We flew on Indigo Airlines from Mumbai to Delhi on Monday, January 19, 2015 (more about the Delhi portion of the trip in a later blog entry), and took the express train from Delhi to Agra early Tuesday morning. The train was scheduled to leave at 6am and actually got underway about 6:10am. By the time we got to Agra the train was a half-hour behind schedule. We were booked on a return train to leave Agra at 9 pm, but by the time we got to Agra at 8:30 am, the forecast was that the 9pm train would be at least one and a half hours behind schedule. That would make for a very long day….

Our guide and the driver met us at the train station and off we went. The first stop was the Agra Fort … which will be in a future blog post. Then we went to the Taj Mahal.

It’s only been in the last twenty years or so that India has taken the care and preservation of the Taj Mahal seriously. It had already been plundered a couple of times, most recently by the British. Today the grounds are beautiful and immaculate. The building has been thoroughly cleaned. The cleaning process involves a special kind of clay that is sprayed on the building and then washed off with water after it dries out, according to our guide. No other chemicals are used. The marble used in the building is Makrana Marble, which is a very hard, non-porous material actually harder than most metals. It also has a translucent quality to it which means that the marble takes on the color of the light shining on it. During the time we were there, the building changed from a kind of a white ivory to a much more of a cream-colored hue as the clouds departed and the sun emerged.

Vehicles with internal combustion engines are now prohibited within about a mile around the monument’s grounds. We drove to a transfer station, left our driver and car, and boarded an electric bus to go the rest of the way.

The grounds are massive. The building is on the banks of the Yamuna River (the second most revered river in India after the Ganges) and includes a garden on the other side of the river.

The whole experience was amazing and delightful. The Taj Mahal was better in every way than I had even hoped it would be. Our visit there was definitely the sightseeing highlight of the trip.

Here’s a small gallery of pictures from our visit to the Taj Mahal: