From Delhi: Taj Mahal and Agra Day Tour by Car with 5* Meal

An early pickup is the whole trick

The difference between a good day in Agra and a long one is what time you leave Delhi. Before six and the expressway is empty; after eight and Gurugram costs you an hour before you have left the city.

Early also means the Taj in the first hours, which is when the marble is worth the trip.

Taj Mahal

Shah Jahan began it in 1632, the year after Mumtaz Mahal died bearing their fourteenth child. Twenty-two years, twenty thousand workers, and white marble hauled 400 km from Makrana in Rajasthan.

The things a guide shows you that you would otherwise walk past: the calligraphy on the great arch, cut in progressively larger letters so it reads the same height from the ground; the pietra dura inlay, with as many as sixty pieces of cornelian, jasper and lapis in a single flower; the four minarets, each tilted fractionally outward so that an earthquake would drop them away from the tomb; and the optical trick at the Darwaza-i-Rauza gateway, where the Taj appears to shrink the closer you get.

And the one deliberate break in the symmetry: Shah Jahan's own cenotaph, placed off the central axis beside his wife's by Aurangzeb after his death.

Agra Fort

Two kilometres upriver. Akbar's red sandstone city of 1565 with Shah Jahan's marble palaces inside: the Diwan-i-Am where petitions were heard, the Khas Mahal, the Sheesh Mahal bath house set with mirror fragments.

And the Musamman Burj, the octagonal marble tower on the river wall where Aurangzeb imprisoned his father for the last eight years of his life, with the Taj visible along the water. He died there.

Four options

An Agra-start car, driver and guide; from Delhi with car and guide; the same with entry fees; or with entry fees and lunch at a five-star hotel.

Practical

Around seven hours in Agra plus the road. The Taj is closed on Fridays.