If you're lucky enough to get a room with a view, you'll see it right away. A shimmering monument of white, it floats above the shabby city of Agra. From afar, the Taj Mahal is as beautiful as the poets promise--a glowing tribute to obsessive adoration and a symbol of India around the world. But up close, the picture begins to crumble. Acid rain and condensation from the former Mughal capital's coke-fueled factories and, environmentalists say, a nearby oil refinery are eating away the marble and turning what remains the color of unloved teeth. The famous canals and watercourses stink. Garbage abounds. And attempts at preservation have proved ineffective, clumsy and lacking in either funds or purpose.
The trouble begins even before you enter the mausoleum that Emperor Shah Jahan built for his second wife, Queen Mumtaz Mahal. The crowds are huge (the site attracts 40% of the tourists who travel to India). And because authorities have banned fossil-fuel vehicles in the area, visitors must rent electric cars or carts drawn by horses or camels to get close to the mausoleum, even as flies swarm around the animals and the dung they scatter across the potholed roads.
After lining up for tickets ($20 for foreigners, 40[cents] for Indians), there's a second line, longer and sometimes more costly. Security guards on watch for terrorists frisk bags and bodies at two separate checkpoints, confiscating anything from a long list of banned items, including tripods, mobile phones and video cameras. And if the guards don't get your equipment, the thieves might: pickpockets work the lines.
But there's no denying the awesomeness of the sight once you're inside. The gardens, the ornamental fountains. The minarets, the enormous marble arches. It is big enough, still white enough, as it stands against a clear skyline. The symmetry is perfect. But as soon as this impression passes, the details settle in. Plastic bottles litter the lawns; the canals are dirty; guides offering tours for an inflated price are maddeningly insistent. The colored engravings are chipped and in places have fallen off. In the basement, the graves of the Emperor and his beloved are off limits, the entrance blocked with untidy wire mesh. The inner sanctum smells of bats and pigeon droppings. Enormous beehives hang from the arches; black smoke stains mark where other hives have been burned off. The river behind the tomb is sluggish with sewage.
It's not that India hasn't tried to take care of the Taj Mahal. Several state environmental lawsuits have demanded action. Polluting foundries and factories have been closed down on the orders of the country's Supreme Court. But the Archaeological Survey of India, the agency responsible for the conservation of the historical site, has neither the funds nor the know-how to carry out its duties.