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"baby taj" detail


Yamuna River

"baby taj"

"baby taj", across the river from the taj

auto-rickshaw ride

I've decided that there is as much waiting in traveling as there is moving and doing.

I wish the Indians would stop burning their trash.

I wish the rickshaw drivers and shop owners would stop calling to me, "Hulloh, Madam! Hulloh!", in that urgent, desperate voice.

Today I woke up at dawn to see the Taj Mahal in the glow of the rising sun. There were much fewer people at that hour, but I still waited in a long line to be paded down by a tough Indian woman in a uniform before entering the taj. The taj really is a stunning, epic piece of architecture--a enormous display of love from Shah Jahan to his dead wife. The tourist craziness doesn't totally ruin the experience of the place, but it is comical to watch everyone line up to have their picture taken in the exact same spots in front of the taj, myself included. We are totally ridiculous lemmings, all of us; I'm not sure that we really cared that we were actually at a place, experiencing it--it was all about having that photographic proof--I was here, see. See that I was here?