The Taj Mahal

We are now in Agra, home to the Taj Mahal. In the last few days we have seen some of the most impressive sights of the trip. The Mughals, who invaded India in the 16th century, left amazingly impressive momuments in this region. Yesterday we visited the Fatehpur Sikri, a sandstone palace and mosque built in the 16th century as the 3rd Mughal ruler Akbar ruled from that area. We then ate lunch at our hotel, which had spectacular views of the Taj Mahal before heading to Agra Fort. In the early 16th century, Mughals captured this originally Rajput (Rajasthani warrior rulers) fort and built over it with red sandstone, enclosing this city capital with a 2.5 km long wall. It was here that Shah Jahan, builder of the Taj Mahal and 5th ruler of the Mughals, was imprisoned by his son Aurangzeb, who also killed his two older brothers in order to take control of the throne.
In the evening, we watched the sun set at the Taj Mahal along with thousands of other tourists. The Taj Mahal is an amazing structure and it has been carefully maintained over the last 400 years. Built from white marble and inlaid with precious and semi-precious stones, this gigantic monument to love appears to float in the sky. In 1631 Shah Jahan built the Taj Mahal as a tomb for his 3rd wife Mumtaz Mahal, who died during the birth of their fourteenth child. To show his deep love for his favorite wife, he built this marble mausoleum to honor her. Shah Jahan said that "Should guilty seek asylum here, like one pardoned, he becomes free from sin. Should a sinner make his way to this mansion, all his past sins are to be washed away. The sight of this mansion creates sorrowing sighs; and the sun and the moon shed tears from their eyes. In this world this edifice has been made; to display thereby the creator's glory."
This morning we returned to the Taj Mahal at sun rise when it looked the most beautiful. Being only a a handful of tourists willing to get up so early, we had the whole Mahal to ourselves. After a visit to Akbar's tomb in the afternoon, we had a tearful goodbye with Andy and Leslie. Their visit has without a doubt been the best highlight of our trip so far and we were so happy to create amazing memories with them. We will definitely miss them and hope they have safe travels. As they drive off to Delhi to catch a plane to New York, we are getting on a 24-hour train to Hyderabad in the state of Andra Pradesh.

Delhi and Udaipur

We are so unbelievably happy that Andy and Leslie have flown from NYC to spend 10 days with us here in India. Until the day we met them, India had been really cold and we often slept in several layers of clothing and blankets at night. From the day they arrived, we have been blessed with amazing weather. The sun is shining, the evenings are cool and, with the exception of Delhi (severe pollution problems), the sky has been bright blue. We met them at our hotel the afternoon after they arrived and spent the time catching up before we went to dinner at Connaught Place. Connaught Place is a very modern shopping area that surrounds peaceful gardens in New Delhi. The traffic was pretty brutal, which made it very difficult to cross the street- quite a welcome to India for Andy and Leslie. The masses of cars and the endless honking was certainly an overload of the senses but we all braved the traffic and made it to a restaurant that served delicious and unlimited Gujarati thalis.
The following day, we had a packed schedule of sightseeing in Delhi. We drove through New Delhi, passing many embassy buildings, the High Court, the president's house and headed towards Chandni Chowk, a section of Old Delhi full of narrow pathways, shopkeepers, cows and monkeys wandering/climbing freely and barbers giving cheap shaves on the corners. We took a cycle-rickshaw through this neighborhood, taking in all the sights before heading to Jama Masjid, India's largest mosque. This mosque can hold up to 25,000 people and Leslie and I looked quite festive in the neon colored polka-dotted smocks that the guards had us wear inside.
From there, we passed the memorials of Gandhi and Nehru and the Red Fort, which were all closed to the public as it was a few days before India's national holiday. We then went to Humayun's tomb. Humayun was the second Mughal ruler in India and this magnificent complex of marble and sandstone buildings and gardens was built by Humayun's wife at the middle of the 16th century. Our last stop was Qutab Minar, a Muslim tower that is 72.5 metres high, making it the tallest minaret in the world. Built in the late 12th century, this tower is surrounded by a nice park and ruins of Jain and Hindu temples that predated it. We ended the evening with a delicious dinner.
We have spent the last three days in Udaipur, the City of Lakes. Udaipur is known as the Venice of the East and, having been to another "Venice of the East" in Suzhou, China, this one definitely takes the cake. The city has 5 lakes and Lake Pichola is the largest one, with many of the city sights around this area. We took a private boat tour and stopped by two palaces built in the middle of the lake in the 16th century. We had relaxing afternoons at our incredibly beautiful hotel Oberoi Udaivilas after mornings spent visiting royal gardens, the City Palace, a crystal gallery collection and some old yet still active temples. We took a cooking lesson one afternoon and also had a yoga session on the balcony of a small palace located within our hotel. Throughout the whole trip, we have continued to pinch ourselves that we are with Andy and Leslie in India. We ate great Indian food every meal, tried some delicious Indian wines and spent the evenings watching the sun set on Lake Pichola or enjoying cocktails on our balconies. We are so excited for the days to come. Tomorrow, we will head to Jaipur, the capital of Rajasthan before driving to Agra to see the Taj Mahal.

