Sunday, 15 February 2026
This morning we headed down to breakfast to the room that we thought we had been told breakfast would be in. With nobody on the desk to check our names off a list, we filled glasses with juice and staked a claim on a table and Bernie had headed off to check out the buffet selection. M’am, M’am, what is your room number? I told him we were in Room 140, one, four, zero. He checked his list. Oh, no, M’am, you are in the wrong room. You need to go to the other one. What, the restaurant on the 5th floor? No, no, no, let me show you. He led us out into the foyer, into the corridor where the souvenir shops are and through a nondescript door that led to a function room, with circular tables that looked ready to host a wedding reception. OK, maybe not quite that fancy, but much fancier than where we had come from!
We were first there so started to check out what was on offer. After enjoying pineapple for the last two mornings, today we were back to melon. They say the more watery the fruit the greater the risk so I haven’t been game to try any variety of melon. Bernie had a little bit of cereal and milk and we both ate toast again. I’ve been eating a lot of toast on this holiday so, it’s at good thing that I remembered the Vegemite.
Another day, another deviation from the itinerary. Day 5 said – ‘Today, just after sunrise, you’ll visit the Taj Mahal at approximately 06:00 before returning to the hotel for breakfast. Alternatively, you can choose to visit the mausoleum just after breakfast at 09:00’. Chandresh convinced us that we would be best to go between these times and organised for us to leave the hotel at 8.00am. He assured us that sunrise at the Taj Mahal is nothing special at this time of year. I guess too, that if all the tours are offering a sunrise visit or an after breakfast visit, that there is possibly going to be a lull around 8.00am?? You go on a tour to get the benefit of the guide’s local knowledge so … last night we all agreed to 8.00am.
We drove to the bus parking area at the Taj Mahal site then transferred to golf carts to complete our journey to the gate. The security screening at the gate was CHAOTIC!! Separate queues again for Ladies and Gents and only one bag screening machine between them. We all surrendered our bags to security screening and then walked through our gendered metal detector arches. Arriving on the other side of security checking we found all the bags for Ladies and Gents in one huge pile. The security staff were holding up the bags one at a time for them to be claimed. Bernie’s bag was held aloft, so Bernie was waving and trying to attract the security dude’s attention but he would not look to his right. I made eye contact with him so, I claimed Bernie’s bag. The important one … with both out passports in it! That left Bernie to claim my hot pink bag when it was held up by security, ha, ha, ha. Now I am writing this it has me thinking, was the security dude holding up Bernie’s bag only looking towards all the ladies on his left because he thought Bernie’s bag was a bit girly???
At last we were in, in to see THE site that this trip was all about for me. We’ve seen some other fabulous things along the way but, for me, this trip to India was always all about seeing the Taj Mahal with my own eyes. So, we were in but still had a way to go. After the screening debacle four of us found ourselves somewhat ahead of the rest of the group, so had to cool our heels at the South Gate while we waited for them to come around from the East gate.
Eventually we were all together again, Chandresh gave us a bit of an overview of how our time at the Taj Mahal would be managed and then, finally, finally, we entered from the south to behold India’s premier monument and … a seething mass of humanity posing in front of it. OMG, people taking selfies, couples photographing each other, people photographing their families, their friends, professional photographers photographing people who wanted a variety of posed photos with the famous monument. And everyone wants to take the photo from straight in front to capture the famous symmetry of the monument.
That’s a lot of people who all want to take their photo from a spot about one metre wide!! Manners were forgotten and we got our elbows out and plunged into the fray with everyone else to get our photos from ‘the spot’. We took a terrible, terrible selfie before resorting to asking Chandresh to take our photo in front of the Taj Mahal. If you can’t beat them, join them was our motto today. The things you have to do to be able to take home a photograph of the world-famous Taj Mahal that combines the undeniable beauty of Persian and earlier Mughal architecture.
The Taj Mahal was commissioned by Shah Jahan in 1631, to be built in memory of his wife Mumtaz Mahal who died during the birth of their 14th child. Construction of the Taj Mahal began in 1632 and the principal mausoleum was completed in 1643, the surrounding buildings and garden were finished about five years later. Chandresh shared other facts with us about the monument. The one that sticks in my mind is that the four towers lean outwards by two degrees so that if they fall in an earthquake they will fall away from the dome.
Chandresh then let us head off to explore on our own for an hour and a half. We put on shoe coverings to venture up onto the marble platform to enter the mausoleum. Despite the signs that are up reminding people that they are visiting a mausoleum and asking them to behave in an appropriate manner there are way too many people treating it like a visit to Disneyland?? We obeyed the signs asking that no photographs be taken inside. Then, as we shuffled along, we had one of the attendants ask where were were from before he launched into a well-practiced spiel about the tomb, the bodies are interred ten metres below the crypts you see here he told us, amongst other things that we had already learnt from Chandresh. Then he gave us the torchlight demonstration on the stone inlaid floral emblems, showing how the light is refracted making the flowers glow. And then he waited … for the tip. I’m not sure if the attendants are allowed to do that – financial extortion in a place of the dead – or if they are just being enterprising extracting cash from the tourists if their supervisor isn’t looking???
