Taj Mahal, Agra
It is exactly as good as the photos make it look. Get there at dawn, before the bus tours.
Field notes
Twenty-eight days, fifteen cities, more than four hundred photos.
India was the longest country of the trip — a month of train travel from Mumbai north to Rajasthan, east through the Taj at Agra, on to Varanasi and the Ganges, and finally up into Nepal.
It's also the country we have the most photos from. Fifteen cities. Forts, palaces, temples, ghats, deserts, and the slow trains that took us between them.
"Six in the morning on the ghats. The river is grey, the sky is grey, the smoke from the cremation fires is the only thing that's warm."
— Varanasi · September 2001
India