Tuesday 8th April 2025

The alarm went off at four, I had hardly slept for some reason, so we got out of bed and got ready, walking along the empty marble corridors to reception where our group was gathering.

At five, we all walked to the bus, and then drove in near silence along quiet streets to the parking for the east entrance, getting off then climbing on a golf buggy for the last half mil to the entrance.

We were not the first ones in line, nor the last, so we waited for twenty minutes, until half five when the gates opened and we could go in.

Our guide told us the history of the building, its vital statistics before we were allowed loose, with the Taj and its four towers in pre-dawn blush pink light.

The Taj, our guide told us, is one of the seven wonders of the world, built on a grand scale, and symmetrical on a number of axis, all the celebrate and mourn a lost love, and a mausoleum built on a grand scale. It has lasted through the centuries.

It is now a place where influencers and people like them go to take selfies to say they’ve been to drive engagement on their social medias. They can even hire their own photographer to follow them round and take shots at the best places, so the rest of us don’t get near.

Bitter?

Yes, quite.

Saying that, going at dawn was a stroke of genius, and meant even after listening to the guide, I was able to get the shots I wanted, and later on get some fine detail shots too.

The gardens, 49 acres of them, are amazing, with reflection pools and platforms, all looking good with said reflections.

Birds were waking up, exciting the two parties of twitchers, sorry, birders on the tour, and macaque monkeys patrolled round looking for discarded food or drink.

Up a set of steps and through more security, and after putting on overshoes, you climb the 22 steep steps to the entrance, though photography or loitering are not allowed, so we file round and back into the now bright early morning sunshine.

Even at seven in the morning, it was getting hot, and our visit was due t end at half seven, so after meeting back up with Jools, we walked to the east gate to the rest of the party.

Then walk outside to wait for a golf buggy to take us back to the coach park.

Not far to the hotel, and in time for breakfast. Or would have been were it not for a conference of trainee executives, who were like a swarm of locusts round the counters. So I made do with toast and a Danish and two coffees.

Next up was a trip to the Red Fort, but Jools and I bailed, as did Andrew and Karen, due to the heat and lack of sleep the previous night.

So, we went up for a snooze, then a shower and packed before lunch at midday and wheels at one.

We ate. Checked out. Paid our bill, and went to the bus where our cases had been loaded, so ahead was a four hour drive back to Dehi to a hotel near the airport. But it seems no one told the driver about the new hotel, as we will see later.

The drive was uneventful. Hot and humid, and the bus bounced over potholes and joins in the road like a rubber ball. I snoozed for a while, as did most of the others, as we retraced our steps of the previous day, passing by the brick factories and kilns, with people, whole families it seems, working to make bricks from the local clay in moulds before setting them to dry. They houses were next to where they worked, jerry built from the bricks they made, and dusty with it.

We drove on.

In time we came to Delhi, with its jams and crazy traffic, made all the worse by the driver taking us back to the place we stayed at on Sunday night, which we only realised after taking an hour to get through the traffic to downtown, he then had to fight through it again to get us to the Lemon Tree near the airport. The three-hour trip took five hours.

But here we are, the internet doesn’t work, and we have to check out in the morning at a quarter to five to catch our flight at ten past seven. Four more guests have joined the tour for the main part, the tigers and the safaris.