Ox-drawn carts trekked roughly 200 miles to Rajasthan where the Makrana quarries were celebrated for their milky white marble (and still are). Laborers constructed scaffolding and used a complex system of ropes and pulleys to haul giant stone slabs to the uppermost reaches of the domes and minarets.

The 144-foot-high main dome, constructed of brick masonry covered in white marble, weighs 12,000 tons, according to one estimate. The Taj was also the most ambitious inscription project ever undertaken, depicting more than two dozen quotations from the Koran on the Great Gate, mosque and mausoleum.

I had visited the Taj Mahal as a tourist with my family in 2008, and when I read of renewed concerns about the deterioration of the monument, I wanted to return and take a closer look.

Unable to cross the river by boat, I went to the Taj complex in the conventional manner: on foot, and then in a bicycle rickshaw. Motor vehicles are not allowed within 1,640 feet of the complex without government approval; the ban was imposed to reduce the air pollution at the site. I bought my $16.75 ticket at a government office near the edge of the no-vehicle zone, next to a handicraft village where rickshaw drivers wait for work. Riding in the shade in a cart propelled by a human being exposed to blazing sun felt awkward and exploitative, but environmentalists promote this form of transport as nonpolluting. For their part, rickshaw drivers seem glad for the work.

At the end of the ride, I waited in a ten-minute ticket-holders line at the East Gate, where everyone endures a polite security check. After a guard searched my backpack, I walked with other tourists—mostly Indian—into the Jilaukhana, or forecourt. Here, in the days of Shah Jahan, visitors would dismount from their horses or elephants. Delegations would gather and compose themselves before passing through the Great Gate to the gardens and the mausoleum. Even now, a visitor experiences a spiritual progression from the mundane world of the city to the more spacious and serene area of the forecourt and, finally, through the Great Gate to the heavenly abode of the riverfront gardens and mausoleum.

The Great Gate is covered with red sandstone and marble, and features flowery inlay work. It has an imposing, fortress-like quality—an architectural sentry guarding the more delicate structure within.

The enormous entranceway is bordered by Koranic script, a passage from Sura 89, which beckons the charitable and faithful to enter Paradise. Visitors stream through a large room, an irregular octagon with alcoves and side rooms, from where they catch their first view of the white-marble mausoleum and its four soaring minarets nearly 1,000 feet ahead.

The mausoleum sits atop a raised platform in the distance, at the end of a central water channel that bisects the gardens and serves as a reflecting pool. This canal, and another that crosses on an east-west axis, meet at a central reservoir, slightly raised. They are designed to represent the four rivers of Paradise. Once, the canals irrigated the gardens, which were lusher than they are today. Mughal architects constructed an intricate system of aqueducts, storage tanks and underground channels to draw water from the Yamuna River. But now the gardens are watered from tube wells.

To further mimic the beauty of Paradise, Shah Jahan planted flowers and fruit trees, which encouraged butterflies to flit about. Some historians say the trees were grown in earth that was originally below the pathways—perhaps as much as five feet down, allowing visitors to pluck fruit as they strolled the grounds. By the time Britain assumed rule over Agra in 1803, the Taj complex was dilapidated and the gardens were overgrown. The British cut down many of the trees and changed the landscaping to resemble the bare lawns of an English manor. Visitors today often sit on the grass.

The domed mausoleum appears as wondrous as a fairy tale palace. The only visual backdrop is the sky.

“The Taj Mahal has a quality of floating, an ethereal, dream-like quality,” says Pres­ton. The bustling crowds and clicking cameras can detract from the serenity, but they also fill the complex with vitality and color. Walking around the back of the mausoleum, I stooped to take a photo of some rhesus monkeys. One jumped on my back before quickly bounding off.

The Taj Mahal is flanked on the west by a mosque, and on the east by the Mihman Khana, which was originally used as a guesthouse, and later, in the 18th and 19th centuries, as a banquet hall for British and Indian dignitaries. I found it a lovely place to escape the sun. A small boy in a black leather jacket claiming to be the son of a watchman at the Taj offered to take my picture standing under a large arched doorway, with the marble mausoleum in the background. I gave him my camera and he told me where to stand, changing the settings on my Canon and firing off photos like a pro. After that, he led me down some steps to a corner of the gardens shaded by trees to take what he called the “jungle shot,” with branches in the foreground and the white marble of the mausoleum behind. We found a chunk of carved stone, perhaps a discarded piece used in restoration work or a stone detached from the monument itself. (Three years ago, a seven-foot slab of red sandstone fell off the East gate.) Two soldiers approached, scolded the boy and shooed him away. 

(Jeffrey Bartholet is a freelance writer and foreign correspondent)