Sunday Feb 10 & Monday Feb 11 On to Agra

The 2^nd conference is over and we are really moving through India. We caught a plane to Agra right after the last session on Sunday. Kapil’s plan worked very well. We were met and taken to the hotel. Kapil met us at the hotel and checked in for us. Having “servants” is easy to get used to. Instead of lining up at a desk, we are seated in comfy chairs in the lobby and all of the paper work is brought over to us. At airports, someone takes our suitcases and escorts us through the whole checking in process.

We are in the Taj View hotel. We do have a view of the Taj Mahal at a distance. It isn’t lit at night, so we really don’t see much of it.

Monday morning we visited the Taj Mahal. It truly is spectacular and very beautiful. The fabulous love story doesn’t hurt either. Our guide made sure that I stood in exactly the right spots to get the best pictures:

Now, walk forward 7 bricks and you see 2 more towers:

Now, another 7 bricks and you see 4 towers (They really loved symmetry!)

Now, you must stand here and I will take your picture:

He made people get out of the way, so that we would have wonderful pictures. It was nice, he took someone else's picture also in this spot.

We spent a long time just wandering around and seeing it from every angle. The guide left us on our own so that we didn’t feel rushed. When we met him again, he had another good viewpoint:

The Taj is really the ONLY pretty thing that we saw in India. Most of the rest looks like it was partially demolished 100 years ago and people are still living in the rubble. Almost every brick wall has a bite out of it.

Rubbish is everywhere. I often saw little piles of rubbish that had been swept together – but then there were cows and pigs eating parts of it and scattering it around again.

After lunch, we went to the Red Fort. This was where the builder of the Taj was imprisoned by his son. He could look at the Taj and see where his beloved was buried (and where he joined her.) His plan was to build a black building to match the Taj across the river for his mausoleum – but his son was tired of him wasting so much money. This is where he could sit and see the Taj:

Kapil met us for tea in the late afternoon. He wanted to propose that we hire his company to guide us through Varanasi also. Since they had done such a good job already, we agreed.

He said that he had started his career working at our hotel, so everyone knew him there.

We ate dinner both nights in the hotel. We have thoroughly enjoyed all of the Indian food.