#TajMahal Agra PT 7 India Nov 2015

I arrived in Agra last night. A trouble free train journey and staying at The Sai Palace near the south gate. All good except wi fi intermittent. Frustrating!

This morning I make the short walk to the Taj Mahal. Simply put it is everything you expect it to be, hope it will be. It is truely stunning and a wonderful unbelievable privilege to see.

Of course the Taj Mahal draws a lot of people but one of the special things about it is the expansive gardens it is set in with broad walks. It is also set on a deep marble plinth so it seems like the whole building is hovering above the gardens. It feels the opposite to claustrophobic and you can find real tranquility easily by wandering off - all the time the stand out building looking perfection. There is a wonderful symmetry about the place and just overwhelming beauty.

I spent a lot of quiet time there. I sat on the white marble Taj Mahal plinth under one of the columns with many thoughts going through my mind. I thought of my childhood vision of India. For some crazy reason about 2 Hill Rise my parents first home - a council flat. My brother Mike was born there. I was 6. This was a time before we had a phone leave alone a mobile phone. A little tiny black and white television. No computers of course. We used to go out to play! This was a time when all we knew about India came from children's books. Exotic. Imaginary.The India where everyone dressed like Gandhi, where bejewelled Maharajas rode on elephants. A land of tigers and the cobra. The place where there was an incredible palace called the Taj Mahal! A totally different world away. This was the India in my mind. And now I am here. Wow. Stupid emotion again! The enormity of it. I am so lucky. It is an unreal place to be and I suspect will overshadow any man made building I ever see in the future. The Taj Mahal will sit happily in my mind with the Great Pyramid of Giza.

To change the mood there were a couple of mad momments that made me chuckle. I was asked a Japanese guy to take a photo of him in front of the Taj. The money shot. He passed me a lump of a camera. I obliged but he wasn't happy with it and he politely asked me to take another. The thing is like so many Japanese he is terrified by the sun. He must have been wearing factor 150. He looked like a white Halloween ghost. I felt like suggesting if you want a decent photo of the Taj Mahal you should step out of the picture - ha! He was very happy with the 2nd one.

The other was inside the Taj Mahal itself. It is not a palace but a mausoleum. There are two beautifully ornate coffins in the centre around which there is a stunning carved screen. (read the histoty!) As people file in they are requested to be silent, no cameras and move anti clockwise! Inevitably people don't always comply. Their system for warning people was to have an attendant with a referees whistle which he blew very regularly and like a rugby referee if someone was using a camera. So much for a quiet mausoleum. Mad. It didn't matter. The Taj Mahal is really about the outside for me.

Talking about the outside - one of the amazing things about the Taj is the intricate way patterns have been created in the white marble by the inlay of other types of coloured stone. I spent ages trying to think where that same pattern had been in my life. I came up with two possibilities. We had a room wall papered with it but particularly I covered a school exercise book with it. Do you remember the school days when you were required to cover your exercise books with wall paper - ha!

The Taj Mahal is truely spectacular.

What a day. So lovely. So incredible I could be there.