You may have noticed that my posts have been curiously absent of late. That isn’t because I’ve lost interest, but rather because I have been in a remote village in Madhya Pradesh taking some wonderful pictures of the local people. I can’t wait to share some, but first I thought I would reward my readers’ patience with an iconic Indian image of….drum roll…the Taj Mahal.

The problem was choosing which photo to put up – should I go for the classic shot of the majestic mausoleum reflected in the water, or choose something a bit different to all the publicity and tourist shots? I chose to do the latter, and hope you like the result, but I think I’ll be posting one or two more over the next few weeks because I got a really lovely collection of images.

Well, it is supposed to be the most beautiful building in the world, so it would be a bit of a failure if I didn’t!

A few interesting facts – the building isn’t actually a house but a white marble mausoleum, built to hold the body of Mumtaz Muhal, the beloved wife of the Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan, who was grief-stricken when she died during childbirth. It is symmetrical on all sides and you get the same view whichever side you look at it from. The ruler was also unceremoniously buried there by his son upon his death after having been deposed and held prisoner by him in the nearby Agra Fort for several years.

The Indian writer Rabindranath Tagore in famously described the Taj Mahal as

“a solitary tear suspended on the cheek of time.”