2007 – The occasion is my 65th Birthday in Agra, India
 

 

The Taj Mahal stands to celebrate the matchless love Emperor Shah Jahan had for his Queen Mumtaz. The famous Bengali poet, Tagore, describing Shah Jahans grief on Mumtaz death, wrote Running tears turned his garment white and the rest of the court followed suit. As did we!

We alight from our white-draped rickshaws walking through white-uniformed horse guards with spears and up a path lit by hundreds of white candles. We lounge on white bolsters under a new moon with plenty of cold Kingfisher and platters of prawn, chicken and beef kebabs from the kitchen of Sheratons famous Bukhara Restaurant watching Alan Guignon performing a recitation of Tagore’s poem.
 

 
 
 
 

 

As a footnote:
Little did the 35 guests realise that two hours before they arrived, that this magical setting, now ablaze in white and light, was a car-park for a carpet factory!

Amazing how the Event Planner, Nimi, managed the transformation installing the white stage, the white sets, the white reclining lounges, lighting and sound system in just two hours.

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Guests at "The Musgrave Party" – India, September, 2007

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s I prepare to depart on a trip to Egypt and a cruise on the Nile next week, I look back on my first and only visit to Cairo – in 1990 on a business trip. I took an afternoon off to do the ‘tourist thing’, and took a drive out to see the Sphinx and the Pyramids just outside Cairo. To my surprise, I didn’t approach them across miles of cinnamon-dusted desert like in the postcards. Driving along the main street of suburban Giza, a bustling built-up suburb with buildings, streetlights, cars and markets, there they were! The top of the great Pyramid appeared like the Castle at the end of Main Street in Disneyland.

Watch this space for the stories for my upcoming trip.

I recall similar disappointment years ago when I first saw St Peter’s in Rome. The wide sweep of the Square just ‘appeared’ at the end of a row of drab buildings along a long, narrow street. Also one Sunday afternoon in London I lost my way in the city and turned out of busy traffic onto the approach of a bridge. Stopped at traffic lights, I looked up to see the battlements of Tower Bridge in close-up with no magical stretch of river to set the scene. Postcards conveniently remove the blight from many of the world’s famous landmarks.