Zuckerberg starts India tour with visit to Taj Mahal

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg today began his trip to India with a visit to the Taj Mahal in Agra and described it as "even more stunning" than he had expected. Zuckerberg, who arrived in India to deepen links with a country that is home to the largest number of Facebook users outside the US, said he had "always wanted to see" the Taj Mahal. "I'm in India for our Townhall Q&A tomorrow, and I decided to visit the Taj Mahal. I've always wanted to see this," he said in his Facebook post. He described the country's most-photographed and photogenic monument as "even more stunning than I expected. It's incredible what people can build -- and what love can motivate us to build." He also posted picture of him sitting infront of the Taj Mahal that was built by Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan in the 1600s.

Within couple of hours, his Taj Mahal post had received over 450,000 likes, 11,000 comments and 7,700 shares. Zuckerberg will host a townhall Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi where around 900 students are expected to attend the Q&A session. India is home to over 130 million users, making it the second largest user base for the world's largest social networking site after the US.

Before coming to India, he yesterday delivered a 20-minute speech in Mandarin at Tsinghua University in China. The young billionaire, who is married to Chinese-American Priscilla Chan, had set himself the goal of learning Mandarin in 2010. After his speech, he shared his accomplishment with his followers on Facebook along with a a video of the speech with English subtitles.

"I just gave my first ever speech in Chinese at Tsinghua University in Beijing -- on why you need a strong sense of mission to change the world. This was also my first real speech in any language sharing how I started thinking about Facebook's mission, what has kept me going through challenging times and what our mission means now looking ahead for our community of 1.5 billion people," he wrote. Zuckerberg had joined the board of Tsinghua's School of Economics and Management last year.

He had last month conversed with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Mandarin at a meeting with technology chiefs in the US. Facebook is banned in mainland China and remains untapped for Facebook that has over 1.3 billion users globally.