Incredible India 2010 - Day4 Agra Taj Mahal

Today we visit the most iconic monument of India, the Taj Mahal. Reading other photography blogs, it was quite obvious that one needs to see the Taj at sunrise. While the gates open at 06h00 we were at the ticket office a quarter to. My iPhone gave me a  local sunrise of 06h12. As a travel photographer I'm a huge fan of the iPhone app MagicHour (the old Vela clock). It gives you exact sunrise ( and moon) with the azimuth for any position on earth.

Even though there are quite a bit of negative write-ups on the net the Taj did definitively not disappoint us!

Our first view of the monumental tomb was through the main gate. I do realize this shot has been made a million time, but I still feel I had to include it.

I then quickly moved on to the North Western side, to shoot the sunrise while there was nobody around.

Next was the East side. The sun was now just peeking above the horizon and shed  beautiful light on the marble mausoleum completed in 1653. Interestingly enough the 4, 40m tall, minarets are tilted slightly outwards in order not to damage the main building if they would collapse.

A closer looks reveals the wonderful detail of the building and the inlay stone decorations which are among the finest in Mughal architecture.

Photography inside the building is not allowed. My Nikon D700 must have self-fired while pointing at the grave of Mumtaz Mahal and her husband Shah Jahan, who build the Taj Mahal when she died while given birth to their 14th child. Her grave sits exactly in the center of the monument.

On exiting the main building these 4 ladies seemed to be having a great time... Who can pass such a wonderful play of colors without making a photograph?

After spending about 3 hours on the site and agreeing this a must see, we went back to the hotel to grab breakfast and then continued our journey Westbound to Jaipur, Rajasthan.

All of the Taj Mahal images here.


Previous "Incredible India blogposts" can be found by scrolling down.

The rest of day 4 should be online in the coming days,

Happy shooting,

BJORN