Day 73- 80: Kathmandu- Jodhpur

It's been so long since pen has touched paper, so much life has been lived and so many places passed through, but I shall forgive myself as we've been busy with the frivolous festive season and all have been merry and drunk. (Well giggly). I shall start from where we left off....

Trains, buses and a horse and cart saw us through the three day journey from Kathmandu to Agra and on arriving we decided to rest a while and spend a good four days there. We had expected the city to be a little more hectic and bustling than it was so the green, leafy streets and open spaces came as a welcome surprise. The only downside was the dried up river bed which runs through the city; I imagine when it's full and flowing the city takes on a much more romantic appearance.

We spent our first night sipping chai on the rooftop of our guesthouse whilst looking out over the city's bulbous onion domes bathed in pinks, reds and yellows by the sun's setting rays. We were staying in the Muslim district where many of the locals keep pigeons (kabootars) and as the afternoon draws to a close, people gather on their rooftops to let the pigeons out of their cages for a daily stretch. Usually men or young boys (kabootar baz) control the flying flock with a code of high pitched whistles and whooping noises and the man with the fastest flock and the most control gains a godly reputation. Some take the sport very seriously, actually teaching the pigeons a plethora of tricks, twists and turns but only when a man has mastered these tricks and is able to direct his flock in perfect curves, or single files across the sky, or even command them to encircle a neighbours' flock and drive it to the ground, can he gain the name 'Khalifas' (Great Master). It's really quite a special way to watch the day come to an end.

The next morning I dragged a sleepy and grumpy young man out of his bed at five thirty so that our first sighting of the most beautiful building in the world would occur as the sun came up and in relative quietness. It was definitely worth it. By mid-morning the coaches begin to unload and the wealthy, camera-wielding tourists swarm the building and the grounds, jibber-jabbering at everyone and snapping everything in sight.

It was still fairly dark when we arrived so we sat on a bench in the gardens and watched as the almighty Taj revealed itself. And it really is quite something. A marvellous spectacle of unimaginable size and beauty made from a ridiculous amount of white marble and finely decorated with precious stones. If only Shah Jahan's inspiration to build the monument didn't have to come from his wife's death. Couldn't he have decided to honour their love and her beauty and build an eternal monument whilst she was still alive? At least then Mumtaz would have seen the building. It seems so sad that her coffin lies in the centre hall of a building built for her, the most famous building in the world, a building constructed by a workforce of some 20,000 men from all over Asia, a building which now thousands of people from all over the planet visit each week and take home models of it, posters of it, keyrings of it and touch it's cool and smooth, thick marble walls with their sticky ice-cream fingers and walk across it's slippery white floors with their sweaty little feet and she never even got a glimpse. I'd be pretty gutted.

So, we've seen the Taj Mahal. It feels like one of those many boxes you should tick before you die (take a trip to the moon= no, Go sky-diving= no, Visit the Taj Mahal= yes!) and I am glad we've seen it. It didn't make me feel emotional or anything (are there people out there who become overwhelmed at sights like the Taj?) and we didn't witness any of the colour changes it talks about in the book from reds, purples, yellows and greys to dazzling white, it just got slightly brighter as the sun came up but definitely stayed white. The book also talks about the shrouds of mist that bathe the building in the early morning but we found that the mist generally stays there all day. Everywhere. It's pollution. Some of the outer walls of the Taj have turned yellow and slightly fllaky from the cities industry and petrol fumes and we never saw the sky for smog whilst staying in Agra. The government has set-up a 'Taj Cleaning Programme' but apparently it will only rectify the problem to some extent. The chemicals used will themselves eventually affect the marble and the methods used by the 'team', such as scrubbing with toothbrushes, may prove disastrous in the long term. Attendants already shine their torches on repaired sections of the marble to demonstrate how they've lost their translucency. And that's not all, the Government may have more to worry about as due to the low water levels of the city's river, the Taj's minarets are tilting dangerously and it's feared that unless something is done to restore the river's previous levels, the entire building could collapse! Tick your box whilst you still can!!!

Our next day in Agra was great. We hired a couple of old clapped-out, rusty Indian bicycles and took our own tour of the city. What joy it was for the first time to hear shouts of "Madam! What a lovely bicycle!" or "Very good, very good, you ride like an Indian!" instead of the usual, constant screaching of "Taxi!?", "Get in my rickshaw madam!" and "Where you want to go? Where you want to go? I take you!". We didn't have to fend off the calls with replies of "We're happy to walk", "We'd like to walk thanks" or "We really want to just keep walking!" as for one day we had our very own silent weapon of response in the name of a bicycle.

In and out on the busy bazaars, through some of the outer suburbs and across the citiy's rather rickety bridge to visit more monuments built in people's honour. I think after the Taj was completed, a lot of the wealthy Moghuls decided it was the in-thing to do and throughout the city many loved ones have been left small houses worth of white marble in the shape of a temple or shrine which made me wonder if there is actually any marble left in Rajhastan (the marble was brought all the way over from the north-western state). We sped past the famous Red Fort, littered with swinging and chattering monkeys and rode along the river to see the Taj from across the water (well, from across the dry bed). It's surely the perfect way to get around any Indian city, hassle free and enjoy the sights in your own leisurely time.

Delhi was our next stop but only for an afternoon. We had no desire to stop there but needed to catch our adjoining train to Rajhastan and buy some more books from the big stores there. It was big and busy as expected (of course we didn't see much) and we were glad to hop on board our overnighter to Jodhpur.