Photo: Taj Mahal, Louise’s Camera, April 2023
“Stand on that line. Look straight ahead. Walk forwards and keep looking straight ahead until you’re through the arch. This way you will get the full appreciation of it.”
These were the slightly unexpected words of our guide as we stood in a large courtyard, flanked by tall red sandstone walls, ignoring the swathe of photographers waiting to offer their services to guide-less tourists.
It was 6am and the sun was just beginning to warm the red walls of the monument. Our autorickshaw had been waiting outside our homestay at 5:30am and at this point we were still worryingly un-caffeinated. This morning just happened to be my forty-fourth birthday and I had woken with a dull migraine headache, probably brought on by the hot and stressful drive from New Delhi the afternoon before.
I say hot and stressful because we’d organised a taxi to drive us from New Delhi to Agra in the afternoon. Our driver had approached the journey as if he was a character in Mario Kart, zipping and swerving between the already chaotic traffic on the roads out of Delhi and then nodding off throughout the journey until he stopped in a rest area for a cup of Chai. With music blaring and the windows down, it had been a memorable, but not relaxing, three hours drive.
I was determined to carry on though despite my headache, as this was our only day in the city and so our only opportunity, on this trip at least, to tick off one particular bucket list experience I had been waiting for years to do.
Today we were visiting the Taj Mahal.
If I’m honest, I was thoroughly expecting this visit to be a disappointment. The Taj Mahal had been on my bucket list for years, ever since I had been given the book ‘Fifty places to see before you die’ as a birthday present. Experience told me that often when we really want to see something, it doesn’t quite meet our expectations. And even if it is the marvel we’re expecting, we’re in a crowd of thousands which tends to dent the experience.
I was therefore surprisingly unprepared for how I felt as I walked under the archway.
Keeping my eyes straight ahead of me, the Taj Mahal grew larger as I stepped through the arch. To the right the sun was rising, bathing the side of this glorious monument to love in white with a warm, golden glow.
This was truly a wonder.
In a moment of complete awe, my eyes filled with tears as I took everything in. Not a glimmer of disappointment.
Photo: The Taj Mahal really is a monument to love, Louise’s Camera, April 2023
If you’re not familiar, the Taj Mahal is a monument to love.
The Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan built the Taj Mahal as a mausoleum for his beloved wife, Mumtaz Mahal, who passed away in 1631 while giving birth to their 14th child.
Shah Jahan was so deeply saddened by her death that he wanted to create a grand and beautiful structure to honour her memory. The Taj Mahal was his vision of an eternal resting place for Mumtaz Mahal and an expression of his everlasting love for her. It was a testament to the intensity of their bond and his grief over her loss.
The symmetrical layout of the Taj, its use of white marble, the intricate carvings, and the delicate inlay work all symbolize the perfection and purity of love. The four minarets represent the four corners of love, and the central dome signifies heaven.
There is doubtless something incredibly special about the Taj Mahal.
The level of perfection that has been achieved in its design and build fills you with a sense of warmth and wholeness that I find hard to describe. It is literally like looking at perfection. Our guide I think said it best, when he said that the Taj Mahal is the only man-made setting in the world that gives you the same sense of wonder and awe as looking at something glorious in nature, like Half Dome in Yosemite National Park, the Grand Canyon or looking up at the stars.
Mark and I looked at each other, both a little misty-eyed in the early morning sunlight.
To finally be here, together, after everything we had been through in the last couple of years, after everything the world had been through in the last couple of years.
It was a special moment.
If you’re new here then let me tell you a little more of our story.
Mark and I had met in 2013, both divorced, both looking for someone to share our adventures with. Mark had four children, I had one.
Travel was quickly built into our relationship DNA as Mark asked me to marry him, serenaded by Italian guitar on the Ponte Vecchio in Florence. We took all of our children to Florida on our honeymoon.
We travelled as often as we could until Covid-19 came and the world ground to a halt. A year into the pandemic, and following a doctor’s visit after a conversation with someone to whom I will be forever grateful, Mark was diagnosed with stage 3 prostate cancer. Within weeks, he was in surgery, and six months later he was back in hospital for a course of radiotherapy.
Photo: Taj Mahal, Louise’s Camera, April 2023
It was the hardest of times and we decided then to stop waiting for an uncertain future and to start having adventures now.
That’s when we decided to walk the Camino de Santiago with two of our children, rather than wait until everyone had left home and we had ‘the time’. 2022 became our year of travel.
And that’s how we came to be standing, gazing at the wonder of the Taj Mahal at sunrise, on that April morning.
It’s also what brought me here to substack and to you, reader.
This seems like the perfect place to share more deeply our thoughts about our lives and our travels, and more about our why. Part blog, part newsletter, and part members’ community, this will be our new home outside of our YouTube channel.
I’m going to write here more regularly at least once a week. I’ll be sharing our thoughts about our travels, our experiences of our part-time life in our van, thoughts about parenting teenagers and home-school and more. I’ll also share more practical things like our itineraries, travel recommendations and knowledge of walking the Camino de Santiago here too.
I’ll be building a community here too. A place to hang out and find like-minded friends.
And that brings me to the BIG SCARY THING.
We’re now offering, as of today, an exclusive paid subscription option here on Substack. If you find value in my writing and in our sharing of our travels, I’d love you to consider becoming a paid subscriber here with me, for less than £1 per week.
When you go paid you’ll also get members-only posts, full access to the community we are building here (so you’ll soon be seeing members-only posts, discussions and private chat spaces) and the warm, fuzzy glow of knowing that you’re supporting us in this big, scary leap in a new direction.
Sounds good? You can opt-in by clicking below.
This will be so much more fun with you!
See you here next week if not before, and thank you for your support.
Louise and Mark x