Around the World with Hardy(T)

India - Taj Mahal

World Expeditions' Ian Williams said at the pre-trip slide show that the Taj Mahal was the only man-made thing that had ever impressed him. After this visit I could see what he meant.

In contrast to the surrounding squalor on the Agra streets, where the hawkers were the most persistent and the beggars the most grotesquely deformed we had experienced so far, the first sight of the Taj Mahal simply left one speechless. It is such a huge building but also such a beautiful one. You can virtually feel the respect the visitors afford the building as they pad almost silently around the grounds. From the reflections of the Taj in the ponds that stretch out before it to the changing colours of the marble in the setting sun; from the sheer scale of the building to the intricate marble work inside the mausoleum; everything about this building is perfection.

Sadly at Agra, our party split into two as half headed off to Varanasi and Darjeeling and the remainder ventured on to Nepal. The Taj Mahal provided a fitting farewell to newfound friends.