Since reaching Northern India numerous travellers had warned us that Agra was the least appealing city on the Golden Triangle route so, considering our feelings about Jaipur, the Taj Mahal had a lot of pressure on its beefy marble shoulders to justify our two night stop off.

Luckily, the Taj transcends the highest of expectations as easily as it transcends the bedlam and commercialism of its surroundings: I don’t usually wax lyrical about buildings and I know nothing about architecture (and anyway, no phrase or photograph can really do justice to its contrasting elegance and delicacy), but we were both blown away. We arrived at the complex just after 6am when it was almost deserted and the sun sent the marble through a spectrum of pale grey, pearly cream, pale yellow and pure white in a matter of minutes – even with sleepy eyes it was the perfect time to visit.

As always in India, with the sublime comes the ridiculous – in this case we were forced to pay an exorbitant sum of money to enter the Taj Mahal complex, most of which is siphoned by politicians while the Taj suffers long term pollution damage – but, thankfully, in this case the sublime won by a mile.

Sitting in a hobbit-size cafe later in the day, our stop off in Agra became even more worthwhile when we met Eric the Scot: Eric was wearing cycling gear so we got chatting about bikes and it emerged that he had cycled from Aberdeen to Agra, half way to his destination (Adelaide) to raise money for charity. Eric was on his own (except for the six man armed guard who’d escorted him through Pakistan) and cited amongst his trip highlights a night spent on the floor in a petrol station, watching the guard dogs patrol the forecourt and listening to the three staff members take turns with a prostitute in the adjoining room (no door in between). He’d had a tooth infection (Azerbaijan) a broken collar bone (Italy), two bouts of gastroentiritis, various other hospital visits, and he was possibly the most cheerful man I’ve ever met. Eric is my new comfort barometer – the following day when James and I were forced (through partly self-inflicted reasons) to pay a 300Rs bribe to sit on the floor of a train vestibule, two yards from the stinking toilet, for three hours, with a numb arse and half a dozen perverted men circling us, I thought of Eric in that petrol station and serenely closed my eyes. Perhaps I am getting spiritual.