The Taj Mahal at sunrise with a private guide

We collect you from the hotel about 40 minutes before sunrise and take the battery buggy to the east gate. Security is quick at that hour. Your guide carries the tickets, including the add-on ticket for the main mausoleum, so you walk straight through the red sandstone gateway, the Darwaza-i-Rauza, and see the Taj framed in its arch.

The first half-hour belongs to the garden and the long water channel, when the marble moves from grey to pink to soft white. We then climb onto the platform, cover our shoes and walk inside to the cenotaphs of Mumtaz Mahal and Shah Jahan, surrounded by a carved marble screen. Your guide points out how the Quranic lettering grows larger towards the top so it reads evenly from below.

Before leaving we walk to the mosque on the west side and the guest hall on the east, both in red sandstone, for the classic side views of the dome. Most guests are back at the hotel for breakfast by 9 am, by which time the queues at the west gate stretch long. If fog hides the dome, as it can in December and January, we hold a second morning in reserve.