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This is the money shot of the Taj Mahal trip. I really understand why the call it a wonder of the world. I'm not even going to try to express how awe inspiring this place was, because words will quickly fail me. And it was big, too. Check the second picture. The little people in front of it were still probably 30 or 40 feet from the base of the walls and they look like nothing. As you can imagine, I think together we took over 200 pictures of this place, so it was really hard to only pick three.

The girls had finished their training period with NARI and were going north to see the Taj and the province of Rajasthan, so I decided to go with them and finish the remaining two weeks afterward. We definitely had a great time. They just left mumbai last night and I miss them already.

All surfaces of the Taj were white marble, and all the decorations that you see were inlaid precious stones. I'm sure some of it was glass, but that was line they gave us, so why not? You could actually see a lot of them shining when you changed angles walking around the building. Inside is only the crypt of Shah Jehan, and his wife, Mumtaz, for whom he built the Taj. I guess his other 100 or so wives must have been jealous. Anyway, really really impressive. We got up way early to see sunrise on the Taj and also so it would be cooler and have less people there. It was so hot in Agra it was unbelievable. I was in a full sweat when I woke up that morning at 5:30am, despite having a roaring fan on just over me and no covers. yech.

This photo, number 1527, is of the the worst bathroom ever. This was at a snack stand that out bus stopped at on the way to Jaisalmer. Not everything in India is pretty and romantic. This was in actuality not even close to the worst one we've seen, but only the worst one we've thought to take a picture of. And if it looks bad, trust me, the smell and damp atmosphere were worse!

We took an overnight camel trek into the desert of western Rajasthan. We rode out a few hours from a spot near a town called Jaisalmer, stopped for lunch for four hours, to wait out the hottest part of the day, and then continued another two or three hours to some sand dunes. We camped there overnight and then came back in the morning. Of course, the sunset and sunrise on the dunes was amazing along with more stars in the sky at night than any of us had ever seen before. We slept out in the open on blankets, and it was sooo nice, even despite being covered in sunscreen and then a thick layer of sand with no opportunity to wash.

We don't look like tourists Cecile, what the hell are you talking about?

We had some company, too. There were these huge dung beetles everywhere around the dunes. They were almost the size of a golf ball and they crawled everywhere. For the first few hours after the sun went down, it seemed like we were continually throwing them off us or our blanket. It wasn't a big deal because they don't bite, but it was still a bit creepy to have things crawling on you. But you could just sweet it up real quickly and throw it off toward the dunes. Also there were stray dogs. India is famous for having a really large number of stray dogs. We have in fact started a photo collection of stray dogs at famous indian monuments. We found really hilarious that you couldn't bring a flash light into the Taj Mahal, but yet there were stray dogs running around the grounds. Well, anyway, much to our amusement, after we finished dinner, and had laid down for the night, we heard some animals walking through camp, and sure enough, it was dog that had come to clean the dishes...in the middle of the desert. Anyhow, it was great and if you ever get the chance to do something similar, you should jump on it.

Next up after Jaisalmer was Jodhpur. This is a picture of the fortress on top of a hill. In it's 400 year active history of almost constant warfare with neighboring kingdoms and invaders, it was supposedly never taken by force. After walking through it, I surely believe it. Those guys were paranoid!

It was really amazingly hot in Jodhpur, as this picture of a dog (1740), lying in an open sewer will attest. We were told that it was reaching 45C ~115F or so during the afternoon, and that's when we were out walking around. yikes. And there was no AC for refuge. I was at least used to the heat, if not enjoying it, the poor girls from northern France were not having such a good time with it, that's for sure.

Movies are the absolute biggest cultural phenomenon, aside from religion, in India. If you didn't already know, they have a massive film industry that works in a lot of the languages found in India and also english sometimes. Bollywood is what the call the area that puts out these movies, that is, Hollywood in Bombay. We decided that we had to go to the cinema in India, since it was such a huge thing here. In fact, in the usual battery of questions that Indian folks asked us was almost always included 'you like Indian movies?'

All the popular music is based on movie soundtracks and every indian guy wants to Sharukan even more than they want to Arnold Schwarzenegger. So, 1753 is a picture of us at our Bollywood movie, Mangal Panday, which, by the way is an amazing movie. The story is simple enough to follow as there is some english and the production values are quite good. Our ten or twelve words of Hindi actually did help a little bit too, so that was fun.