The Taj Mahal
Marble that changes colour with the sun
- Distance
- 42.2 km
- Surface
- Riverside road
- Profile
- Flat
- Starts
- 05:30 early
- 07:00 main
- Start temperature
- 16 °C
Cut-off: None · Course closes 14:00
Marble that changes colour with the sun
Twenty thousand workers, twenty-two years, and a thousand elephants carrying marble across India — all of it so that one emperor could bury his wife somewhere worthy of her. It is a tomb, and it is the most photographed building on earth, and neither of those facts prepares you for standing in front of it.
Flat · Riverside road
The Yamuna riverside and the quiet roads behind Mehtab Bagh, on the far bank, where the Taj sits on the water opposite you for most of the distance. Flat, fast, and run at first light, when the marble turns from grey to pink to white as the sun comes up over the river. One of the two easiest courses of the seven, and it falls in the middle of the week, where you need it.
Day 7
Inside the Taj itself, with a guide, in rolling groups as people finish — the hotel is a few hundred metres from the east gate, so you shower and walk. Then the Red Fort at Agra, where the emperor who built the Taj spent his last eight years imprisoned by his own son, looking at it across the river.
Sixty people will see the seven wonders this way.
Places are allocated in order of deposit. Finishers of any Runbuk event may reserve before general registration opens.