Taj reopens after 6 mths, 1,235 visitors mark Day 1
AGRA: A total of 1,235 people visited the Taj Mahal, which reopened after six months of Covid-19 induced closure, on Monday, an Archaelogical Survey of India (ASI) official said.
The visitors included 20 foreign tourists, ASI’s conservation assistant Amar Nath Gupta said. Tight measures were in place to contain the spread of coronavirus disease.
ASI has fixed the maximum limit of tourists visiting Taj at 5,000 in a day divided in two slots of 2,500 each.
In pre-Covid-19 days, about 10,000 tourists used to visit Taj
Mahal in a day during the summer, considered to be the offseason, Gupta said.
The tourist inflow would increase in winter when the number of daily visitors would often reach 15,000-20,000 between October and March, the peak tourism season in Agra, he added. The crowd inflow multiplied to 40,000 a day during Christmas and New Year celebrations, he said.
Chimi Lia, 48, from Taiwan was the first visitor to step inside the Taj Mahal premises on Monday and reach the turnstile gate even while the staff were spraying sanitiser on the premises at 6am.The architectural marvel had been shut since March 17. Other visitors also queued for their turn for thermal checking, sanitization and frisking by the staff of ASI and the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF).
Among Indians, Pratibha Talan from Agra was the first one to enter Taj Mahal.
There was no window ticket sale. Visitors could purchase the ticket by scanning the QR code at the entry gates. It could also be booked through the ASI website or the mobile app.