun. The marble seemed to glow in the light.

It’s a place you don’t hurry over and many folk sit quietly and soak in the atmosphere.

The Taj Mahal is generally regarded as ‘the most beautiful monument built for love’ and it was erected
to the memory of Mumtaz Mahal who died producing her fourteenth child.

It took twenty two years to finish the Taj buildings and the marble was brought from Rajasthan. Twenty thousand people worked on it under the direction of experts from Venice, Bordeaux and Iran.

It stands at the end of an ornamental garden and reflected in a long pools of water it makes a perfect picture, but your camera has it has to be a still one, video cameras are not allowed.

It can, at times be crowded with tourists and you should be wary of pick pockets, beggars and touts who gather at the entrance. Perhaps the most poignant view of the Taj Mahal comes from a mile and a half away at the Red Fort where Shah Jahan who built the Taj was imprisoned by his son.

He spent his final days looking out across the Yamuna River to the final resting place of his wife. It’s a favourite picture spot for newly married couple to have pictures taken and new brides in traditional scarlet saris are posed against the distant Taj.

If you want to get away from the crowds, and you will, it’s worth visiting Itmad-ud-daula, which is on the opposite bank of the river and north of the Fort. It too is a mausoleum, built of white marble in 1628,

it predates the Taj Mahal and it’s often locally referred to as ‘the baby Taj.’ It’s smaller and when I was there tourists were out numbered by the red faced monkeys who roamed the grounds.

They spend the evenings there and go off during the day to thieve fruit and vegetables in the local market. At the River Gate in the shade of an ornately carved pavilion I looked out at the women doing their washing in the Yamuna river beside the water buffaloes, while over head, Kite hawks flew feathering their wing tips.

India is a strange mixture and while you can plan your own visit with the help of a good guidebook, like The Rough Guide or Lonely Planet series, there is a lot to be said for using the expertise of a good tour company.

Tour operators have escorted tours that will whisk you round the main sights, taking in the Taj Mahal at Agra, Delhi, Jaipur and Samode and on other itineraries have you visiting Khajurho, to see the magnificent temples that are famous for their erotic sculptures, or Varanasi for an early morning boat ride to watch the sun rise on the Ganges.

In this kind of holiday you stay in comfortable Western style hotels and travelling in a group you are insulated for the much of the clamour, hassle and poverty.


My trip was not quite so sanitised and from the window of my little hotel in Delhi
I looked across to where a boy squatted on the ground rinsing cups for his tea stall.

Cows, that were once white, wandered by, they were covered with the grime of the city, so too were the saris of the women who carried baskets of dried dung to be used as fuel.

We explored narrow alleys where open fronted concrete shops sold, buckets, barbed wire and brightly coloured fabric. Tailors treadled away on sewing machines and inside a 'School of Typing' students pounded the keys.

We were off the tourist track and I was surprised to find that no beggars bothered us.
Eventually the alleys got narrower and when we found a dead rat in our path we decided to turn back.

Amid the greyness of it all it was the women who sparkled with their brightly coloured saris and although much of what we saw saddened us, people were smiling.

Eventually we heard a cheerful sound and fell in, with others, behind a brass band who were wearing bright blue uniforms complete with white spats.

We guessed they were on the way to a wedding, but they ended up close to our hotel where a crowd had gathered to witness a house being blessed.

The tea boy was still busy rinsing cups in the bucket and his stall was doing a brisk trade.

A cow with a very dirty rear end ambled by and I reckoned that if I had a house there I’d want to have it blessed too
.

FACT FILE.

I flew with Air India from London Heathrow .

Leaflets: Government of India Tourist Office, London Tel: 0207 437 3677

Website:- http://www.indiatouristoffice.org/

Report by Allan Rogers