We collect you at the hotel in the dark, hold your place in the queue before the gate opens, and put a photographer with you who has shot the building through every season and knows where to stand in the month you are visiting. Not a guide with a camera - someone whose pictures you will actually keep.

Two hours covers it properly: the plinth and the mosque while the light is low, the garden as it warms, and the far bank afterwards for the view most visitors never see. Guides join later if you want the history; the first hour is deliberately quiet.

Friday is closed. Full-moon viewing is a separate ticket on a strict quota and needs a month's notice. Nothing else about this is difficult, but it only works if you sleep in Agra - driving in from Delhi means arriving at nine, with everyone else.