It does not disappoint. Perhaps the planet's most famous building. The monument to grief stricken love. The white marble, luminous this morning as the sun fought the overcast sky...yes, India made it a pain: selling tickets a kilometer away rather than at the gate. Yes, that Japanese woman trying to shoo people out of her photo inside the no-photo shrine. And India is smelly and noisy. But the morning hue, the inlaid marble: you made your point Shah Jahan.
We arranged a taxi to take us to the Red Fort and "baby Taj" - an earlier, less large yet still impressive and finely detailed tomb in Agra. From there we visited the tomb at Sikandra. But for the Taj each site would be a major tourist attraction and were worth the time.
We have now fought through the touts' lies and the streets of animal excrement to reach Emperor Akhbar's Fatephur Sikri. India is both easy to love and easy to hate: I hope our last few days have more of the former.
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