I am writing from Agra - home of the Taj Mahal. It is a town about 3 hours by train from New Delhi. The tourists here are more concentrated, so the locals are much more ruthless about hassling. But, we've learned some coping mechanisms and are getting along just fine.

I wish I could describe what it is like to walk down the street in India. The cars whiz by honking their horns and assume that you will jump out of the way. However, in making that jump, one must be careful to avoid the poop - cow, dog or otherwise - puddles of unknown origin, dogs and cows resting on and around the roads and small drainage/sewer gutters on the sides of the road. There are so many more people here and they have so much less money, so everything is dirtier than Thailand. We bought some popcorn on the street two nights ago and were almost deterred from eating it when we saw the state of the seller's hands as he scooped the popcorn into the small "bag" made from newspaper (of course scooping with his bare hand). Traffic lanes are unnecessary as nobody abides by their 'suggestion' anyway. Consequently, we have been doing much careful stepping, jumping and leaping to avoid losing a limb to passing vehicles. (Of course it doesn't help that cows are sacred, so the drivers would rather hit me than them!)

If you get past the traffic, you have to deal with the people selling things. I think we were swarmed several different times by about 30 children (all together) selling...I kid you not... Taj Mahal snow globes. Postcards, jewelry, carvings and more kitsch than you can imagine were constantly shoved in our faces. In Delhi, if we said 'NO', they generally listened and went away. Here, they know that if they follow you for 20 minutes talking the whole time that most people will give in. (It did not help that Kristine actually WANTED a snow globe.) Then, when you do manage to extract yourself from the mob of blossoming capitalists (I say this in jest, for although they are smart, they are also very very poor and desperate to make some sort of a sale. But, I think the stock market was mentioned to us at one point to remind us of our "gazillion" dollars we had at home in the bank.) you immediately find yourself followed/accompanied by rickshaw drivers. They are determined to take you somewhere, of your liking of theirs, where ever that may be.

We decided today to take the day to walk around the see the town and do some shopping. (We are doing the Taj Mahal tomorrow - going at 6am, to see the sun rise there and have the best light for picture taking.) At one point, as we were walking away from one of the Taj gates, a bicycle rickshaw stayed beside us as we walked for at least 15 minutes. We kept telling him no, but he was riding beside us quoting lower and lower prices. Finally, reinforcing this behavior, we climbed in and asked him to take us to the old market. Initially we were trying to squeeze all of our 3 rears into a seat built for 2. This wasn't working very well, so I eventually got out and held onto the back. I had great fun helping to push when we went uphill and occasionally running beside the bike to lighten his load, but I did fear that the vehicles behind me were not having a very pleasant drive - having to stare at my rear end! I do think, however, that I offered a great deal of entertainmet to much of the town who were much amused by the white girl jumping on and off the back of the rickshaw! We didn't end up anywhere near where we wanted to be, but we had a nice tour of the outskirts of the city and I got some good exercise after the train ride from Delhi.

Tonight we saw on the roof of our guesthouse, ate stuffed nan and watched the sun set (though it's a little overcast, so there wasn't a colorful one) near the Taj Mahal. It is so beautiful and we can't wait to visit tomorrow. I can't believe that I am actually here. I am at THE Taj Mahal!

Off to bed now. It is freezing. The paper said that it was 11 C yesterday. Brrr! Was trying to upload a few more pictures from Delhi, but it's not working. So, next time, pictures from the Taj!