Moonlight Taj Mahal Tour from Yamuna River Side in Agra

The Taj from the other side of the river

This is not the inside-the-monument night viewing, and it is worth being clear about that before you book. The Archaeological Survey opens the Taj complex itself on only five nights a month, around the full moon, with a separate limited ticket sold in person at Agra's ASI office the day before.

What this tour does instead is take you to the Yamuna riverside behind the Taj in the evening, where you see the whole building from across the water with nobody in front of it.

For a lot of people that is the better photograph and certainly the calmer hour.

The viewpoint

A ghat on the far bank, reached by road from the city. The Taj sits directly across the water on its plinth, floodlit at the edges and lit by whatever the moon is doing, with the river and the sandbars in between.

On a bright night the marble holds light in a way that photographs strangely — it is translucent to about a centimetre, which is why it reads as glowing rather than lit.

Birds come in to the sandbars at dusk. It is one of the few genuinely quiet places within a kilometre of the world's most visited tomb.

Your guide

The history you would get inside: Shah Jahan, Mumtaz Mahal, the twenty-two years, and the reason the building faces the way it does — the river was part of the design, with the tomb set at the end of the garden rather than in its centre so that it would be seen from the water.

Practical

Around three hours with hotel pickup in the evening.

The view depends on the moon. A few nights either side of full moon is the window; a new moon gives you a silhouette and the floodlights.

Take a jacket from November to February, and mosquito repellent in any month — you are on a riverbank at dusk.

No monument ticket is needed, because you do not enter the complex.