The Taj Mahal: It Actually Doesn’t Disappoint

The Taj Mahal is the kind of place that you assume will let you down after a lifetime of photographs. It doesn’t. The white Makrana marble shifts colour by the hour, pale gold at dawn, near-blue in overcast light, blinding white at noon, and the symmetry of the cypress-lined gardens stretching toward the mausoleum still hits in a way that photographs simply cannot transmit. Shah Jahan built it in 17 years using 20,000 workers for a wife who died in childbirth in 1631. The scale of the grief is visible in the scale of the building.

That said, Agra can grind you down before you even get there.

Getting In

The Taj opens at sunrise and closes at sunset, closed on Fridays. Entry for foreign nationals is currently ₹1,100 (roughly £11), which includes the Agra Development Authority fee. Buy tickets online the night before at asi.payumoney.com, the queues at the gate on busy days run 45 minutes to an hour, and you can skip them with an online booking. Shoe covers are provided free at the entrance. Photography inside the mausoleum itself is not permitted.

Arrive within 30 minutes of opening. By 9am on a peak season morning (October through March) the central reflecting pool is forty people deep. At 6:30am it is still manageable.

What’s Actually Worth Your Time

The Mehtab Bagh garden directly across the Yamuna River is worth the separate ₹500 entry. You get an unobstructed rear view of the Taj with almost no other visitors. Most people skip it. Their loss.

Within the main complex: the Mosque on the west side and its mirror-image Guest House on the east get overlooked because everyone is staring across at the mausoleum. Both are fine examples of red sandstone Mughal construction and worth 20 minutes each.

Eating in Agra

Agra’s most famous export after the Taj is petha, a translucent sweet made from ash gourd. Panchhi Petha on Fatehabad Road has been selling it since 1956. For a proper meal, Pinch of Spice on Taj Road does reliably good North Indian food at mid-range prices (budget around ₹600-800 for two with drinks). Avoid the restaurants immediately surrounding the south gate.

Where to Stay

Mid-range accommodation concentrates on Fatehabad Road. Hotel Kamal is well-regarded at the budget end. For a splurge, ITC Mughal has a good garden about 2km from the Taj. Oberoi Amarvilas is at the extreme top end with Taj-view rooms from every window, spectacular if the budget allows, genuinely spectacular.

Getting to Agra

Agra is 200km from Delhi. The Gatimaan Express departs Hazrat Nizamuddin station at 08:10 and arrives Agra Cantonment at 09:50, 110 minutes, the fastest connection available. Most visitors manage Agra as a long day trip from Delhi, but one night there gives you the sunrise visit plus time for Agra Fort (included in the ₹1,100 Taj ticket on the same day) and Fatehpur Sikri without rushing any of them.

Fatehpur Sikri, the abandoned Mughal capital 40km west of Agra, is genuinely magnificent and deserves two hours. Built entirely in red sandstone in the 1570s and abandoned within 15 years, it preserves a complete Mughal imperial complex in near-original condition. Almost nobody stays long enough to see it properly.