The marble marvel

Elephanta Island temple in Mumbai, India. Picture / Brian Fallow

Testifying to a husband's grief, an emperor's power and a civilisation's artistic prowess, the Taj Mahal should be on anyone's must-see list.

It is the kind of place that tempts people to wax lyrical - "a teardrop on the cheek of time" - that sort of thing.

But words fail to do it justice and, though it is one of the most familiar images in the world, photographs do too. They left me unprepared for its size and scale, its sheer mass.

How could anything so beautiful be so big? How could anything so big be so beautiful?

But beauty is not the first word that comes to mind to describe Agra, the once-imperial city in the North Indian plain where the Taj is found. It is as though the drab dilapidation and squalor that surround it were deliberate, to heighten the contrast.

A sense of anticipation built as we transferred to electric buses several kilometres from the site, a precaution against the damage exhaust emissions might do it.

After the security screening, inevitable in our barbarous times, you enter a vast forecourt dominated by an imposing gatehouse in sandstone and marble.

Through the gateway at the other end of a long garden I caught my first sight of the Taj Mahal in all its serene splendour. Niggling fears of being disappointed dissipated at once. It is arrestingly beautiful.

The tip of its central dome stands nearly 60m above the ground and it is as wide as it is high. And this is not a mosque or a palace but a mausoleum, a tomb built by the Mughal emperor Shah Jehan for his wife Mumtaz Mahal, who died after giving birth to their 14th child.

Started in 1631, it took 20,000 craftsmen 22 years to build, using white marble and decorating it with inlaid stone. The marble changes hue, reflecting the colour of the sky, so dawn and sundown are especially popular visiting times.

The decoration includes inscriptions from the Koran in black stone, which are larger the higher they are from the ground so that they all appear the same size, and a delicate, sinuous, floral motif using various semi-precious stones.

This inlaid stone technique embellishes the structure but does not encrust it or detract from the beauty of its lines and form.

We visited in November which is in the Indian winter, so the temperature was as balmy and pleasant as a New Zealand summer.

And while plenty of other people were around, the numbers were not overwhelming or any impediment to enjoying the site.

OSH would not approve, however. The Taj Mahal stands on a marble-paved platform about 100m square with minarets at each corner but only a low parapet around it.

Walking backwards with a camera clamped to your eye is not a good idea. And the steps up, polished by who knows how many pairs of visiting feet, lack a handrail.

The ornate central chamber does not contain the remains of Mumtaz Mahal and Shah Jehan. They are buried in a crypt which is off limits. Some of the Indian visitors tossed coins down the steps to the crypt.

Shah Jehan intended to build a second mausoleum for himself across the river, a replica of the Taj but in black marble, but before he could he was usurped by his son Aurangzeb and imprisoned in Agra fort.

From his quarters there he could see the Taj Mahal in the distance. Was that cruel or was it kind?

The Red Fort, so named for the sandstone from which it is built, is Agra's other must-see attraction.

A masterpiece of Mughal architecture, it is a fortified palace, built and used by three of India's rulers.

It contains several courtyards, including one which was used for public audiences. It surrounds a large arched canopy of stone which screens from the sun, fierce in summer, the elevated and ornately decorated balcony where the emperor sat dispensing justice or whatever.

Another smaller courtyard served the imperial harem. The surrounding chambers are small but numerous.

There is also an exquisite mosque and the apartments from which the imprisoned Shah Jehan, whose name means ruler of the world, lived out his last years, staring down the river at the lustrous domes and minarets of the tomb he built for his queen.

I visited Agra as part of an escorted tour of six Asian and African countries run by Melbourne-based Croydon Travel under the brand Captain's Choice.

A Qantas Boeing 747 was chartered to convey a couple of hundred Australians, and some New Zealanders, to visit the choicest tourist attractions in India, Jordan, Morocco, Libya, Kenya and Mauritius.

The experience is something like a cruise, with the jumbo and a series of five-star hotels filling the role of the liner. There are inevitably trade-offs involved in this unusual, if not unique, approach.

It costs big money to keep a jumbo on the ground so the time spent in each country is limited to two or three days. The upshot was that seven of the 16 days of the tour were largely consumed by travel from one destination to the next.

They minimise the hassles that involves, however. Baggage is handled as a job lot so you don't have to deal with Customs and, because it is a chartered plane, there is no check-in for seat numbers and the like. But there is no escaping immigration formalities and airport security checks.

It is a far cry from the hippie trail, backpacker type of travel. Interaction with local people is limited. But let's face it: when you reach a certain age there is a lot to be said for air-conditioning, comfortable beds and an endless supply of bottled water.

And there is still ample opportunity to get a taste of life in the places being visited.

For instance, as we waited outside an upmarket store in Agra for the rest of our party to finishing shopping, one of my travelling companions was attracted by some cheap bangles being hawked by a street kid, persistent and engaging.

The store's impressively uniformed doorman kept shooing the lad away, but his authority only extended to the edge of the property. Across that line willing buyer and willing seller completed the transaction. It's good to know that the entrepreneurial spirit is still alive at all levels of the Indian economy.

Bustling Mumbai, the commercial capital, gives off the same sense of enterprise, multiplied by 16 million.

Even at 6am on the way to the airport the route was lined with little shops, the size of a single garage, already open for business. But I can't help thinking they would have more chance of catching foot traffic if they organised a pavement.

About an hour's ferry ride from Mumbai is Elephanta Island, famed for a Hindu temple hollowed out of a mountainside.

To reach the temple requires climbing more than 100 steps, mercifully shaded and flanked by moderately importunate vendors of jewellery and refreshments.

For the elderly, infirm or plain lazy there is the option of being carried up and down by four guys with a seat attached to two poles.

Thought to date from the 7th century, 1000 years before the Taj was built, it is dedicated to the god Siva, depicted with three heads to represent his roles as creator, preserver and destroyer.

The statues of Siva and others who feature in his story, like the chamber which contain them, were hewn from the rock in which they stand. What devotion, or compulsion, I wonder was required to accomplish that?

* Brian Fallow travelled as guest of Captain's Choice.

* Next week, Brian Fallow moves on to Jordan, with its extraordinary rose red city of Petra, and Libya, with the magnificent ruins at Leptis Magna.