Sun-rise at the Taj Mahal

Anybody who knows me is probably aware that I'm not the best at getting up early in the morning. I generally don't really wake up until I've had a cup of coffee. As a rule I enjoy a nice lie in when I don't have anywhere that I need to be! :) This morning I had intended getting up at about 8:30 and spending a leisurely day investigating onward travel. However, I happened to glance at my watch shortly after 5am and after weighing up the pros and cons of missing out on my lie in decided to drag my lazy ass out of bed. 5:15am apparently is not a good time to be looking for an auto-rickshaw driver outside the hotel, the usual gathering of them wasn't present, so I had to resign myself to avail of transport from the hotel, which although very comfortable is a good deal more expensive. It does however come with air con. Yesterday my auto-rickshaw driver had taken me to the main entrance to the Taj which is in the Taj Ganj area (complete with narrow alleys that aren't really appropriate for cars). This is defintely the place to enter the Taj, as you can get really close to the entrance. The main entrance is a good distance back from the main Taj building and the auto-rickshaws can get pretty much right up to it. However, the East gate where I was taken this morning is much closer to the main Taj building and cars are prevented from going all the way to the entrance. I got to the barrier where the cars can go no further at 5:30 and was anxious that I might have missed the sun-rise. A short cycle rickshaw ride brought me to the East Gate where I had to wait until just before 6am along with 2 Germans and 2 Italians to get a ticket. They say the Taj opens at sunrise but if its 6am every morning that its open its more sun-rising rather than sun-rise.


I was one of the first tourists to get in through the gate and was the first tourist to get close enough to the Taj to take some nice photos which I hadn't been able to get yesterday. I'm hoping that they turn out as well as the view that I had this morning. Despite not getting the actual sun-rise as a backdrop against the Taj, I was very glad I dragged myself out of bed this morning as there were very few tourists around when I was there, and its really nice to enjoy such a fantastic monument when you pretty much have it all to youself!

Having done a quick tour of the main spots I had taken photos of yesterday I decided to head back to the hotel. On the way out of the Taj, I bumped into a couple that I had gotten chatting to at Dublin airport the day I left Ireland. Grainne and James were on the same flights to Delhi via London and they happened to be at the Taj this morning as well. Small world or what! :) They're heading to a few of the same spots as I am, so we exchanged email addresses so that we can trade stories of how we're getting on in South East Asia. Guys if you're reading this I hope that you enjoyed the remainder of your time in India and that you get to chill out a bit in Thailand.

I got chatting to an American guy while eating breakfast back at the hotel, he works for the US Goverment and at the moment is based in the Embassy in Beijing. He also lived in New Zealand for a few years, and it was nice to hear yet another person with nothing but great things to say about NZ.

I'm travelling on to Bharatpur tomorrow, and I'm not sure if there will be internet access easily available there, so if there are no posts from me for a while - its probably just that I don't have access to the internet. If you've been reading up on floods in India on the west coast and in Mumbai I'm nowhere near there, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh do get hit by the monsoon as well, but not as badly as the west coast.