Wednesday 2nd April

Agra, Uttar Pradesh

I'm sitting in awe of the most beautiful building in the world. The Taj Mahal. Of storybooks and postcards from other people's holidays. It's so ornate, seems so unreal and you feel you can almost take it home in a little box. It's shape is insanely aesthetically pleasing, it's design so endearing that I could just sit here all day. Just looking. Poor Shah Jahan. he spent thirty-odd years building it and soon after it was finished he was deposed by his own son and spent the rest of his life imprisoned in the nearby Red Fort, gazing towards his love.

The Red Fort here is pretty amazing too, in much better condition than the one at Delhi. Although it has also had all the gold and precious stones stolen. They're putting lots of work into restoring it though and it'll soon be in 'mint' condition. The Taj Mahal has had all it's precious stones replaced on the outside so that no-one will see them. They would as well. From the front (or back, depending on how you look at it) you can see the Taj Mahal on the banks of the river Yamuna, like some huge white spaceship. This was our first glimpse of it and it was so weird seeing it for real as opposed to the postcards. It looks totally different to what I expected, not that I really know what I was expecting - a big white thing standing by itself, perhaps.

Lots of tourists again, though I think I'm immune now. Some (most) of them still quite shock us though, girls wearing shorts and see-through dresses, things like that. Outside the fort they were selling whips! Why? What relevance is a huge leather whip to the beautiful fort? They were very pushy, thrusting things in front of our faces; film sir? Marble box very cheap only 50 Rupees, whip sir? Okay this box only 20 Rupees sir, sir? Film sir? Okay film only 12... 10.. sir, sir?

The mosquitoes are back in force, last night we got completely bitten to death. I don't think either of us got much sleep and I don't know when we last took our anti-malarials. Then again if we had been taking them every day we'd have run out by now anyway. I just wish I'd got enough for me for the six months, instead of sharing C.'s. We must have missed loads of days - six months for one have lasted for two! Mosquitoes, what was God thinking? It'd serve us right if we both get full-blown malaria.¹

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Ramnad hasn't been in my thoughts very much lately, although on the way to Itmad-ud-daulah's Tomb (also known as the Baby Taj) we saw a lot of wild pigs that brought it all back a bit. It's hard to imagine the desolation that I felt before we left. The tears in my last choir practices. The loneliness in Madurai. I knew that once we started on the Round Trip it would all go away and it has. The past month has literally flown by and we haven't had time to think. There have been plenty of relaxing afternoons, but then we were just so glad to have nothing to do that we thought about other things. Home is very far away, even when I talked to dad in Goa it felt kind of out of place, an oasis. It's as if I'm sending my postcards to nowhere because I get no return on them. That's the main reason I feel so detached from my life, like it's a book I've read, or something I saw on TV once. Of course when we're back it'll be the other way round, but I'll know a lot more about India.

We've been travelling round by cycle-rickshaw, which is a lot more fun, eco-friendly, quiet and interesting, even if it does take longer. In Agra, there are carpet emporiums and marble shops as well as all the jewellery shops. here they lure you in by showing you how things are made. We go in, look at the factory then tell them we're not going to buy anything so there's no point in trying to persuade us. Okay, they assure us just looking, you don't have to buy. This is soon forgotten when they catch you looking at something with more than passing curiosity. Good choice, sir, excellent gift for girlfriend, mother... SHUT UP!!! And they get annoyed when we don't buy anything. The carpet place was very interesting though, one man knots the carpets by hand, cutting each knot separately. How he does this without missing knots and cutting his fingers off I'll never know. Next, the carpet is washed and another man trims it with a pair of scissors. He does this twice and then the pattern comes out. The edges are sewn up with wool, tassels are cut on the ends and it is ready for us to buy (beautiful for you front room?).

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I have been very pleasantly surprised with Agra, it's not crowded, not that polluted and is a reasonable size. You can escape the usual racket quite quickly in the gardens. The weather has been very good to us as well, there are loads of clouds in the sky which hide the sun, making it very cool instead of unbearably hot. They cleared for a while around lunchtime so we could get all those idyllic shots of the Taj Mahal. I could stay here for a week, a year, forever. Shame I probably won't come back. But then I suppose that's up to me...