From Jaipur: Taj Mahal & Agra Private Guided Day Tour

Jaipur to Agra, and the marble connection

Four hours by road, with a comfort break. What is worth knowing on this particular route is that the marble in front of you at the end of it came from Rajasthan — Makrana, about 400 km west of Agra and three hours from Jaipur. The same quarries still supply the marble inlay shops you will have seen in Jaipur's bazaars.

So the Taj is, in material terms, a Rajasthani building assembled in Uttar Pradesh. The craftsmen came from further still: Persia, Central Asia, and the stone-cutting families of Gujarat.

Taj Mahal

Shah Jahan commissioned it in 1631, the year Mumtaz Mahal died bearing their fourteenth child. Twenty-two years of work.

Your guide covers the calligraphy cut in increasing sizes so it reads uniformly from the ground — signed, unusually, by the calligrapher Amanat Khan; the pietra dura inlay, where a single flower can hold sixty separate stones; the four minarets, tilted fractionally outward so an earthquake would drop them clear of the tomb; and the optical illusion at the gateway, where the building seems to shrink as you approach.

And the one asymmetry in an otherwise perfectly mirrored composition: Shah Jahan's own cenotaph, placed off the central axis by Aurangzeb after his death.

Agra Fort

Akbar's red sandstone city of 1565 with Shah Jahan's marble palaces inside: the Diwan-i-Am, the Khas Mahal, the Sheesh Mahal. And the Musamman Burj, the octagonal tower where Aurangzeb imprisoned his father for the last eight years of his life, with the Taj visible along the river.

Three options

Private AC car, driver and guide; the same with monument entrances; or with entrances and lunch.

Practical

Twelve hours door to door, of which eight are road. The Taj is closed on Fridays.

Entry is ₹1,300 a head for a foreign adult with the mausoleum, ₹650 at the fort.