The only rockstar at the taj mahal

The Agra trip we went on was one of the strangest experiences in my life. Period. We started it off at our infamous raj garden apartment, now free of the polluting influences of Sushil Kumar. We ordered Domino's Pizza and sat down for a good long bollywood film. Once midnight rolled around, we stumbled out of the apartment and into the cars we'd arranged to take us to the Taj. I was more than a bit nervous. Indian roads are notoriously dangerous. The highway to Agra is unlit, cratered and fraught with peril. Unmarked construction sites, livestock and impromptu barricades erected to collect tax from travelers abound. I sort of half jokingly called both of my parents and told them I loved them and hopped into the back of our dingy hired Qualis. The whole point of doing the trip as an overnight was to sleep. Try as I might, there was simply no way that was gonna happen. The road would rocket you out of your seat the moment you'd nod off. I tried some crazy origami sleeping position with the other guy in the back, which looked like a line of tetris that was about to be cleared (except my legs didn't vanish). This didn't work because I almost mashed my neck into the seat more than once. Finally after 6 fitful hours of tossing and jostling, we made it to Agra. When we finally made it up the street full of touts, we entered the Taj and paid the exorbitant 750 rupee entrance fee (slightly less than $20) and went in. Some of the girls paid for a tour, but the guys were largely content to simply wander. We did see the beautiful tombs themselves, and they really are as pretty as the pictures everyone takes, but the place was simply mobbed outside. The weirdest part was there were white people EVERYWHERE. In Jaipur, I end up gawking at every other white person I see, because they're so rare outside of the program. I maybe see 5 white tourists a week poking around our neighborhood, only because the Birla Mandir is so close. In Agra, white people (namely white tourists) were everywhere. You know you've been somewhere for a while when you gawk at other foreigners. Once we'd finished our wanderings and settled down for a rest at the back of the structure, the weirdest thing that's ever happened to me in India slowly began to happen. There were 12 of us, we were all wearing respectable, non-touristy clothes and most of us were wearing salwar kameezes (the girls) and Kurta Pajama (the guys). I was wearing a tee shirt, but with respectable pants. Slowly, some Indians came over and started gawking at us. Eventually, a crowd of about 40 people swarmed and started shooting pictures. They'd bring their kids over and click away. Everyone wanted to have their pictures taken with the weird white people. At some point, an old woman asked Kari, one of the fairest skinned women in our group (blonde haired and blue eyed) to autograph her arm and a 50 rupee note. Then a bunch of Muslim guys came over and saw that one of our group members had a Muslim-looking beard and gave him the traditional muslim greeting and we got mobbed once again. The iconic image from this whole experience was watching this small kid, who was probably no more than 8, just gawping open-mouthed at seeing two pale white women in salwars. We then faced the street of touts again while going to get a bite to eat. We got to the roof-top restaurant we'd been looking for and had just pulled up a table when the heavens opened and we got seriously dumped on. We quickly dashed down to the first floor of the restaurant and passed a very pleasant two hours down there enjoying some nice food and hot coffee. All the while, the storm was dumping torrents of water onto Agra's stinky ass streets, which put a very palpable pong of shit and rotting garbage into the air. Agra is a foul cesspool of a city and I don't think my nose got a break from unsavory smells from the time we crossed in until the time we moved on. The more immediate problem was we had no desire to wade through 1 km of raw sewage to get back to our cars. Cars are not allowed in Taj Ganj, which ruled out having our drivers pick us up. We had to take rickshaws which are like boats in this sort of weather. It didn't help that I was basically in charge of getting my rickshaw to where we needed to be and since it was me and a bunch of people crammed in to such a small space, my retarded caveman Hindi had to suffice. It only worked so well, though. He did understand parking, but he misinterpreted what I said. I said paschimi parking, which means the west lot, but he thought I meant dakshini parking, the south one. Eventually he just gave up, making us fend for ourselves and ripping us off in the bargain. I was so happy to get back to our dingy little Qualis and shut the door to shield us from the stink and touts of the Taj Mahal parking lots. The next 6 or so hours are sort of a delirious haze, where I may or may not have fallen asleep.

I had another really weird experience yesterday. The guys in the apartment were hungry and we decided to visit a mall we'd never been to before. It clearly wasn't totally done, many of the shops on the third and fourth floors were blank storefronts being outfitted for tenants. We came to this place called indijoe sizzlers where the ambiance was clearly geared towards a chilis/tgif/applebees sort of place. They'd clearly never had a white patron before, let alone five, so they asked for our input on all sorts of minutiae, like the music, and the amount of M&Ms in the shakes. It was totally strange.

The power's getting cut so I have to run. Pictures tomorrow.