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  • Day 7

    Who needs sleep... Taj Mahal

    November 25, 2018 in India ⋅ ☀️ 25 °C

    What a night. We booked a prioty dive of a place to stay in the night before the Taj and it was ridiculously loud the whole night. Music blasting, traffic noise constantly, what sounded like dogs killing each other all night. It was just carnage to be honest. After watching the hours slowly tick by we eventually peeled ourselves out of bed at 5am and got ready to head out to the Taj.

    In the dark we walked to the south gate. One queue for women and one for men. Luckily we had spoken to a couple the night before who gave us various tips including buying the ticket online and making sure the ticket was sent to both of us as we will be split in gender queues. Great tips!

    From the outside you can't see anything. You just queue at the towering south gate and you can feel the eagerness to see the wonder behind the wall! Luckily we got there for 5:45am so we got in quite quickly and at first you enter a court yard. I remember thinking... Where is it?! And then you turn a corner and it's there. This beautiful, glowing masterpiece. It was a surreal moment. My mum had always wanted to visit the Taj Mahal and hadn't had this opportunity. I was so honoured.

    We waited for sunrise to see the golden glow and it was really magnificent. We then walked through the mausoleum like a heard of sheep and were soon out enjoying being next to the incredible structure again.

    Did you know that due to pollution the Taj Mahal is now a browny yellow colour due to pollution and the government have to actively clean the monument to get it to its original white state. Today the pollution levels were 4.3 times the acceptable allowance and I must admit I could really feel the suffocation and I've come away with black under all my finger nails and in my nose. It's pretty disgusting...

    Now if I'm honest it would have been more incredible had they had the ban of cameras etc like the temple yesterday as it did ruin the atmosphere with people just trying to get that perfect shot but to be honest it wasn't too busy when we were there.

    After leaving we went for breakfast, collected our bags and met up with Ajay for the next part of our trip, Agra Fort.

    Agra Fort construction began in 1565 and is a made from palatial red sandstone. Jeez its big. When entering we had the usual touts and "tour guides" attempting to go in with us and luckily we didn't fall for it as we saw one guiding another tourist later and they were having an awful time. The Fort was really impressive and would have been better with a real guide who actually cared then it would have been great but it was still great walking around and just enjoying its grandness. From the edge we could see the faint outline of the Taj Mahal, not because it was far but because of the pollution.

    We then jumped back in the car to begin the long journey to Jaipur. It was very long... It took about 5 hours and we arrived checked in to our accomodation around 5pm. We then did our washing, had dinner and was in bed by 8:30pm shattered.

    What a great day.
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