Never having being much of a fan of the 'must see sights' I was never particularly bothered about visiting the Taj Mahal but all the other volunteers seemed pretty keen and it wasn't too much trouble to get there so after a few team beers on the Friday night we got up early on Saturday and headed for the six hour bus to Agra.

After arriving in the afteroon we grabbed some food before Tom and I walked down to see the magnificence of a wonder of the world. I think we were both pretty suprised to see how small the structure itself was, I was pretty underwhelmed. The building itself is very aesthetically pleasing and it does look rather beautiful when the white marble catches the lazy orange glow of the setting sun but its just really.....small.

We had a potter around and walked into the building itself which is basically a single central room that houses the tombs of the mughal emporor Shah Jahan and his wife for whom he had commisioned the building after her untimely death in 1632. I would typically associate a tomb with an area of peace and tranquility as opposed to the cattle-market that quickly insued. The ambiance is somewhat hindered by the guards who utilised their government issued whistle with both force and frequency to usher the snap-happy visitors along. The architecture inside the building it pretty nice and the inscriptions on the walls are incredibly detailed but it's hard to pay too much attention as we were constantly aware of the pigeons inhabiting the roof overhead ready to smear us with an inky poo bomb.

We had chosen a hotel that had a rooftop bar and restaurant that would allow us to overlook the Taj into the evening. After grabbing a few beers and taking to the top deck we sat and talked late into the night and I began to appreciate the beauty of the building, the intricacy of the architecture and how difficult this must have been to construct nearly 500 years ago. Nevertheless I remain adamant that if it wasn't for the fact that it was built with white marble it would barely be on the tourism radar. There are many more sophisticated and thought-provoking buildings across the world than the Taj although I guess it's amazement comes from the iconic imagery associated to it and the fact that the expense and difficulty of building in marble acted as a chest-beating excercise for the empire at the time.

Let's face it, it is a beautiful building and I am glad I went but its just....small.