Delhi/Agra, India. May 14, 2012

I went to the Taj Mahal yesterday. As bizarrely calm as I have come to feel in Delhi, I was looking forward to a trip out of the chaos which is this city. I wanted a break from the persistent, endless, mindless, inane, judicious, ridiculous honking of horns and the long deep sprogging of snot before it is spat out.

My driver picked me up at 5.30am. The city was still dark as we set off into the countryside. It was as quiet as Delhi is ever going to get. I watched the sun come up over sprawling fields. I watched all manner of transport take to the streets from overcrowded buses to tuk tuks with a dozen people squished in, camels and bullocks drawing laden carts behind them, motorbikes and bicycles and cars and antique trucks. I saw people wash at communal water pumps and kids playfully heckle each other as they wandered off to school. This felt like a peek at the India not seen in the guidebooks. And I felt so blessed to be experiencing it.

Except for being on the roads. The lanes on Indian roads are aspirational at best, utterly disregarded at worst. A three lane road in India obviously can handle five lanes of traffic if the motorists try hard enough – and they do! Somehow though, there are remarkably few accidents. It’s as if everyone is just going with the flow and it works. I have found it best not to sit in the front seat of a car and definitely not look out the windscreen. Looking out a side window could be alarming but not terrifying so this became my preferred option.

After about five hours of travelling on the perilous roads, we were approaching Agra, home of the Taj Mahal. I was desperate to go to the bathroom and realised I would have to brave using a public toilet. Mmmmmmm.

Luckily I had some tissues with me so I entered the cubicle. I immediately started dry retching. The smell was, well, imagine the worst smell you can for a public toilet in India and you are probably getting close. At this stage I wish I had on a short skirt or just shorts but I knew you had to dress respectfully at the Taj, so I had on long pants. I had a problem. I had to decide whether I keep the legs of my pants from wading through other people’s urine or cover my nose. I went with the former while wishing I was the Hindu God Ganesh who has eight arms. Then I would have had a spare hand to hold my nose and stop dry retching as I sat astride a hole in the ground in the middle of bloody nowhere. I resolved there and then to drink as little as possible for the rest of the day as this was not an experience I ever wanted to repeat!

Anyways, the Taj Mahal. No motorised vehicles are allowed within a few kilometres of the area so you need to pack your water bottle, splash on sunscreen and your hat, and prepare for the long walk in searing heat. As you approach the grounds there are all these elephants – some with decorated trunks – being shopped around as taxis. They are massive beasts and defecate a lot so you are battling enormous crowds, huge piles of elephant dung and trying to not get run over by electric tuk tuks. Indian nationals by far account for the majority of tourists at the Taj, but there are also healthy numbers of international tourists wandering around dazed, overwhelmed or just in awe.

Just as the combination of the heat, distance and crowds seems too much to bear, you look up and there she is – the glorious Taj Mahal! It is impossible to not suck your breath in. The millions of photos and drawings of the Taj come to life before your eyes. It is real and the scale is beyond comprehension.

It was astonishingly beautiful. I actually cried when I saw it. Angkor Wat and the Great Wall of China have nothing on this baby. It is HUGE. MASSIVE. MAMMOTH. A TESTAMENT TO MAN’S INGENUITY.

My guide had studied the history of the Taj Mahal and was very keen to impart his knowledge. I was thankful to have someone so knowledgeable explain it to me. You either have to take your shoes off or cover them when you are inside the monument. Anyone who knows me understands my pure loathing of shoes. Oh my God, the feel of my bare feet on that cold, ancient marble was heaven itself. And the story. The Mogul, Shah Jahan, built it when his favourite wife (mmmph) died giving birth to their 14th child. Her name was MumTaj Mahal. The doctor had warned him to stop “having relations” with her as she wouldn’t survive another delivery, but he believed as a Mogul he was powerful enough to stop that.

She used to travel with him into battle (cause apparently that is the privilege of the favourite wife) and she gave birth while battle waged. He was sent for and legend goes that as her life force slipped away, she asked him to construct a small building so she would be remembered. I am not sure if it is a monument to guilt or love or because he misunderstood the word “small”. Either way, I’m glad he bothered. It took 20,000 workers 22 years to build and the ancestors of the artisans who worked on the carved and bejewelled marble continue to live just outside the walls of the Taj Mahal.

I was able to sit for a very long time outside in the forecourt and meditate and just enjoy its splendour and be grateful for the incredible opportunities my life has offered me. Seriously, I was sitting in front of the bloody Taj Mahal. And I laughed and then cried some more. The scope of the project, the years of dedication, the intricate craftsmanship, the history, the reverence.

Spending time in a place so ancient and so important historically, is humbling as an Australian where we have largely failed to recognise indigenous places of significance and western buildings have only been on the landscape for a couple of hundred years. Before I began travelling, I understood old buildings to be those found in The Rocks in Sydney which would not be older than 215 years. It really is funny when you consider it in that context.

Anyway, finally I needed to leave and was promptly taken to a number of local shops by my driver and guide despite my strong protests. But this is all part of the game and the key to surviving India is to just go with it man.

By the last shop I had had enough of the constant, frustrating badgering and haggling so I claimed I had no money, that an Indian had taken all my money and I was broke. Kind of true in that I had been ripped off a few days earlier by an Indian shopkeeper. The poor men in the shop, ancestors of craftsmen who had worked on the Taj Mahal, were so mortified by this they immediately offered me money. It was at this point that the generosity and warmth of the Indian people really dawned on me. Yet again I was humbled. Naturally I declined feeling a little guilty about the mistruth.

The trip back to the motel was fun because India was in the throes of celebrating the Hindu festival of colour – the Holi festival. While that means the whole country has completely shut down today – seriously, there is nothing happening and I wish I had bought a good book to fill in the day – the celebrations start early. That meant the ride back (four and a bit hours) we saw people being pelted with water bombs and dye bombs. The colours are amazing. You would see “people carriers”, which look exactly like cattle trucks crammed with people, throwing these colour bombs at other passing people carriers so there were these clouds and explosions of colour everywhere.

I was amazed on the approach back to Delhi to see a group of young girls aged probably between about three and six, begging for food or money, who found an exploded colour bomb on the ground and began covering each other in the purple, laughing their heads off, begging forgotten for a few moments.

It had been a long day. I was dehydrated and very, very hungry having gone with the only safe eating option of bananas for the entire 12 hour day. But I felt exhilarated. I had seen more of India. I had been to the Taj Mahal. Felt the cold, ancient marble beneath my feet as millions before me had. India had anchored itself as my spiritual home. I had fallen in love and know the affair won’t end soon.