Narinder Singh in Chandigarh

Chandigarh and Amritsar

Contributions by S:
We spent the last two days in Chandigarh, the capital of both Punjab and Haryana. After Indian independence, Punjab lost half its land to Pakistan and its capital city Lahore. Prime Minister Nehru, along with other Punjab and Haryana leaders, decided that the new capital city for these two states would be a symbol for independent India. They hired a group of world famous architects Le Corbusier, Pierre Jeanneret, Matthew Nowicki, and Albert Mayer to design India's first planned city. Le Corbusier, the main architect, had a very clear vision for this garden city:

The city plan is laid down in a grid pattern. The whole city has been divided into rectangular patterns, forming identical looking sectors, each sector measures 800 m x 1200 m. The sectors were to act as self-sufficient neighbourhoods, each with its own market, places of worship, schools and colleges - all within 10 minutes walking distance from within the sector. The original two phases of the plan delineated sectors from 1 to 47, with the exception of 13 (Number 13 is considered unlucky). The Assembly, the secretariat and the high court, all located in Sector - 1 are the three monumental buildings designed by Le Corbusier in which he showcased his architectural genius to the maximum. The city was to be surrounded by a 16 kilometer wide greenbelt that was to ensure that no development could take place in the immediate vicinity of the town, thus checking suburbs and urban sprawl; hence is famous for its greenness too. (Wikipedia)

On the morning of our second day of exploring, we met a friendly 73 year old Sikh man named Narinder Singh. Retired for the last 15 years after working in various government offices in Chandigarh, he has made it his hobby to show tourists around the city. He prides himself on being able to take you to restaurants where the food is delicious and cheap as well as places not open to the general public. He gave us a private tour of Nek Chand's Fantasy Rock Garden which is a 25 acre garden full of sculptures made from waste and trash collected in the months after Indian independence when millions of Indians moved from Chandiagarh to Pakistan. He also took us to meet the city's Minister of Health and took us to the gov't Publicity Office where he cut out several photos of himself in the newspapers that the employees had saved for him. He welcomed us into the Sikh Cultural Center where his friends arranged for us to stay at a guest room in Amritsar's Golden Temple, Sikhism's holiest temple. He was a really friendly man who practiced Hindi with us and encouraged us to speak it to strangers on the street. He carried around a canvas bag full of pamphlets and newspapers, which he collected more and more of throughout the day. His gold mine was at the publicity office where he looked through all of the packed shelves and took one copy of each of the pamphlets they had. He also had a bag of small gifts to give to foreigners that he stopped to talk to on the street. After he presented them with either a pamphlet, flower or a garland (S and I got all 3), he asked for a photo to be taken to remember the experience. He was very kind and continuously called me his granddaughter the whole day. Day after day, we are just constantly amazed by the generosity of the hundreds of incredibly friendly people we have met along the way.
We are now in Amritsar, the holiest city for the Sikh religion. There is the spectacular Golden Temple here.
In 2 days, we will head to Delhi and meet Andy and Leslie for an exciting adventure around N. India with them for a week. Can't wait!!!

