The man, who travelled 1,400 kilometres to see one of the seven wonders of the world, has 847 photographs of it on his phone, none of which will be looked at after this month, and approximately three minutes of actual visual memory of the structure he came to see. He rates the trip 4 stars. He deducted one star for the parking.
The man — who visited the site with his wife, parents, and two children; who waited 45 minutes in the entry queue; who paid the ticket price; who walked the full approach path in 39-degree heat; who bought an overpriced water bottle at the gate; who argued briefly with a guide offering services he ultimately accepted at half the asking price — spent the first 38 minutes of his Taj visit positioning himself and his family for photographs from every possible angle, including angles that required lying on the ground, angles that required his wife to climb a short wall, and one angle that a security guard asked him to please not attempt twice.
For approximately three minutes — between the completion of the family group photograph and the discovery that there was a spot near the reflecting pool where a different forced-perspective shot was possible — the man stood quietly and looked at the Taj Mahal. Without his phone. Just looked. And it was, he would say later that evening at the hotel, over dal makhani and a cold Kingfisher, "actually very beautiful, yaar. Very big. Very white." His wife, who also looked at it for three minutes and had approximately the same experience, agreed. Their children, aged 8 and 11, had already asked when they were going to the ice cream stall that was visible from the second gate, a question first raised at the first gate and raised continuously at ten-minute intervals since. The ice cream was good. It was very good. It was, the 8-year-old confirmed, the best part of Agra.
