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Published: March 16th 2006
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The Taj Mahal
This is my first glimpse of the Taj... Hello Everyone~
I have to say that India is like no country that I have ever been to. It is a country of such extremes. Starting from where I left off, Mal and I woke up around 6 am to go to the Taj Mahal in Agra. It’s a four-hour drive each way, so we had a long day. Artie who is the sister of Pooja (the woman who’s apartment we stayed at in Delhi) arranged one of her drivers to pick us up and drive us to Agra to see the Taj Mahal. The drive was such a nice way to see the country; the car ride was never boring! After we had been driving for a while, there was a big truck in front of us (not like a pick-up truck but a BIG truck) and all of a sudden it flipped over on to its side. It was like three cars ahead of us, so obviously the cars in front of us stopped fairly fast-and so did we. Then we got rear ended (not bad) so there were cars on either side of us and the first thing that ran in my mind was this truck could blow
Camel
Camels are all over the place here. up… then the guy who hit us came running up yelling at our driver and he said “you need to go because they diesel is leaking and it could catch fire!) -well yeah! But there was nowhere to go. The cars in front of us started to move and as we drove by the truck the windshield was completely gone but the driver was moving around, so he wasn’t dead. Based on traffic in India I’m surprised this is the only accident I encountered. It sounds a lot worse than it actually was.
As we drove through towns along the way, I saw black bears that were on leashes alongside of the road, mal said that they make them dance and do tricks, it was sad. There were also monkeys on leashes too. There are these motor taxis that people pile into. They aren’t that big put people were hanging out the side and sitting on top-it’s quite a sight. The Taj Mahal was breathtaking; there are no words to describe it. My first glimpse of it just kind of hit me. It’s like I knew what I was expecting to see just from seeing pictures of it my
Girls
These girls were in front of us when we were driving whole life, but the real thing is so beautiful. The detail work seems like it would have been impossible to do, because every part of it is detailed. To go inside we couldn’t wear shoes, you could either buy these stupid looking sock things to put over your shoes or just check your shoes and go barefoot. So we went barefoot, the marble was so smooth and felt really good to walk on. So many people kept asking Mal and I if they could take pictures with us, we thought it was kind of odd but I guess it’s a pretty common thing. As you leave you are supposed to turn around and look back at the Taj because it means that you will return. Mal and I kept looking back!
For lunch Artie told the driver a place to take us for lunch. Next thing we know we pull up to this incredibly nice hotel and Mal was like “figures”… Our lunch was really good; it was so hard for Mal and I to believe that we were sitting together having lunch in India together! As we left the quiet closed off property of the hotel and entered back into the “real world” it was such a drastic difference. I didn’t like it because the money we just spent on lunch could have fed some of these people for weeks. It’s a hard fact to get used to. We had our leftovers boxed up to give out to someone. That night it was just us who stayed at the apartment in Delhi with Asha the housekeeper. It was nice to sit back and relax.
The next morning Mal and I got drooped off to do last minute shopping and then I got dropped back off at the hotel to meet up with the SAS group to fly back to Chennai. At the airport in Delhi, I was sitting waiting to board the plane when my three friends who I usually travel with appeared. It was so good to see them and they said that I should wait at the airport in Chennai (because they were on a different flight) and then we could get a hotel and travel to Melapurrama (sp?) for the last day. The flight was only 2 1/2 hours; in Chennai I told the group leader that I was going to stay behind. I waited in the airport for about an hour and then met up with my 3 friends when they got off the plane. We took a motor taxi to our hotel, which wasn’t the nicest place in the world but it was cheap. We woke up the next morning at 7 and got a motor taxi to the bus station. We were pretty much the only non-local people there. The bus to Melapurrama was around two hours. When we got to the town we walked around and saw the ancient temples. They were very cool to see. We had lunch on the beach and overlooked the Bay of Bengal. It was extremely hot out that day and we all had our backpacks to haul around. When we got back into Chennai we wanted to get a really good last dinner, so we had this motor taxi drive us to a restaurant we found in the Lonely Planet book. It was still early considering the time that people eat dinner here, so a lot of the restaurant s weren’t open yet. We had to get back to the ship and we didn’t want to get dock time for being late. Our driver took us to this one restaurant that let us in and we had a really good dinner but ate way too much! In total it was around $9 USD. As we got dropped off at the port there were a lot of kids begging for rupees and people trying to sell us last minute stuff.
Taking a shower that night on the ship was the best feeling ever! I was so exhausted that I went to sleep pretty early that night. I had such a great time and can’t wait to go back!
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Momma
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Remember the Bollywood Movie..
Tiana! Thanks for the India update!!! Lovely photos - but both Dick and I said "we want to see photos of Tiana!" The Taj is gorgeous!! While you were in India I kept thinking of that colorful Bollywood movie you and I saw! Hilarious! You are probably just arriving in Myanmar! ANOTHER adventure!! Sending Hugs, Kisses and Blessings your way! Mom and Dad