Agra/Taj Mahal

On my second day in a country, it seems I like to wake up really early and go see a wonder of the world. Today, it was a 4:45am wake up call to head to the Taj Mahal.

Also, our overnight low temperature - 91 degrees.

Somehow, we had a second straight flawless day of Indian transportation. After getting off the train (which was fast, air-conditioned, and nice) bleary-eyed in Agra at 8:30am, we hired a rickshaw wallah (driver) to drive us around all day for just over US$8. He was very good (he never abandoned us or had any major accidents and took us wherever we wanted) so I tipped him $2.50. We quickly settled into sharing the road with camels, water buffalo, wild horses, cows, donkeys, goats and monkeys as well as a million pedestrians, mopeds, bike rickshaws, motor rickshaws, tractors and even occasionally a car.

The Taj Mahal was awesome. Its hard to describe with words how amazing a structure it was. Very quick historical summary: the Taj was built in the 1620s by the Mughal emperor as a mausoleum to his 2nd wife who died giving birth to their 14th child. It was simply beautiful. Symmetric in all four directions with exquisite gemstones inlaid in transluscent marble. Gorgeous. Pictures definitely better than words.

Today the high temperature was 109. And it is a wet heat. For those keeping score at home, that is really, really hot. So we mostly kept moving between world heritage sights and shady spots. We saw the Agra Fort which was another huge red sandstone structure with a few interesting mosques, a masoleum outside town with lots of animals (peacocks, antelopes, and monkeys) running around, the Baby Taj Mahal, and some sweet and oddly deserted Mughal gardens right across the river from the Taj.

And between darting from shade to sights, it was another day of starring in random Indian family photos. I am in at least 30 photo albums thaty aren't mine already.

Finally infrastructure here (or lack thereof) continues to astound. The power went out four different times today. Also, in front of the Taj, there are large grassy areas that were being mowed. How you might ask? Well obviously by two men in a motorless lawn mower cart that were being pulled by two cows. Inside the grouds of arguably the nost famous building in the world, cows are hard at work.