"Some strange kind of odour fills our nostrils as you leave the Shilpgram parking slot and move towards the Taj," a young Chinese tourist Zhao Hong told this correspondent recently.

 Tourists from other parts too have felt "the whole city of Agra has an unusual stink or odour. We dont know what the reason is but it is there like the urban clusters are perched on mounds of shit," reacted an American traveller Robbie.

 Elsewhere they roll out a red carpet for guests. In Agra, you have permanently animal dung splashed roads and a stink in the air welcoming people. Little wonder no one wants to stay back for the night in Agra, comments Surendra Sharma, president of the Braj Mandal Heritage Conservation Society. "I hope before the Commonwealth Games they would address this problem," he hopes.

 Environmental scientists in the city blame the river Yamuna which has been reduced to a huge sewage canal for want of fresh water. "The city's sewer system is choked, the treatment plants are not working. In many localities waste water including sewer is being directly pumped into the earth through borewells. Methane is being generated from huge mountains of garbage piled up everywhere as there is no proper and scientific system in place for its disposal. Hospital waste is also callously littered around. You have the dairies and cattle herds freely loitering around. No wonder foul and noxious gases are being released into the atmosphere," says environmentalist Ravi Singh.

 In the Taj Ganj area around the Taj Mahal, you have the horse-driven tongas, hundreds of them. Now you also have the camel carts. "The animals litter around. You can see the condition of the roads, all splashed up with dung that gets stuck up on the shoes and is transported inside the monument. Dairies in the Taj Ganj area have not been shifted. So you have the spectacle of cattle merrily crossing the road at the Eastern Gate of the Taj Mahal. The cattle fights are joined in by barking dogs almost daily," says emporium owner and handicrafts exporter Abhinav Jain.

Last year ex Municipal commissioner Shyam Singh Yadav had ordered special bags fitted to the animals rear to collect the dung. "For some time the tonga and camel cart drivers followed the instructions, but now no one cares and the sad scene is visible to all," says tourist guide Ved Kumar.

The road from the Agra Fort to the Taj Mahal is littered with "animal-shit" that no one cares to clean. The present municipal commissioner Anand Vardhan thinks it is "not such a serious issue after all."

A stall owner at the parking slot says there must be close to 100 animals drawing all kinds of vehicles. "Each day a minimum of five kilograms of dung is expelled by one animal. Once in a while you also have elephants coming over to amuse the tourists. What they leave behind is never cleaned up."

The Agra Development Authority has no plans to clean up the area. "It is the responsibility of the Municipal Corporation," said one official.

Agra mayor Anjula Singh Mahaur said she would visit the area and "do something to sort out the problem."