Back on the outside we completed a circuit of the raised marble platform before heading over to the terrace between the mosque and the mausoleum. Chandresh told us last night, when we were looking across the river, that the Shah built a mosque on one side of the mausoleum and then had an exact copy built on the opposite side for the sake of symmetry. Although the exterior looks identical, the faux ‘mosque’ lacks a number of key elements that always feature in a true mosque that faces Mecca.
We wandered to the centre of the garden to try to take photos from the central midpoint of the site that was made famous by the Diana photos. In February 1992, The Princess of Wales was photographed alone on a bench here with the Taj Mahal behind her. Although she had travelled to India with Charles, their marriage was all but over at the time so many consider it to be a very poignant image. Of course if you are the Princess of Wales or another visiting dignitary, they close the site for a couple of hours while you visit. Nice for some!
We returned to the meeting point at the South Gate just before 11.00am with the other couple travelling with us arriving soon after and then Chandresh a couple of minutes after that. There was no sign of all the girls though. Andrew walked to the inside of the East Gate but couldn’t find them there either. Then I received a message on my phone from Sally to say that they were OUTSIDE the East Gate. With a couple of messages back and forth we established that all six of the girls were in the same place, so we headed off to join them. At such huge sites with multiple gates it is a bit confusing getting everyone in the same place at the same time.
After the Main Event we were taken to the Agra Marble Emporium for a demonstration of the stone inlay work that features in the Taj Mahal. The descendants of the craftsmen who came to work on the Taj Mahal, continue to produce stone inlay work to this day. And after the demonstration we were escorted through to the showroom – of course. While we appreciate the artistry of the work, it’s not really the sort of thing that we want in our house. When they were struggling to sell us any larger pieces they opened the doors to the back room where they have a range of smaller (cheaper!) items for purchase. Tcht, I was going to buy one small black marble elephant with stone inlay work on its back BUT, somehow, we came out with three.
Aargh, not done with the shopping yet. Our next stop was a souvenir store. The Manager sat us down and told us all about everything he had to offer in his store and the discounts that he would make available to us on certain items. One of the things the touts at sites have been offering is steel drums played with a drumstick with a rubber ball on the end (like used to play the xylophone) and they sound so pretty. I weakened and bought a small steel drum! Bernie purchased a T-Shirt with an elephant on it and we purchased a couple of bags. We’re thinking of leaving some stuff at tonight’s hotel as we will be back on Wednesday and we want to make sure we achieve the 15kg weight limit on the domestic flight to Varanasi tomorrow. While we shopped, Chandresh ordered in some samosas for our lunch
We then returned to Delhi in the bus. Chandresh started working on us on Tuesday to change our journey back to the capital from rail to road. He told us that the train trip on the Gatiman Express is overrated and would have us to our hotel in Delhi much later than going by road in the bus. He said that the train is fast BUT you have to check in an hour before you travel and then the station in Delhi is about an hour and a half away from the hotel we are booked into. He claimed it would be 10-10.30pm before we reached the hotel. The eight of us out and about on Tuesday were convinced, but the two who had stayed behind with dodgy tummies were not as keen when they found out the next day. The mode of transport was debated back and forth for a couple of days with the road option winning out.
Travelling by road we arrived at the door of the Hotel ITC Welcom just after 7.00pm to check-in. Another thing the group had struggled to reach a consensus on was tipping so we all tipped Karamvir and Deetu individually as we left the bus. We had asked Chandresh this morning about tipping and he wasn’t very helpful about how much we should give the driver and his assistant. All he would say was that we should tip each of them separately because there was no guarantee that the driver would share a tip given to him with his assistant and whatever we tipped the driver, his assistant should only be tipped half as much. We were happy to tip them both, Karamvir did a great job driving us around without incident and I appreciated Deetu handing me down from the bus every single time I alighted and preventing me from falling face first out of the bus!! We just hope that we tipped enough. It would be embarrassing if we gave them a miserly tip.
Chandresh assisted us with check-in and then pleaded with us to fill in our Happy Sheets (customer feedback forms). He told us that the Armadale sisters would be collected at 6.00am in the morning for their international flight to Singapore and the rest of us would be picked up at 7.00am for our domestic flight to Varanasi. With all the admin and instructions sorted out, our keys were allocated and it was time to tip Chandresh, the amount being another dilemma, and say our farewells to him.
Without a doubt this is our nicest hotel so far on this trip. Fortunately we started at the worst hotel and the standard has continued to improve with each stop. It is good to know that we will be back here again on Wednesday night, before we head home. We had a bite to eat in the hotel restaurant because we had really only had a snack for lunch. Bernie enjoyed his chicken pad Thai and I thought my cheese and spinach ravioli with a burnt butter and sage sauce was delicious.
We retired to our room for an early night but then our tummies started to rumble threateningly. Oh no, were the samosas no good?? We only had toast for breakfast and what we just ate couldn’t be causing a problem already could it?? That only leaves the samosas. Fortunately, we were just a bit bloated and loose in the bowels, no vomiting.
Steps: 11,932 (7.54kms)
