Taj Mahal: I have this thing with the Taj

I’M NOT sure when exactly my fascination with the Taj Mahal began but my love for it has been a strange one, considering I had never visited it.

There was just something aesthetic about its arches, the famous dome and the romantic sentiment behind it just made it all the more beautiful. Even a cynic like me couldn’t fail to appreciate such a huge, public display of a man’s love for his wife. Never before had an Indian Moghul, who had several other wives to choose from, done anything so extravagant for a woman.

Over the years I’ve painted a huge canvas of the Taj Mahal as a gift for my parents and spent endless hours studying its towers and many arches for an A’Level art project, but it was all from books I’ve read and photos I found online.

There are just so many images of it everywhere that I felt like I had already seen it from every possible angle.

So when I was finally stood there with it towering, tall and dominant, right in front of me, it was quite an emotional moment.

The small town of Agra, like many parts of India, is not the cleanest, quietest, or the most looked after. It was almost hard to believe that you were about to come across one of the World’s wonders within it. Yet standing there in the distance, amidst a mass of derelict land and rubble, is the Taj.

Surrounded in a misty haze as we entered the town, it’s enchanting beauty can be seen for miles. I was in complete awe.

Nothing quite prepares you for seeing it in person.

While there is not much to see inside, and it is essentially just a giant tomb for a very lucky woman, you cannot deny that it is an incredible tomb. It was as beautiful and breathtaking as I had always imagined it would be, and it was most certainly worth the long wait to visit it.

Now finally, I will have my own photos to look back on for years to come.