Agra

this was written sunday, i just haven't had internet till now.

I can’t believe I’ve already been here for almost six weeks. I feel like I’ve been constantly in motion. Today I took the day off completely, no errands, just unwinding my thoughts and bones and tired feet. Betsy and I made toast and tea for breakfast, and walked to an internet café, I sent out some resumes for summer jobs (I guess this was an errand, but it was the weather was nice and we walked, so it seemed like much less of one). We got back and had some tasty potatoes and onions with chipatis and dhal with our host parents. Then, after several months hiding from the sun (it was winter at home when I left, and here a t shirt and an ankle length skirt is as risqué as I’m willing to go), I put on my swimsuit and went to soak in some much needed vitamin D on the roof. I just started reading Special Topics in Calamity Physics, it’s starting semi slow but I have been assured in another 100 pages or so I won’t be able to put it down. It made for good laying out reading. It was warm and it was quiet and I was happy.

This weekend we made a trip to Agra. The train took longer than expected to get in Friday night, but that was fine with me as I was completely engrossed in The Unbearable Lightness of Being. I feel like I’m going to have to read it again because I couldn’t get myself to slow down. We snacked on oranges and Parle G’s, and talked to a woman from Israel traveling India for 6 months, then moving on to Nepal, Thailand, the rest of South East Asia for another 6 months. She had already traveled extensively through South America and the US, and Australia is her next on her list. I had questions I wanted to ask, like had she already served in the Israeli armed forces? Had she always been traveling alone? But she settled into her book in Hebrew (also weird for me, I always pictured Hebrew as a nearly extinct language, like Latin, what kids recited at their bar mitzvahs, but there is a whole nation speaking it.)

Anyways, Agra. To be honest the city is not somewhere I would miss. It was how I would picture a city rebuilding after a war. Police officers (in thick olive green suits holding rifles stood at every one of the several road blocks, the animals were sick (heart breakingly sick, I saw a dog that I think had polio), and the people we talked to unhelpful. The hotel we stayed at had next to no running water, and a “triple” was 2 twins pushed together, so Betsy and I essentially shared a twin. But we shook it all off, got up at 5:30 to see the Taj at sunrise. It was breathtaking, unusually quiet and we got there before the bulk of the tourist rush. Tour guides are highly recommended for the Taj, but we opted out, I don’t think explanations could have made it more beautiful. doesn't it look like we're superimposed with a picture of the Taj? i promise we were really there. sorry its sideways, i don't have time to fix it.

We then took a bus out to Fatehpur Sikri, Akbar’s fortified city. There is hardly a way to describe it except just enormous. Gardens, ruins, pools, it was just sprawling. Emma, Betsy and I sat and talked in a courtyard for a while, about how ridiculous it is that we still think about certain times and people and places with a good deal of frequency. But then I realize that I probably think about lawn sprinklers and crawdads at least once a day, so it’s not so ridiculous that even when things lose their importance we still think of them often. We took the bus back, I think the guy sitting next to me was drunk, he kept singing out loud and then passing out. It was 3 in the afternoon. We bought some parathas (basically a chapatti stuffed with spices and any veggies you want, in this case just potatoes. I prefer them with peas and cauliflower though) and bananas from the street and hung out at the train station until our train, which was regrettably not a sleeper, instead a car packed to the max with people, bumping elbows and sitting in the aisles. It was a challenging trip, but definitely memorable, and the Taj Mahal is unimaginably beautiful in real life. My friend’s dad cried when he saw it. I don’t think a building is capable of bringing me to tears, but I understand how it could happen there.