We left Delhi only 13 minutes late, which as you know, in India, counts as being 100% on time. Apparently it can be a 5 hour drive... 2 hours to leave Delhi, then 2.5 hours on the expressway to Agra... then at least 30 minutes to get into Agra. Which all actually went to plan. Even the expressway was recognisable as an actual road.

Our first stop on arrival in Agra was the Red Fort - Massive. Huge. Unmissable. We imagine it’s where everything is measured from in Agra, ie. the restaurant/shop/park is so many minutes from the Fort. It was significantly bigger than either of us thought it would be and certainly an enjoyable spot to walk around. At 2.5 kms from it’s more well known sister monument, the Taj Mahal, the fort can be more accurately described as a walled city. It dates to the early 1500s and was the main residence of the emperors of the Mughal dynasty until the capital was shifted from Agra to Delhi in 1638. It got it’s current look under the emperior Akbar who ruled between 1556 and 1605. One of the highlights of the fort was actually standing on one of the terraces and seeing the Taj Mahal rising mistily in the distance.

We eventually made it to the Taj Mahal - or ‘Great Palace’ in the late afternoon. It was not so much that it had actually cooled down, but it had become somewhat less hot. The tomb of Mumtaz Mahal built by her loving husband, the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan was certainly breathtakingly beautiful. We are very lucky to be visiting now as it’s been undergoing a long and thorough restoration over the last several years and the work has finally finished. The ivory white marble is now in pristine condition and a joy to behold. We walked a lap around the building - never having realised it actually sat on the banks of a river then eventually shuffled through the surprisingly small interior - unlike the TARDIS it’s much smaller on the inside. Whilst visitors are forbidden from taking photos and encouraged to respect the dead by being quiet, the staff have no such rules and for a small ‘acknowledgement’ will call your name out so in floats around the dome in a magical echo and shine a small torch into the precious stones, eg red carnelian from Arabia, inlaid into the pure white marble. In all, 28 different types of precious and semi-precious stones were inlaid into the marble and materials were brought from all over Asia and India for the construction - which took over 11 years and 1000 elephants - not to mention 22,000 labourers. We then strolled through the British style lawns and gardens and took far too many photos of the exterior as the sun started to set and the colours and shadows seemingly changed from one minute to the next

We left the Taj about 30 minutes before closing time and thankfully the large electric golf buggy shuttles still had a bit of juice to cart us back to the main parking area. Apparently that is by no means guaranteed at the end of the day. We checked into Seven Hills Tower Hotel in Agra which immediately became a favoured hotel because they upgraded us to a suite in order for us to have a bathtub. Lovely people at the Seven Hills Agra! We were very keen indeed to use our sitting room, so settled in and had a rest before nipping up to the rooftop for the promised view of the Taj Mahal on the Agra skyline. It was definitely there and whilst distant, the juxtaposition of a modern(ish), Indian city with this monument was surprising and pleasing to the eye. There was a jewellery and handicrafts store across the road and we can highly recommend not going shopping, haggling or buying when you’re hungry - it just adds another level of pressure. James’s super power is definitely haggling however and we walked away with a pretty pair of earrings with my birthstone. The fact that we walked away with them did of course mean that we’d still paid too much (though 50% less than the owner would have been initially happy with). We had dinner on the rooftop of the hotel and were in bed by the new standard time - 9 pm. The trouble with 2 large tour groups arriving in the one hotel on the same evening? After dinner and with an early start the next day, they all want hot showers at 9 pm and luke warm was as good as it was going to get. Pressure was excellent though and we had a pleasant enough bath to wash away the India-ness of it all. Small mercies.

(PS - We made up for it in the morning - up bright and early around 6 am and we had a seriously hot, deep and bubbly bath before a quick trip to rooftop for sunrise, snuffling breakfast and out the door by 8.30 am. Off to another of Akbar’s achievements, Fatehpuri Sikri/The Forgotten City and then on to Karauli, via a palace for lunch, a private palace visit and a palace for the night - truly it will be a palatial.)