The Forts of Rajasthan

Since Ahmedabad, we have visited Jodhpur and Jaisalmer, two cities with tremendous forts and palaces sitting atop hills. Jodhpur is home to Meharangah Fort, built in the early 19th century by Maharaja Man Singh. It is surrounded by the blue city, thousands of small houses painted indigo-blue to indicate the homes of those of the Brahmin caste.

From there, we took a very noisy overnight train to Jaisalmer, a 12th century sandstone fort and palace. Due to excessive water use by the hotels, restaurants and residents, the desert Fort is slowly beginning to collapse. It is the oldest living fort in the world and there are many restoration groups working to fix the plumbing and overdevelopment problems in order to keep the fort in its original place- atop the hill. Yesterday evening, we packed into a jeep with 7 other Indian tourists to Sam Sand Dunes Park, a pretty isolated area of the Thar desert where we rode camels to the highest point of the dunes and watched the sun set. While I thought the camel ride through the desert was romantic, S found it to be unbearably uncomfortable.
We are in the most touristed state in India - Rajasthan. While is easy to understand why so many tourists come to Jodhpur and Jaisalmer, it does dramatically increase the hassle-factor and we have started telling all the touts that we hate shopping. They are usually stymied by this and leave us alone. Despite the overwhelming amount of tourist infrastructure, we have successfully been able to explore less visited parts of these areas, which has been very rewarding. While exploring some gardens in Jodhpur, we met two Nepali brothers who own one of the millions of tourist handicrafts shops in Thamel, Kathmandu. We shared chai with them while the older brother recounted to us how he met his wife through her accidentally dialing him as a wrong number.

Traveling through the desert has been extremely cold. We have been wearing our thermal underwear and wool socks everyday! Tonight we head to Bikaner where a 16th century fort and camel rides through the desert are the primary tourist attractions. I think we will be skipping out on the camel trek, given S's 45 minutes of pain last time.

Rajasthan- Jodhpur, Jaisalmer, Bikaner

Ahmedabad

We have spent the last two days exploring the largest city in the state of Gujarat, Ahmedabad. It is where Gandhi lived from 1915-1930 and from where he began the long struggle for Indian independence. We visited his ashram yesterday and saw several exhibits on his life and his simple living quarters that he shared with his wife Kasturba. We also had a great Gujarati thali yesterday for lunch- they are lighter and sweeter than your traditional Punbjabi thali.
We are coincidentally in town for the international kite festival. In the spirit, kids all over the city are flying their paper kites in the sky. We stopped by the event and, after a great pav bajie (grilled bread with spicy vegetables), watched as kitists from all over the world flew their huge colorful kites. While there is not too much to see outside of the ashram, we have met many nice people (this place does not get a lot of tourists), been invited to several homes and saw our second Bollywood movie. The great thing about these movies is that even though we can only understand about 5% of Hindi, the plots are so visual and unsubtle that we understand 100% of the story. We especially like the 3-4 music and dance numbers interspersed throughout the story- very entertaining!
We today will take a night train to Jodhpur after we have dinner at Ahmedabad's best restaurant- it's in a 1920's mansion and the menu changes daily!!!

Ahmedabad

Bhopal to Mumbai

Mumbai

Today is day 164 of our trip and the last five days have been full of adventures and thought- provoking experiences: having lunch at a family's home, visiting Mumbai's biggest slum and being extras in a Bollywood TV show!!!

