At least I've seen one of the 50 things before I die.

---

When you come to India as a backpacker you enter a different universe. It happens to everyone. Not a spiritual universe, but a financial one. Any transaction over 60 rupees tends to bring on hot flushes of flustering. If a form of transport costs over Rs150, apart from planes and trains, and not even then sometimes, backpackers would generally rather walk than pay such a sum. The two amounts above, for the purposes of general understanding, are 75p and ₤1.87. I have been trying to resist this traveller's twinge, I feel not entirely successfully. So please imagine how backpackers react when upon arrival at the Taj Mahal they have to scrape up Rs750 for entry. It's fortunate that nearly all travellers are forewarned by the Lonely Planet because otherwise in order to reach the Taj you'd have to climb over a pile of stunned backpackers who've fainted from the shock.

Sidenote: Why am I the only traveller who carries the Rough Guide? It's not like it's more expensive. I'm starting to think there must a treasure map in the Lonely Planet or something.

Anyway I did pay the Rs750 to get in and it was worth it. The Taj Mahal is one of the buildings held up to you as a feat of architecture as a child. I think it wasn't until I was about nine that I actually learnt that it was India. It's also one of those places that as a child you never actually think you'll see.

The gardens are enclosed by red brick walls which I was genuinely surprised by as I had assumed the Taj stood by itself but there's also a mosque made of red brick to the left to the tomb and an identical building that served as a rest house to the right. This is so the entire ensemble is perfectly symmetrical.

I've heard other travellers say that they were expecting the Taj to be bigger than it was, but for me it was just as I'd imagined. As someone who spent a good four hours trying, trust me when I say it's a struggle to get the whole building in a single photo. Even single elements like one of the towers require you to stand a decent distance away. On the plus side because of it's inherent symmetry however you look at it the view you get of the Taj is spectacular and instantly recognisable. Once you get closer up (putting on some paper booties so you don't damage the marble) the detail of the carving catches your attention. Of particular note for me the huge arabic writing on the facade that I cannot believe I never noticed in any photographs and the carvings of flowers in the entryways.

I was also, from what my guidebook said, expecting the marble to be in pretty poor condition. But most of it was pretty flawless and white, the downside to this was it was actually pretty difficult to look at it up close because the sunlight was reflected so strongly.

It's also possible to go into the tomb and see the mausoleums of the queen and kind buried here. This was where my jaw kept dropping just by looking upwards. The height of the ceiling is immense and gives you a better idea of how tall the tomb is when you look at it from the outside.

When I arrived in Agra it was raining really heavily to my pleasant surprise and this meant lower temperatures for the rest of the day. So once I'd seen and snapped everything I sat in the gardens. Partly to just relax and enjoy the cool, partly to try and squeeze Rs750 worth out of the experience. It's a lot of money after all.

---