We woke up this morning at 5:40 to get to the Taj Mahal by six. (Shakil took us.) After two hours there, Shakil returned us to N Home Stay where we showered, rested, and had a breakfast of toast, eggs, and, for Ethan and me, Cadbury chocolate shots and strawberry gummies. We tried to get Olympic coverage on the TV but for some reason we couldn’t get power.

The mini-Taj was next on our list. It was built for the king by the king but he never finished it. It is waaaaay smaller than the Taj Mahal across the river, but it is, to me, more interesting. It had narrow passageways, peepholes, and paintings. The stone outside the main part was burning hot, but Mom and I (for some reason) chose not to use the shoe-covers and just went barefoot. Agh!

Our next stop was a garden. To get to it, Shakil had to take the car through poor parts of Agra. The people in some of those parts live in mud huts and we saw women carrying ten bricks on their head in a construction site. In New Delhi, we saw a woman in her bright pink sari sweeping and picking up trash on the side of the road.

The garden was right on the river and is, according to the sign, the best place for viewing the Taj Mahal in moonlight. It wasn’t nighttime but it got dark fast. The clouds rolled in and the rain came down and we ran back to the car as fast as we could… except Shakil wasn’t there. So we waited a couple of minutes, called him, and eventually got back in the car. He had gone looking for us.

The marble shop was interesting. We bought a table for our living room that has to be shipped to Seattle (!) because that’s the nearest port. The owner gave Ethan a chess set as a gift. It is a wooden box with the marble board on top. Inside are the little pieces, which are also made from marble. We learned that the marble for the Taj Mahal is the strongest in the world. It has to be cut with river sand and water because the marble is crystalline. The sand contains crystals, too. The owner tested our knowledge of semi-precious stones when he had us name seven or eight that were in the “flowers” at the Taj. These stones included mother-of-pearl, jasper, tiger-eye, and turqouise.

The red fort, officially known as the Agra Fort, is almost boring without a guide. It is red and it’s on the river, but I think we still needed a guide. We did learn, however, that the giant cup in the courtyard was for bathing. I thought it was for coffee. It was raining slightly so the walkways were either slippery or slightly submerged. It was fun though, and it would have been more fun if we had been allowed to go up to the top of the walls and walk around, getting an archer’s view.

Ciao!