Before getting on a 4 hour-delayed train to Mumbai Monday night, we had lunch at the home of Raj Kumar, a very kind man whose family we met in Sanchi the previous day. We took a rickshaw out to their home and spent a few hours talking with them and getting to know each other better. Raj's daughter Umika and nephew Manish were both wonderful and, as they were both visiting their family in Bhopal, invited us to visit them in their respective homes if we visit their cities. Raj's wife Sima cooked a delicious Sindhi meal consisting of a vegetable stew/curry and Umika showed us how to make chai- India's most popular drink. They were so welcoming and generous and we hope to be able to visit Manish and Umika if time permits.

On Wednesday, we spent the morning on a tour of the Dharavi slum, Asia's second largest slum after Karachi in Pakistan. The slum covers about 1.7 sq. kilometers of land and is home to over one million residents. The organization that runs the tour uses 80% of its proceeds to run a kindergarten and job-training/personality development courses for adults. We visited several of the factories in Dharavi- plastic recycling,cloth dying, oil and paint can recycling, and clay pottery. We also visited some residents' homes. On average, there are 4-8 members living in a home and 43% of families have 10 sq. m of space in which to cook, eat and sleep. We visited an elementary school where the teacher was in the middle of a math lesson, which was quite exciting. When the students in the class found out I was a math teacher, they all wanted to show me their workbooks and what they had completed. This evening, I purchased a book about Dharavi and hope to learn more about the community that lives there.

It was on the same day of the tour that we met a really interesting and engaging couple Amy and Jeff. We met them for dinner at one of Mumbai's top restaurants that evening and had a fantastic time with them. We enjoyed sharing our travel experiences and hope to see them some time in the future!

Yesterday morning, shortly after I woke up, the hotel manager told us that a casting agent was looking for Western people to be extras in the Bollywood TV show Powder. I was on board right away and, after some serious thought, S decided to do it too. The casting agent picked us up at our hotel at 6PM where we took a hour and a half 10 km drive through some of Mumbai's worst traffic. While the first few hours we mostly just sat around the set with the other extras, we started filming around 10:30 PM. It was a two minute clip with the main character leaving a train station, bargaining with a taxi driver and then, after talking to a self-centered young motorcyclist, getting on the back of his motorcycle and driving off. S and I, hard to believe, were playing foreigners who just got off the train and were getting on a tour bus. They did about 8-10 takes from 5 different angles which lasted until 3AM. We were provided dinner, chai to keep us alert and 500 rupees (10 US dollars) for our work. It was a long night with lots of waiting around but it was certainly worthwhile!
We have really enjoyed our time in Mumbai- it is a beautiful city with lots of life and character. Definitely my favorite city so far. We catch a train to Ahmedabad tomorrow afteroon.

Ancient Ruins in Madya Pradesh

Khajuraho, Orchha, Bhopal and Sanchi

We have been spending this week exploring ancient Hindu, Islamic and Buddhist ruins throughout the state of Madya Pradesh. We began in Khajuraho, whose 11th century Hindu are adorned with elaborate erotic carvings. We spent yesterday, New Years Eve, in Orchha, a small town of 8,500 people that has really impressive 17th century Islamic palaces and temples. We spent a few hours wandering around Jehangir Mahal and Raj Mahal, whose enormity and architectural detailing certainly holds one's eye. We climbed up the narrow staircases of each one admiring the projecting windows, domes and towers on each of the 4 floors. From the top, as far as the eye could see, we saw smaller temples and ruins dotting the landscape along the nearby Betwa river.
We spent our New Years Eve at a rooftop dinner-dance party at the Sheeh Mahal Hotel, which had amazing views as it was located between the Jehangir and Raj Mahal. A classical music performance with a dramatic transvestite dancer preceded a delicious Indian buffet. We ate dinner next to an '07 Wesleyan couple who have been cycling around the world for the last year and a half. Such a small world!
We have just arrived in Bhopal, in central Madya Pradesh. Tomorrow we will explore more Islamic ruins in the area and hopefully head to Sanchi the following day to see ancient Buddhist temples. We have been having a hard time getting train tickets as this is one of busiest travel times so our plans are subject to change. We'll find out tomorrow morning at the train station.
Happy New Year to everyone!!!