Harry's strict warning to Meghan ahead of trip without him that left her baffled (2024)

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle have just touched down in Columbia for their four-day unofficial royal tour.

The unconventional choice of location has raised eyebrows, particularly after the Duke of Sussex has repeatedly refused to return to the UK with his family due to safety concerns in his own home country.

However, it's not the first time that one of their trips has caused tension as Harry once issued a stark warning to his now wife, Meghan, ahead of her previous vacation to India during the early days of their relationship.

When the Sussexes first became an item, they were desperate to keep things under wraps from the public to ensure they had as much as privacy as possible.

So much so that Harry even urged Meghan to specifically not take one particular photo on her travels just before she embarked on the humanitarian trip with World Vision to promote menstrual health management and education access for young girls.

The duke previously confessed how he had begged her not to take a picture in front of India's most famous landmark, the Taj Mahal, for one very good reason.

Writing in his tell-all memoir Spare, the 39-year-old explained how he advised her not to do this in case people thought she was mimicking his late mother, Princess Diana.

The former Princess of Wales was famously snapped sitting alone at the famous landmark during a tour of India, with the imagine becoming symbolic of the state of her relationship with the then Prince Charles at the time.

However, when Harry issued the warning to Meghan, he claims that she simply laughed at him.

He wrote: "Do not take a photo in front of the Taj Mahal. She’d asked why and I’d said: My mum. I’d explained that my mother had posed for a photo there, and it had become iconic, and I didn’t want anyone thinking Meg was trying to mimic my mother.

"Meg had never heard of this photo, and found the whole thing baffling, and I loved her for being baffled."

Diana was pictured alone on a bench in front of the iconic landmark when she was visiting the country with Charles in February 1992.

Little did the outside world know that they were already spending the majority of their time in the UK apart and staying at separate residences with Diana based at Kensington Palace while Charles preferred to reside at Highgrove in Gloucestershire.

Ten months after the historical snap of Diana was taken at the Taj Mahal, the couple announced their official separation.

Many years later, Prince William and Kate Middleton took a trip to India in 2016 where they visited the monument and snapped a photo from the same bench.

The couple sat together for just a few seconds on the same white marble bench before walking into the Taj Mahal for a private tour which marked the end of their trip to India and Bhutan that year.

The bench has now become a huge tourist attraction at the Unesco World Heritage site in Agra which has up to 25,000 visitors per day.

A royal aide claims that the Prince and Princess of Wales made a last minute decision on the day of their visit to sit on the bench and that it was a move to mirror Diana, despite the seat being associated with her worldwide.

An insider at the time said Diana's visit to the Taj Mahal was "not a particularly strong memory at all" for William. They added: "He has many other memories of his mother that are much more important to him."

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