Agra

Once the capital of the Mughal Empire, Agra is best known as the home of the Taj Mahal, one of the Seven Wonders of the World. The incredible monument was built by Shah Jahan, after the death of his beloved wife Mumtaz. Construction of the Taj took over 22,000 labourers and 1000 elephants, and used materials sourced from as far as China, Tibet, Sri Lanka and Afghanistan. It’s hard to underplay the beauty and grandeur of this incredible building, once described as ‘a teardrop on the cheek of eternity’ by Poet Rabindranath Tagore.

Aside from the Taj Mahal, there are two other UNESCO World Heritage Sites that you can visit in Agra. One is the Agra Fort, a well-preserved Mughal palace constructed from red sandstone and white marble. The other, which lies 40km out of town, is Fatehpur Sikri, designed in the 16^th century to be the new capital of the Mughal Empire but later abandoned.