I stood before the Taj Mahal and held my phone aloft to get my own picture amidst tourists from all over the world doing the same thing. The majestic building is worth every click.
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Buildings like the Taj might look more-or-less the same through the generations, but the people worshipping at the altar of architectural beauty? They change a lot from year to year.
One thing that was hard to miss among the selfie-taking throng was the numbers of tourists, and whole tour groups, walking around with face masks on. With day packs on their backs, they looked more like HAZMAT workers than sight-seers.
But it's not just tourists attempting to protect themselves from pollution. In New Delhi, it was common to see residents wearing similar disposable masks, or women holding scarves up over their noses as they hurried through congested streets.
When we were there, air quality was reaching its annual dismal low as stubble burn-off, coal-fired power plants fuelling increasing use of air conditioning, construction work and vehicle exhaust fumes combined with unique geographical and meteorological factors to turn the air into thick, toxic smog. Visibility was so poor you could never see further than the middle distance.
The health effects of the worst days were being compared to smoking 33 cigarettes a day. Children were being kept home from school; people with respiratory sensitivities were urged not to go out. The fate of the city's homeless, many of whom live on the streets amongst the exhaust fumes, is painful to think about.
These days we are increasingly aware of how our own fate is inextricably linked to the fate of peoples and ecosystems everywhere on the planet. It's impossible to wander the world as innocently as we might once have done. Air travel is deeply polluting, for a start, and tourists' plastic water bottles are clogging the once-beautiful rivers of the world.
Meanwhile in Australia, the Adani coal mine inches closer to production. If it goes ahead, we'll be digging up the coal of the Galilee basin to be burned in India where it will add to local air pollution and global climate change.
This at a time when renewables are a viable alternative. Nobody's innocent in this interconnected world, but we can surely do better than this.
