Oops

We thought we were soo slick. Everyone said Agra was a nightmare, and we managed to time everything so that we would arrive in the early morning from Ajmer and leave in the evening for Varanasi. The train schedules only makes such a schedule possible one day a week and we got the last to sleeper berths available. Pretty cool. Except that the one day in question was Friday, when the Taj Mahal is closed to non-Muslims.

In the end we saw the Taj from an acceptable vantage and were glad to be leaving the pollution, prices, and mayhem of Agra when we did.
Posting about Agra is the perfect time to talk about honking. Indians honk their horns (be they attached to bike, moped, car, truck, or bus) incessantly. On one of our first days here I stepped outside a restaurant to see what the cacophony was - I couldn't believe that was just the din of normal traffic. Drivers honk to indicate that they'll be passing you, that they won't be braking for you, and that they see you. So if I'm walking down a road, and a bike is driving toward me on the other side of the road there will be a honk just to recognize our mutual existence. As a tourist it has been an adjustment but not a real problem.
In addition to seeing the Taj, we spent our day in Agra at Itimad-ud-Dualah, or the Baby Taj where we enjoyed some hilarious monkey business.
And at the Red Fort, where Shah Jahan, who built the Taj lived and eventually was imprisoned when his son usurped his throne. The area where he was quartered enjoyed views of the Taj, where his queen was buried. When Shah Jahan died his son buried him beside her, destroying the otherwise perfect symmetry of the site.





So not as perfect as we planned, but enough to last a lifetime nonetheless.

xoxo Jessie