Agra to see the taja

Train leaves at 5:30. wake up. Wake up! Grab a brush and put a little, makeup Hide the scars to fade away the, shakeup (Hide the scars to fade away the) Why'd you leave the keys upon the table? Here you go create another fable

...wait...thats not right....

(few people are going to understand that but it popped into my head and i had to write it down)

anyway...

wake up at 4 get to station at 5. get on the tracks at 5:30. people sleep all over the tracks and there seems to be a accepted thing about crossing the tracks. even when trains are coming. at this point, stuff like this just seems normal. i mean, who the hell wants to walk the 50 yards to the over pass anyway when you can cross in front of forty tons of moving steel?

Get on train. Tired. Sleep. More weird dreams. Wake up...see multiple people urinating and shitting on the way (outside). alright.

Get to agra. lots of white people. americans and europeans. people with goofy pants and stupid shirts. they probably think the same of me.

Drive to the Taj Mahal. I didn't really know anything about it before coming to India but I read a couple weeks ago its "the greatest building in the world, period" Didn't even realize that so okay, I'm excited. Seeing humuyans tomb (the male version of the taj they say) in Delhi I was really taken back by it's presence so I was all the sudden very excited to see the Taj.

Driving up to it I caught a glimpse of the dome. My reaction was..hmm.okay..that looks kinda cool...

I see a camel.

Get to the gate. A group of twenty water buffalo cross in front of us and we get inside. Nothing but a camera is allowed.

When you walk inside you can't see it. Only the gate and a sliver of the dome. Then you walk through the gate and its there.

It, even more so than the area of Old Delhi, is pointless to describe. Its utterly massive and looks like it was left by an ancient alien race. It doesn't belong on Earth. It belongs in a different solar system. It looks like a intricately beautiful space craft, if there was such a thing.

The two things I noticed in person that the pictures never revealed to me was that first of all the thing is GIANT. Its like 74 meters and it makes the people standing around it look like ants. Second thing is the marble plays with itself and it creates a coating that looks like fish scales shimmering and reflecting. You have to see it. but thats perhaps the most striking feature.

It's been described as a tear drop on the face of eternity. Yeah, thats a good description. Like I said, it looks like aliens left it here. Its not human.

We went to two more sites (mini taj, agra fort) than drove to our hotel which was really nice. The hotel was inside a bird sanctuary and nature preserve. We go to Dinner and before we eat we have a private concert of three fathers and three sons playing tabla (drums) and singing. Kids were like 8 so it was keww.

Eat. Sleep. Mate. Feed. Kill. Repeat.

I wake up late. I go to brush my teeth and I notice something moving on my toothbrush. It would appear maggots have infested my toothbrush bag and are crawling across the bristles. I wash it off and pause for about thirty seconds wondering if I can still use it. thinking..

I envision myself asking someone and realizing no, absolutely not, hell no and throw two toothbrushes away.

I kept my toothbrushes in an open bag and the humidity from the brush combined with the bag created a nice little maggot habitat. I skipped brushing my teeth the night before so thats good. but i did brush them the morning before which makes me believe that i probably used a maggot infested brush in my mouth...

feelsbadman

Everyone goes on a bike tour of the bird sanctuary and comes back soaked because its pouring. After breakfast I head out on my own. Get a naturalist to come with me (who rips me off like 400 rupees) into the jungle. however, the tour was good. I saw peacocks, jackals, doves, kingfishers, giant stork birds mating, a three foot monitor lizard, and a soft shell turtle attempting to cross the road.

I come back soaked from the rain.

Off to another fort. Akbar's palace near Agra.

I see probably close to 20 people publicly pissing and shitting. I like India because every forty feet there is something fascinating. My professor said, whose lived here for close to twenty years that India is never boring. Agreement.

I saw an old naked man bathing next to the road.

The palace is cool. It starts to rain, again, which sucks but whatever. We eventually come across a bath (pool?) that is very deep but the water is still about 30 feet from the surface so it looks like a quarry. Lots of green algae and moss is in the water.

some local kid starts yelling at us that he's going to jump in (there are no guards here surprisingly to stop this sort of thing). Everyone starts yelling "nahi" for no in hindi. I have my camera (video not picture) and yell "haji!" for yes in hindi.

He leaps off the edge about a 30 foot jump then comes back up freezing and in nothing but his underwear asking for money. my buddy aaron gives him 1/5 of a dollar.

We head to the mosque next door. If this place was once holy, it no longer is. The whole place is a massive shopping center and covered in garbage. There is a tomb which had a spiritual vibe to it but the second you get into the place a young kid would attach himself to each one of us and provide a "tour" and refuse to leave us alone.

People aggressively attempt to sell dumb shit to you ("here come see my specialty its a hand carved elephant inside an elephant INSIDE an elephant!), ah great i was just looking for an elephant inside an elephant inside an elephant. how did you know?and they constantly violate your personal space. It gets old fast.

I see a beggar whose back is bent 90 degrees the wrong angle and can only walk on all fours (at the Taj) I just wanted to mention that.

Laughter diffuses uncomfortable situations (not necessarily in that context but just in general)

feeling without the feelsbadman

...

Pizza hut.

Train. Homeless kids have fun playing with us. Two kids don't have legs. They like pictures. One kid steals from a shop and gets the shit slapped out of him.

Train ride. Towards the end I remember you can hang off the trains in India and spend the last twenty minutes sitting on the edge where the two cars connect in the door stop. Fun times.