We went to bed early(ish) last night as we knew we’d be up at 5am for our sunrise visit to the Taj Mahal. It wasn’t so easy to get to sleep though as there were fireworks going off and lots of music and noise combing from somewhere outside. On our way back to the hotel last night we’d bumped into a loud mini-parade of something with lights, music and men on horses. It was like the Bridgewater carnival had come to Agra. We asked at reception if it was a particular festival. It’s just wedding season was the reply.

The alarm went off at five and I dragged myself out of bed, showered and dressed. Mike followed shortly behind. We were out of the hotel by 5.30 to walk to the East Gate of the Taj. As we’ve mentioned previously, the pavements here are shocking, add in no street lights and they are a virtual death trap. We carefully made our way along the side street our hotel is on until we reached the main road which was lit. The main road down to the Taj East Gate is probably one of the best paved streets we’ve encountered, but even then I managed to trip up twice (fortunately maintaining my upright position on both occasions). It really looked as though this street had been ‘done up’ for when India hosted the G20 summit of world leaders in 2023. As well as pavements it had very fancy street lights and trees planted all along.

When we reached the east gate the queues were already building. There are separate  queues for Indian and foreign visitors (or high value ticket holders as they called us). We joined and had to wait until 6.30am before they started to open the doors (30 minutes before sunrise). When they finally opened we then had to slowly shuffle through the most bizarre and chaotic security checks. Women and men had to go into separate queues. They had just four metal detectors (of which only two were working) and everyone was frisked after passing through the detector. Bags had to be put through the x-ray scanner, but there was only one. A security guard was literally pilling bags on top of each other and shoving them into the machine. One x-ray machine seemed totally inadequate for India’s top tourist attraction (visited by more than 3 million each year). I think that we’ve seen more x-ray machines at most of the Indian metro stations we’ve visited. 

After the bags came out, they were piled onto a table where security staff would randomly pick them off the pile and open every part, empty the content and check them. What was bizarre was that there was one side for women’s bags and the other side for men’s bag, but of course there was no way of knowing which bags belonged to who as they’d all been shoved through the same x-ray machine. My bag got pulled out by a guard checking the women’s bag. It had got tangled up with a women’s handbag so as he pulled that one out, mine went with it. I rushed around to the ‘women’s side of the table’ as she was reclaiming her bag (with mine still attached!). What was even more bizarre was that although they’d emptied her bags contents and checked it, they didn’t touch mine! We untangled the straps of the bags and commented on how chaotic the process was. Mike retrieved his bag from the men’s side (after it had been emptied and checked), then we were free to go through into the site. Mike wondered if USA presidents had to go through this, I suspect not.

It was nearly seven (sunrise), there had been a moment when i thought we’d be watching the sunrise over the metal detectors of the Taj Mahal, but fortunately we just made it to the main event. Despite there being hundreds of other tourists there, it was still magical (a definite pinch myself moment) watching the morning light on the Taj Mahal and seeing the sun slowly illuminate the beautiful white marble of the mausoleum. It went for a pale blue in the morning mist, to a warm white as the sun’s beams slowly fell across it. It was definitely worth the early rise.

We proceeded to don our shoe covers to climb the vast marble platform on which the mausoleum sits, and entered the Taj. No photos are allowed inside, and we shuffled around in a one way system. We’d seen beautiful images and drawings of the tomb in the Great Mughals exhibition in London last year, and here we were looking at the real thing – truly beautiful. I managed to miss the ‘no-photos’ sign and took a couple of photos of the sun falling through the lattice work into the mausoleum. after we’d exited and taken a few more photos as we traced our way back through the garden and bumped into Tom and Lilly near to the famous bench where Princess Diana had been photographed. Their friend took a nice photo of us to add to our blog before we bid our farewells and headed back to our hotel for breakfast.