Agra India

We got to India this afternoon at about 1:00 local time. In our hotel, every room has a view of the Taj. The staff are dressed like characters from Alladin. We were greeted warmly then marked with a dot. We were hoping to blend but the blonde hair gave us away.
By 3:00 I was standing in the shadow of the Taj Mahal. It's beyond description. There isn't a picture in a book or a word in my vocabulary to do it justice. It took 20,000 men 22 years to build. Or vice versa. No matter. As Jack would say "It's ginormous!"

And it is. On the plane, we heard a great lecture about the Shah Jahan who built it for his favorite wife. She died giving birth to their 14th child. He built the Taj as her final resting place. 30 some odd years later, his usurping son buried him next to her. His tomb is the only, and I mean ONLY, thing about the place that is non-symmetrical. I have a friend who really needs to come see Angkor Wat and the Taj Mahal, these grand scale manifestations of symmetry. I nearly fainted. But then again, that might have been the malarone.