Day 1: Agra, Uttar Pradesh

A few weekends ago, I flew with a couple other volunteers and HELP’s visiting Board of Directors member, Janet, to see the Taj Mahal in northern India. Who goes to India without seeing one of the wonders of the world?! Aside from the heat nearly killing us—we’ve gotten used to the mostly cooler weather in Hyderabad—everything went better than we planned. Our flight didn’t get delayed, we all had beds on the train (unlike last time), and the guesthouse we stayed in wasn’t super sketchy.

Besides the Taj Mahal, Agra didn’t have too much to offer, so we’re glad we only spent one day there. Here were some of the highlights:

The memorable overnight sleeper train without AC. This was just the beginning of how sweaty we all got during the next few days.

 

They were all taking refuge from the heat like we were.

I kept thinking of the part in Slumdog Millionaire when the boys steal all the tourist’s shoes. I’m glad that didn’t happen to us.

Agra Fort

Baby Taj

We also got another view of the Taj from across a river, which is where most people see it on Fridays when the Taj is closed to visitors.

There was some smoke coming from the area to the right of this shot, so we asked our auto driver what was going on. He said the Hindus were cremating a body and after they are done, they would likely spread the ashes across the river.

A lot of the tourist shops sold marble piece since that’s what the Taj is made of. This one shop showed us how they inlaid the colorful pieces... So beautiful. So expensive.

The best part of our day was having Mori as our driver. He showed us all the sites in Agra, found us the best air-conditioned restaurants to eat at, searched for a place with snake charmers (we couldn’t find one), and told us cool stories about his two wives—the Catholic one living in Spain, and the Muslim one living there in India.