There’s more to Agra than the Taj Mahal. The Red Fort and nearby Fatehepur Sikri are masterpieces of Mughal architecture in their own right and Agra is a lively, engaging city (which in India means extremely lively, exceptionally engaging). But “Emeralds, rubies, and pearls…must pass away, yet still one solitary tear would hang on the cheek of time in the form of this white and gleaming Taj Mahal,” as India’s great laureate Rabindranath Tagore wrote. Heartliftingly, almost hallucinatorily beautiful, the Taj is one of the first artifacts we would present to aliens as proof of humanity’s worth.