This is where Princess Jasmine lives, right?

On my first day at the volunteer house a group of lovely British girls invited me to come with them to drive all night to Agra and then watch the sun rise over the Taj Mahal.

Very romantic and adventurous, right?

Well, it turns out our driver was blind in one eye, illiterate, didn’t speak English and didn’t seem to understand Hindi, and had no idea where Agra was, let alone the Taj Mahal. He also kept swerving to intentionally hit and kill wild dogs. By my count, he got four and one parrot. But we made it in the end, and even though we didn’t get to see the sunrise over the mausoleum we did get to check it out before all the tourists and the touts got there.

The Taj Mahal is just as beautiful as it looks in the millions of photographs you’ve seen of it, and I almost wish I’d never seen a picture of it before just because I think it would be so amazing to see it for the first time. As it is, when I first saw it I was kind of like “Yes, there it is. That’s what it’s meant to look like. Coolies.” It’s not until I got inside that I started to feel the sense of awe I was looking for- The marble ceiling is amazing; and the center, where the coffins are, has the kind of hushed solemnity that reminded me of in the catacombs under St Dennis in Paris. It was the first time I’d heard something close to quiet since I came to India.

It made me a little sad to see inside because of the deterioration- cracks in the marble have been patched up with wood gum, and missing chunks of masonry have been replaced with painted wood.* Hopefully they up the restoration budge in the next few years so it doesn’t get too much worse.

Side note: It costs 20 rupees for an Indian person to get in… and 750 for a non-Indian. Way to institutionalize racism, guys. Geez.

* I am entitled to be concerned about these kinds of things because I have two thirds of an Art History degree.

This is the back view. I am helpfully pointing at it so you don't miss it.