Built over 17 years the 1600’s as a mausoleum for Shah Jahan’s favorite wife after she died giving birth to their 14th child, the Taj Majal is a strikingly beautiful building that pretty much everyone in the world knows and has viewed in pictures. Of course, we knew our India experience would not be complete without a visit, but were very surprised how well worth the visit in person to the Taj Mahal would be. We arrived for sunrise and wandered the peaceful grounds taking photographs and viewing the spectacular white marble building with intricate detailed carvings and artwork up close. Another tour during our one day in Agra was to visit the Agra Fort which was built by the Moguls in the 1500’s. I’d say that it was almost equally impressive. The pictures speak for themselves.
Embarrassingly we couldn’t resist the temptation to make a stop in Khajuraho in the Indian state of Madya Pradesh to check out a group of Hindu temples with Kama Sutra carvings that date back in the 10th and 11th centuries. These temples are all immaculately carved with figurines, many in very – some of which I really mean “very” – erotic poses. These temples were immaculately preserved and the detail of carvings was probably the best we have seen yet. And for the record, I am not just saying that because they were erotic sculptures. Yes, just like the magazines and videos of today, the women were all very busty and perky with the perfect curves, the men very well-endowed, and there was quite the variety of scenes and orgys with a multitude of interesting positions. But we look past all that and appreciate the details and fine artistic nature of the temples and their historical significance. Who am I kidding…it was fun looking at the ancient porn. One detail we found interesting and humorous was that the most erotic scenes even had carved figurines of others nearby with their hands covering their eyes so as not to see the scandalous action going on right next to them. In this case the pictures speak for themselves too…but some actually are so erotic that we’re keeping our photo album rated “R” and only publishing a few select poses. If you are the type who is interested in viewing photographs of more of what the Kama Sutra carvings had to offer, just ask when we return home and we’ll show you the rated “X” stuff…including the one with a man and his horse.
Our final quick stop was to Varanasi, one of the holiest
cities in India and located in the state of Uttar Pradesh. Hindu pilgrims come to the ghats along the
Ganges river to wash away their sins and there are ghats along the side of the
river where cremation ceremonies for dead bodies take place in public. Our visit was short. We arrived late morning off an overnight
train from Khajuraho and needed to leave early the next morning to start our
two-day train-bus-border crossing-long-bone-jarring bus journey to Kathmandu. So our main activity was to take a boat ride
down the river near sunset to see the ghats, the city, and do some people
watching from the water. The cremation
ceremonies were interesting. There was
one fire burning and one body being prepped.
Let’s just say that it didn’t smell like a normal campfire.
That’s it for India.
We have moved on to Nepal and are looking forward to some incredible
trekking and finally an escape from the lowland heat into the cool, dry, high
mountain air of the Himalayas for most of our final two months on this trip
before we return to the states.
The following is a thank-you letter to the country of India:
Dear India –
Thank you very much for having us. You are a unique, challenging, somewhat
frustrating, and at times, uncomfortable adventure. We are both fascinated with your country: your people - who are both friendly but who also at times can
be evil, your beautiful geography, and colorful history. It is amazing to me how over one billion
people from a huge range of social classes, ethnic backgrounds, and educations
can all live together in what on the surface appears to be utter chaos, but
somehow works anyway. We have a few
minor recommendations as follows:
-
Foreign tourists are not walking ATM’s full of
money, school pens, or chocolate. Please
teach your children that because right now most of them are really annoying.
-
You might want to do something about your litter
problem. Your country looks like a giant
landfill. The state of Texas was fairly
successful with their “Don’t Mess With Texas” campaign. From our observations feeding off your
national pride, a “Don’t Mess With Hindustan!” campaign might be a good start
cleaning up the place.
-
Your vendors and shop owners might want to adapt
a less aggressive sales technique. They
were the worst we experienced in Asia.
We don’t enjoy that heavy pressure to buy and did less shopping and
bought fewer souvenirs than we might otherwise have because of it.
-
Please fire whoever is in charge of maintaining
the computer systems for train reservations.
They don’t work most of the time.
There was not one train ticket booking that was not a headache where we did
not receive a message such as “System Behaving Badly. Try again later.” The silliest headache was the online kiosks
at the Delhi train station to check booking status. After painfully entering all the information
on a touch screen that barely worked, it wouldn’t let us hit the enter
button. Not just one, but all three
kiosks had the same problem with the software.
There were lines of people beating their heads against the wall because
of this and no one doing anything about it.
Certainly your IT gurus (who we in western countries had actually been
concerned about taking our IT jobs overseas) can do better than that.
-
The Indian head-bobble is endearing and we love
it. Please keep that one as is.
-
Indian men’s infatuation with blond-haired women
is understandable. Blond hair can be
beautiful and it is not in the Indian gene pool. However, you’re going to have to figure out
how to stop the weird staring if you’re ever going to get a blond-haired woman
to feel comfortable around you.
-
When you choose to install a western-style
toilet, please post some signs like we saw in Vietnam and Indonesia instructing
people how to use it properly. The
steamy turd on the floor right in front of the toilet is gross.
That’s it and thanks again for the
experience. While, for us, your hassles
were not always worth the rewards, we will have some great memories and enjoyed our visit.
Sincerely,
Brian and Elise
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