Every guidebook under the sun has one comment to make about the Taj Mahal -it's enough to melt the heart of even the most jaded traveller.

'Mirror, mirror on the wall, who's the most jaded of them all?' I may as well ask at this point - because the simple truth is, the Taj and I just didn't click.

I had none of the promised heady rush of amazement, none of the awe-struck wonder that such a thing of beauty could exist. Instead, I found myself distracted, slightly disappointed and wondering whether I was the only person on earth who'd looked at this hulking great thing and thought, 'Actually - it's not that nice.'

There's just no scope in the sea of cliches for saying that liking the Taj might be a matter of personal taste - some people go for it, some people don't.

Instead, it's like chocolate, like God, like babies - you HAVE to like them, or risk people finding you awfully odd.

There were moments of greatness, it's true. Walking up to the massive entry gate in pitch darkness, all the Indian sentinels and security guards stamping their feet to keep warm, their breath puffing out in large, frosted-white speech bubbles, felt fantastic. Very adventure-licious.

Equally, seeing the Taj loom up at you through a huge scalloped portico is striking. In the heavy mist of a winter's dawn, it takes on an almost ethereal, dreamlike quality, seeming to float in the fog's belly. It's a little like being at sea and witnessing the bulk of a whale looming up out of the ocean's darkness - awe-some in the most full sense of that word.

But there are so many other elements at play in the Taj grounds that - for me - made the morning less an experience of communing with Beauty, and more like being stuck in a queue at Woolworths.

As we wait to go through the mandatory security screening before entering the complex, a booming American voice cries out, 'Hey! Tell us how you enjoy the frisk this morning!! Yesterday, I told him, "Hey Bud, that sure feels good!"'

Equally banal are the conversations of a large Aussie contingent inside: 'How can ANYONE wear open shoes in India?' they wonder aloud to one another. 'I was so glad to have closed-in shoes in Varanasi,' says one woman and everyone around agrees.

'See that "No Videography" sign over there?' asks another. 'Well, two Poms just walked past and said, "Oh, no more pictures allowed after this point then." Funny, really, to think they once ruled the world ...'

It's run-of-the-mill tourist chatter; things you could hear at any airport, at any international sporting match, on any beach.

But we're at The Taj, and I'm suddenly more taken by tourists' banter and the coldness of my butt than I am by the world's greatest monument to love.

'That's not a monument to love,' I find myself thinking, irritably. 'that's a monument to someone's grandiosity.' I feel cranky that a building errected after someone's death should be taken as the greatest act of love a person might be capable of, ignoring all the while the myriad tiny acts of devotion that pass between people every day.

Everyone's having trouble focusing their cameras in the half-light and the mist. I overhear one woman say, tight with anxiety, 'Oh, but really, we are just taking these for our own memories, aren't we?' Her voice rises a notch or two higher in concern, 'I mean ... these photos have been taken so many times by so many people - ours will just be for us; just to say we were here ... Won't they?'

It's sad and wistful, and there's the need for reassurance, and it makes me remember that we're all here seeking to have some 'special', 'unique' and somehow life-affirming experience. But instead, it's so easy to end up feeling tarnished and thoroughly unspecial. It's like being at a party and feeling that you're somehow socially stunted, and that everyone else is having a ball.

It's a tourist scrum; we 're all jockeying for pole-position, shutters clicking and flashes blanching out fine detail. It makes me glad that I forgot to go to the Eiffel Tower in Paris. After all, no one place can bear the weight of having to be an icon for a city, a country, or an idea as big as 'love'.

Perhaps that's what makes it easier to be a local than a tourist where big-name landmarks are concerned. I can look at the Harbour Bridge and the Opera House and know that they have very little to do with my felings towards Sydney, or my home country. Whether I find them 'beautiful' is not at issue. I think that's an easier space to occupy than that of the traveller who, having journeyed halfway 'round the world looks at Utzen's creation and thinks wistfully, 'Oh, it's so much smaller than I thought it would be.'

Back at the Taj, a laughing American woman calls out, 'I don't think I can have children now!' as she rises from one of the famous marble benches. Posing for my own faux-Princess Di shot, I am inclined to agree - I bet Di had bench-warmers, not to mention a security cordon. Us plebs are left to get our instamatically-happy snaps with other hopefuls milling in the background. There's rubbish in the grounds, too: discarded Aquafina bottles and bits of tinfoil bob listlessly in the slightly grubby aquamarine pools.

We take our own insta-romance shot, stretching out our arms until we can catch both our reflections in the camera's gaze. I like it - we know the Taj was there behind us, even though it almost can't be seen through the winter's sky.

As we leave at 8am, the Taj - enduring, obdurate monument to Something - cloaks itself in fog and disappears entirely behind a belt of haze.