First Impressions of India

India is indeed intense...there are so many people and we look very out of place here so we are certainly getting a fair number of stares. We arrived in Delhi a couple days back in the late evening and the ride to our hotel was an adventure in itself. The streets are full of cars and cows and people. The women dress beautifully, just like all the pictures you've seen: reds, pinks, greens...it makes for amazing photos. We took a train out of Delhi the next day. We accidently got on the "local train" which meant that we stopped in EVERY possible town. What should have been a two hour ride became an 8 hour ride! I guess tourists dont usually use that train because we had a huge crowd around us, just staring. Luckily we sat next to a Nepali army man who took us under his wing.

Now we are in Agra. We decided to splurge and get ourselves a room with AC ($11). A good choice. Its turned out to be our safe haven for escaping the suffocating heat, dust and people. Every time we walk down the street men call from their rick-shaws "Where you go?" or "Where are you from?" or "Very good price for you!" I think that the whole country has an excess of taxi drivers because they will follow us for ages asking if we want a ride before they finally give up. Yesterday, we made arrangements to go for a few hours with a driver who would take us to all the sights. He took us to a shopping area (where he gets commssion, of course) and then to a restaurant (again, commission). We didn't end up buying anything, which was probably disapointing to him, but we did enjoy the restaurant he took us to. Indian food is delicious! The food is so flavorful and filling. We are enjoying meal-time immencely.

We also got to see the Taj Mahal yesterday. Our driver dropped us off at the entrance and cautioned us, "Dont buy anything from the people there, walk strait to the ticket counter and buy your ticket." It was good advice, the Taj is a very popular place for tourists and locals alike. Sellers will hound you relentesly to buy their postcards and Taj trinkets. But, once you get into the gates (passed the security that is divided on one side for women and the other for men), everything calms down and the views are just stunning! The Taj Mahal is just as spectacular in life as it is in the pictures. We got to walk inside and see the tombs where both the builder and his beloved wife (who died giving birth to her 14th child at 34) are buried. You probably already know this, but the builder built it as a shrine to his wife when she died. The whole thing is symmetrical with the exception of the addition of the husbands tomb (who died 30 years later after being overthrown by his son.)

We took lots of pictures, saw some monkeys and met some nice people there. A couple of sari-clad women asked if I would be in a photo with them, and we ended up talking for a long time. The two ladies (sister-in-laws) didn't speak much english but the younger woman's husband could get by with a few English words. We got some translation help from a young man sitting near by. The women spoke Bengali and a little Hindi. The boy's native language was Mavarati (or some word close to that) and Hindi and a little English. The family and the young man would speak Hindi to each each other when we ran into kinks with English. I didn't realize that there were so many languages spoken here. Only 20% speak Hindi as their first language, but it is used- along with English- as a bridge language between different groups.

We'll take an over-night train to Lucknow from here, but it doesn't leave until 11pm, so we are going to go to a little park across the river from the Taj to watch sunset. We have Dodge (the sheep mascot) with us and are planning to take his picture there. We wanted to take him onto the grounds of the Taj Mahal to get his photo, but he didn't make it through security (neither did our gum or our playing cards). So that is our big plan tonight.