Taj Mahal!

Yesterday, almost the entire group (all but 3 participants and one project supervisor) got on a train in the very early morning to go to Agra for a day of sightseeing. We arrived at around 10am and spent a while bargaining with taxi and rickshaw drivers. In the end, we agreed with a few rickshaw drivers for each person to pay 50 rupees ($1.25) for the entire day of service. We started off by going to a restaurant, which unfortunately turned out to be terrible food (but that’s a first so far in India). Then we went to the Taj Mahal, and I paid 750 rupees to get in. As it was a weekend, there were A LOT of tourists there, but it was still an amazing experience. I think the best part is that I’ve seen so many images of it my whole life, and never thought I would actually see it, but there I was. The group wandered around for almost two hours, taking lots and lots of pictures, and we met back at the rickshaws to head to Agra Fort. On the way there, we stopped at a very high quality marble store, where supposed descendants of those who built the Taj Mahal carve and designed marble table tops, boxes, elephants, etc. with inlayed precious stones. It was interesting to see the process, but the prices for even the smallest pieces were expensive by any standard. After looking around, we continued on our trip to Agra Fort. Agra Fort was another 250 rupees for the foreigners in the group, and so a few of us decided to keep travelling around. We went to Mughal Gardens and walked around for about 10 minutes, then decided it was time to go get food. It took three attempts to find a good restaurant, taking a rickshaw from one to the next, and finally we found a cheap restaurant with possibly the best food I’ve had so far. We met back at the train station at 6pm and headed for home.Today, Annu and I went to the a university which is planning to introduce a Panchayati Raj Department of studies, and has invited us to its inauguration on Friday. We got a tour of the area and finalized plans for Friday. Then they had the driver take us all the way home (a 90 minute trip). Wednesday the group is going to the Canadian Embassy to present our program to the officials there. We will be seeing the other Canada World Youth group that we were with during the pre-orientation camp in September for the first time. They have already lost 5 out of 9 of the Canadian participants! We created a ‘timeline’ of pictures, and two participants from our group will be speaking at the event.