Delhi and Agra

Yesterday we toured Delhi. We saw lots of old buildings from the Mogul Era about 800 years ago. A mosque, the Red Fort, Humayun's Tomb and a really beautiful old minaret from the same area. All were made of red sandstone. The hightlight of the day was a bicycle rickshaw ride through very narrow alleyways with a chaos of street life, vendors of all kinds, cows, sleeping dogs, bicylcle "pickup trucks" piled high with all kinds of goods and a wild tangle of wires overhead dripping dangerously towards the alleyway. There was a family of five (!!!) on one motorcycle...child, child, dad, child and finally mom in the rear. Dehli streets are all chaos, honking horns, and crazy driving, with the right of way determined by who got there first. I thought I was crazy to have driven in Rome 5 years ago, and that is true, it was crazy, but it was a simple stroll in the park compared to Delhi. I'm glad we have a driver to take care of that end of things. All in all it was the most interesting travel experience we have ever had though perhaps not the most pleasant. Still, I loved it.

We took the 6:15 AM express train to Agra this morning. You think of India as full of people shore to shore but it was all wide open spaces and fields. There was a beautiful foggy mist most of the way with the sun rising slowly, silouhetting trees in the distance. Ethereal and beautiful. The Agra train station was chaos like the Delhi station was, very hard to pass through the throng. We headed off to the Taj Mahal this morning. It is more spectacular than I expected despite being a 'wonder of the world'. Vast and beautifully detailed. From pictures you don't get a sense of all the detailed inlaid stone work that went into building it. Two twin buildings would be tourist sites on their own but were dominated by the central masuoleum. On the way back to the parking lot we rode in a very touristy horse cart amdits more chaos of horse carts, bicylce rickshaws, donkeys, and camel carts. There seemed to be a We're off to the Agra Fort this afternoon and then to see the Taj Mahal from across the river at sunset.