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While in the town of the Taj Mahal, we also visited the tomb of the 3rd Moghul emperor, Akbar. Legend is he had well over 300 wives but only 3 sons survived. He was considered a great ruler 400 years ago. Then the all marble tomb completed right before the Taj Mahal, built in 1622 for the father of the Emperoress' father. Because it was the first of all marble it is called Baby Taj.
We went to the Agra Fort built by and inhabited by six successive Mughal emperors. This is where Shah Jahan was imprisoned by his son and where he just watched the completion of his Taj Mahal.
We went to a marble factory. This area is famous for it's marble work and inlays as evidenced by the Taj and Baby Taj. They had beautiful pieces and I bought an elephant, picture frame and little cat.
Afterwards, we spent most of the day on the bus. UGH! This bus has no suspension so we were constantly bumping up and down. We stopped at a McDonald's for potty break and ice cream. Since they have no beef burger their Big Mac is instead a Chicken Maharaja
Mac. Didn't try it but we may have to try their veggie burger before we leave.
On the way we saw a wedding procession. It was the groom going to the bride's house. He was riding a horse with a little boy for good luck. There were no women in the procession which, according to our guide, meant the groom's family was from out of town and all the women were at the bride's house. We stopped to take pictures and the procession stopped to take pictures of us taking pictures of them! It was hilarious!
During the bus trip, our guide talked about the caste system here, mostly about the Untouchables. Over the last 20 years there has been a lot of reform in providing this caste more opportunities. For instance, Indira Ghandi passed a law requiring that 50% of jobs be reserved for Untouchables. If they wish to go to a specialty school like law or medicine, they only have to score half of what any other caste has to score. But the Hindu bible still says that if you are born into that caste, you can't change. And they still live in the poorest sections
of town with little shelter and food, even though the government provides electricity.
Also along the way we stopped at a local village to see their daily life. Again, the people were so warm and welcoming to have strangers walking around staring at them. That was a treat.
Water buffalo, cows, monkeys, camels all fight the cars, buses, motorbikes and rickshaws for space in the road. Worse than China, traffic lanes and cross walks are only painting on the street. Everyone goes whatever way they need, however they can get there and are required to honk their horn doing so. Our guide told us that short beeps meant "get out of my way or I'll hit you" while a long beep meant "get out of my way or you're dead!" We sat one day where we could watch the driving from the front and it just scared me too bad. I can't believe we have yet to see an accident.
Once we got to Jaipur, we went to a 280 year old market for locals to look at some local buys. Ernest got a pair of leather shoes for about $6 but that was it.
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