Agra, India

11/24

We see our driver, Mr. Singh, come up to the hotel in his tweed coat and black turban. He is happy to see us again, as we are of him. We step into the White dolphin car - our mode of transport for the next 2 weeks. He pulls open the passanger door as Lisa and I step inside.

Mr. Singh lights up two matchsticks of insense and has his morning prayer tapes playing in the background. I feel like I have just entered some mobile tantric room as his car is a shrine of peace. The white and pink flowers hang from the Dashboard. Next to it is his creed of how he is to protect and serve all visitors to his Nation of India. "It is my duty", he later tells us, "to make sure you are having good time in this program."

The 'program' for the day, as Mr. Singh calls it, is to drive to Agra. Agra is home of the famed Taj Mahal as well as many other fabled buildings. The drive is roughly six hours today. Mr. Singh is a fan of banannas as he stops by the fruit stand to order two bunches for the next few days. We take some bananas and store them in the back seat of the car. "2 bananas, 3 banans, no problem!" Our Sikh driver was definitely a monkey in his previous life.

Driving in India is a symphony of chaos. As every rule breaks Western intuition. They drive on the left side of the road and they use their horn every two seconds. In fact, it becomes way too common to see the sign "Please Blow Horn" on the back of a truck. It is way too common for cars to pass each other on to oncomming traffic. I close my eyes every 10 seconds for fear of another head on collision. Mr. Singh looks at me befuddled. "We drive, left, right, fast, slow, no problem!" We are told there are very few accidents in the major cities, and only very few accidents on the freeway. I tell Mr. Singh to just keep his eyes on the road.

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Today's first stop on the 'program' is the Agra Fort. There is a fairly long story, but I will try to limit it to a paragraph. This fort was the home of Shah Jahn - a Moghul emperor - grandson of the first Moghul emperor Akbar. The Moghuls were the Muslim tribes that occupied India for over six centuries. This Shah Jahn was quite the ladies man at a herum of over 5000 wives. S. Jahn's son, for either reasons of herum jealousy or just plain out power hungry, imprisoned his father later in life within the Agra fort. For the son had begun to assume power over the years. At any rate, the story goes that the last few years of Shah Jahn's life was spent in the Agra fort looking at the Taj Mahal from the bedroom. To me, that's not prison, that's a 4 star hotel with unlimited room service.

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11/25

Aap kay say hay? What's going on? Mr. Singh has us up at 6:15 today. We get dropped off roughly one mile away from the Taj Mahal. The sun has not come up yet, but the tourists are coming. We walk the rest since the Indian government has banned all vehicles within 1 mile due to pollution.

The Taj Mahal is considered the 8th wonder of the world. This Shah Jahn character mentioned above really liked Marble. He liked it so much that he instructs 20,000 of his closest friends to retrieve marble from Rajasthan, India over a 20 year period in order to build him a building. As I mentioned above, this guy had 5000 wives. He had a favorite wife, whose name I forget, but she must have been something. For he decided to start building this Taj Mahal in her honor when she died. Artesans come into the mix and bring in semi-precious stones, and then etch these stones in the marble. Each octagonal shaped marble piece took 20 days. One crack of the stone and they had to start over again. At any rate, S. Jahn's wife is buried here in the Taj Mahal. And after S. Jahn goes, he gets buried right next to it. All I have to say is that the estate tax accountants must have had a field day when he died.

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The reason we visit the Taj Mahal at sunrise is that sun and light affect this building tremendously. Being built of 100% hardened Indian marble, it is translucent in nature. When the sun or the moon or the stars hit the building, strange things happen to it. For example, when Lisa and I get there, the Taj Mahal becomes a soft, gray color. By midday, it becomes a pearly white color. People spend all day at the Taj Mahal just checking out the changing colors from the different lighting. It is a photographers dream come true. For me, I just like sitting down on the bench and getting away from the harrasing guides whom are not allowed inside.

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We stop on our way out of Agra at Fatehpur Sikiri, the old abandoned palace about 40 kilometers from Agra. It was the original capital of Akbar's reign, but was abandoned due to a low water supply. And given the 110+ degrees farenheit of the Indian summers, I don't blame him. We walk through the sandstone and marble structures and take pictures of the place. A highlight is that there is a pavilion where they played human chess. I guess it's good to be the king.

More to come, talk to you then.

Travelling Sherman