race through agra....

sean and i hit agra, the formal capital of india during the mughal period, in a day. we saw the amazing taj mahal and the stunning agra fort. both were beautiful, but agra and varanasi are both cities in which we didn't want to linger. thank goodness katie has confirmed our suspicions in her comment of our last post, agra and varanasi were filthy and hectic and, frankly, really unpleasant. the sights in both cities are breathtaking, but the stress level involved to see them is far too high.

we are now in jaipur, an expensive town with a subway sandwich shop. yes, we went. yes, i had a chocolate chip cookie. yes, i am VERY happy. jaipur is the biggest city in eastern rajasthan, the land of the kings, and one of the more touristy states in all of india. from here, we are deciding where we will go next. we want to visit gujarat, western rajasthan, and the punjab. now we are balancing the political situation along the pakistani border and a lot of flodding in gujarat. sean and i are both feeling a little under the weather after our agra marathon, so i think we'll take it easy here for a bit and poke around the old town, known as the pink city, because everything is painted pink.

the taj mahal was amazing. it didn't take very long to visit, there is the one main chamber and two side buildings, all very beautiful. it rained a little while we were there, and at the agra fort, and since all the flooring in marble, we spent a lot of time concentrating on maintaining steady footing. the back of the complex overlooked the yamuna river. from various parts of the city, and from agra fort, we could see the taj mahal with the river flowing alongside it. so striking. all around the area people were trying to sell postcards, and get us into one rickshaw or another, or a horse cart. it was overwhelming, but not as bad as varanasi. the auto rickshaw drivers do a thing where they try to get you to trust them by 'coming clean' with you, and telling you what they make, and where they will get commission, and generously bad-mouthing the other drivers. all of our guys have said they have been in the business for 20 years, and now there are a lot of young guys who don't know what they are doing, and they won't cheat us, etc. etc.... all they want is for us to think they are the only guy in town who will be straight with us and so we'll hire them for a full day tour. our driver in agra went so far as to tell us that all the restaurants around the taj mahal deliberately give food poisoning to the tourists, implying he was the only person who could keep us safe. luckily, we ate twice in agra, and we are just fine.

ugh. i am ready for this cold to go away, i feel really fuzzy.

reportedly, there is a theatre where we can go see a bollywood movie. sean and i hope to do that tonight, we aren't really up for anything more active. compared to agra and varanasi, the weather here is beautiful, blue sky and a nice breeze. it isn't rainy at all, but really sunny. it isn't even that hot. we are really going to have to watch sean for sunburn, though. i'll write more when my head clears.