US President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania are all set to marvel the beauty of the Taj Mahal at sunset during their whistle-stop tour of Agra on Monday.
Trump will be only the third US President to visit the Taj, after Dwight Eisenhower in 1959 and Bill Clinton in 2000, while Melania will join the long list of First Ladies to have visited the monument of love on the banks of Yamuna.
Jacqueline Kennedy had the Taj on her itinerary during her nine-day solo trip to India in 1962 when she rode an elephant, visited Benares and joined Holi celebrations on the last day of her visit.
Hillary Clinton also visited the Taj in 1995 along with her daughter Chelsea, who was then in her teens, while on a speaking tour of South Asia, signalling a thaw in the Indo-US relations after the fall of the Soviet Union.
Five years later Bill Clinton visited India, the first visit by a US President in two decades, but Hillary had stayed back, ostensibly due to the Monica Lewkinsky episode that was unravelling in Washington. Clinton was accompanied by his daughter Chelsea.
Among the royalty to visit the marble monument include Queen Elizabeth in 1961, her grandson William and his wife Kate posed on the famous lover’s bench in 2016, close to their fifth wedding anniversary.
Lady Diana, the Princess of Wales, posed alone on the lover’s bench during a visit in 1992 as Prince Charles met with business leaders in New Delhi.
The photographs of Diana, sitting forlorn with the monument of love in the background, spoke volumes of the bumpy marriage with Charles that ended soon after.
Barack Obama visited India twice – 2010 and 2015 – but missed a date with the Taj on both the occasions. Barack and first lady Michelle had planned a visit to Agra in 2015, but had to cancel the plans as he flew to Saudi Arabia to mourn the death of King Abdullah.
Among the world leaders who have visited Taj Mahal include Russian President Vladimir Putin and wife Lyudmila Putina (1999), Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf and his wife Begum Sehba (2001), Brazilian President Lula da Silva (2004), Chinese President Hu Jintao and his wife Liu Yongqing (2006), Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his wife Sara (2018) and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, wife Sophie and three children (2018).