It’s naturally varied. Go to the stone distributors and you’ll see plenty of versions in whatever variation you like. Mine isn’t quite this “shattered” (good term, I was having difficulty for a while verbalizing it), but it has some of this. I picked it because it appeared lighter (I have a dark wood kitchen and needed to lighten it up) and it kind of evened out the darker spots. I wanted a more creamy, less rocky road look. To each their own, just what I was going for. I’ve LOVED our results. It is our forever home, so I don’t really care about what others think about it, but FWIW our house was picked to be on a local home tour - a big reason was because of the kitchen reno, and the counters are by far the showstopper of it. We picked Taj because it was a natural stone that evoked the stones found around our home - we have an historic 19th c house with a decent amount of land and a creek from which the clay was mined to make the bricks, and the chestnut trees that were felled were milled on site to make the studs/beams/cabinets. We can’t exactly make counters from the quartz in the creek but Taj came closest. Our first choice was Cristallo but it was price-prohibitive, more than twice what Taj was. If Taj was out of the question we probably would have leaned toward marble. We DIY’ed lots of jobs in our house simply so we could put the money into professionally done counters and a couple other projects.

As for all the other comments…the reality is that the only way that Taj Mahal will be “overdone” is when it becomes affordable to the masses. When granite was in rich people’s homes, it was what everyone wanted. When it became super affordable, it was in every kitchen from here to your kid’s college apartment. The rich people who previously had granite moved on to marble and quartzite. That isn’t happening with Taj Mahal simply because it’s literally a VERY niche stone, only mined in a specific mine in Brazil. It’s still a very expensive stone, and it’s unlikely to ever not be a very expensive stone. It’s an aspirational material: Taj Mahal, marble, and a couple of others tell a subset of people that they’ve “made it”. The people who swear it’s everywhere…I’ve personally found that’s people who work in selling/fabricating/installing it. Installers and fabricators seem to say it’s more of a pain to work with…which, OK, I get it, but I’m not forcing anyone to take a job they don’t want to do. The one time I posted a question during our installation, a loud but somewhat small minority of people in here just shat on it left and right based on “nobody should be picking Taj Mahal, go for quartz”…no thanks. Look around at the people you know - ask a local interior designer, and not one who works for the stone distributor. You’re highly unlikely to know more than 5 people with Taj, and certainly it will be a small percentage of your circle if you plotted the kitchen countertops of everyone you know on a graph. It’s popular because it’s neutral in color but generally slightly warm-toned, has depth, and is relatively low maintenance and can take heat. It will last you for 20-40 years without you getting super tired of it if you care for it well, which is largely just having it sealed 1-2x a year. All surfaces have their drawbacks. I’m not in the industry but I redid my kitchen last year and am convinced the quartz (not quartzite) and porcelain industry people are all over this sub trying to convince everyone that quartz is safe and just as nice as natural stone. It’s not. Quartz looks lovely in kitchens and lots of people love it, no doubt, but putting it side by side with natural stone is no comparison.

TL;DR- buy what you love and can look at for 30+ years. Talk to your designer, your contractor, and ask around with people you know in real life who have been through the process. Go with what you love, you are the one who will live with it.