The next day we headed for Agra. Originally, we wanted to fly, as you might remember, but our flights remained suspended. Taking the train would have involved getting up very early. Eugene suggested that we hire a driver and said she knew some who were good. It sounded like a plan. Our driver, who also did not speak English, so all communication was up to Vally, arrived at about 11 AM in a white Mahruti van. We agreed to pay him 4 Rs per kilometer for the ride. Supposedly he knew his way around Agra, although it turned out that he only knew how to get there, which was enough. He was another excellent driver, a tall, angular mustached man in his 30's. It was his employers car. It looked at lot like a VW bus, as I have said, except the engine is somewhere in front and there are sliding doors on both sides. Like almost every Indian vehicle except Bishop Albert's Sumo, the seats had long ago given up any pretense of being comfortable. I did my best to prop myself up with pillows to make it bearable. Also the window were covered with transparent purple plastic which may have blocked the sun, but made it difficult to see anything.

The trip to Agra was expected to take about 4 hours, along the bumpy Delhi to Agra highway. This particular highway has a bad reputation safetywise, which was not encouraging. We only saw two accidents, actually, one of them recent and three dead dogs, which wasn't bad. The trip itself, however, was a series of what looked like near-misses. Normal for India but hard on us. Most of our long-distance highway travel had been at night but this was broad daylight. I repeat. There are no traffic laws in India, nor are there any warning signs. This is best symbolized by the not-necessarily-divided-highways on part of the Delhi to Agra road. Parts of the road were dual lane, but they are working on widening it, so parts are divided. While statistically it is possible that more of the cars on one side were going in one direction, and ditto on the other, in reality it was two ways on both sides.

Eugene had sent us off with a CARE package of oranges and chickoos, but by about 2:30 we were hungry for lunch. We stopped at a roadside restaurant in Matura. Matura, which our Hindu driver did know well, is full of temples and is supposed to be the birthplace of Lord Krishna. Unfortunately, we didn't have to time to visit Matura. The food at the restaurant was incredibly good. Much more similar, since we were in Northern India, to the type of food you see in Indian restaurants here. We ate outside in a walled, grassy area. The tab was 200 Rs (less than $6), including the drivers meal. At the meal's end they brought us a small tray with some little pellets on it. They looked like they could have been animal droppings, only more irregular, hand-rolled. We asked what they were and were told they were "gasbotis," a digestive aid. Sounded reasonable to us, so we each ate one. I suppose you were supposed to eat them. Maybe you are supposed to swallow them with water. They tasted AWFUL!!!!! and it was a very long time, and a lot of water, before I could get rid of that taste. I hope they helped.

We left for Agra with no particular hotel in mind. Actually we thought our driver was an expert and would know where we might stay. So, once we realized that he would be no help, we took out the guidebook. The guidebook mentioned that there was one 5-star hotel with a view of the Taj Mahal. We were tempted. A little luxury at $150 for one night sounded good. The hotel was called the Taj View and our driver had to ask directions to find it. We must have stopped at least 5 times, as we gradually narrowed down where it was. We were still ambivalent, so we asked to see a room. It was true you could kind of see the Taj Mahal at a distance from the window, but it was underwhelming. The room was nice, but we both have probably been to too many scientific conferences where we stayed at places that were at least that nice or nicer. Actually the hotel room in Cochin had far more character than this. Still, we were tired. When we got to the desk, the clerk asked if we had seen the Taj Mahal yet. We said "No" and she told us that it was closed on Mondays, which was tomorrow, so if we wanted to see it we'd better go right that minute, since it was 4:30 PM and it closed at 6:30. She said she'd hold the room. So we raced out the door and told our driver we wanted to go straight to the Taj Mahal. He stopped for directions a couple of times, and finally we were there, or at least in the parking lot.

Agra, by the way, looked just like any other old Indian city. I expected it to be more modern, since it caters to so many tourists, but it was crowded and many, although not all of the streets were narrow and unpaved.

The entrance fee to the Taj Mahal was 105 Rs each and the guide wanted 125 Rs for his services. His English was comprehensible. To get to the Taj Mahal, you go through heavy old wooden doors which are set at the side of a huge red sandstone gate with marble inlays on the face. The inlays spell out verses from the Koran. The sandstone and the doors are dark. Then suddenly, you see it, the white Taj Mahal, maybe 150 feet ahead of you, and you inhale sharply and say to yourself "Oh my God!" I was afraid that I would be disappointed, instead I was blown away. The pictures that we've all seen don't begin to convey what it looks like. It is a shimmering jewel. From that distance, it truly feels divinely inspired.

Here is the story of the Taj Mahal. It was built by the Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan as a mausoleum for his wife Mumtaz Mahal who died in 1631, while producing child number 14, after 17 years of marriage. Construction began that year and was finished in 1651. At least 20,000 people worked on the construction of the Taj Mahal. The architect was a man named Isa Khan who was a sufi mystic from Iran. The construction of the Taj Mahal was a rather costly enterprise that probably strained the stability of the Emperor's kingdom. It is rumored that he intended to build a second Taj Mahal, a black replica of the first, as his own mausoleum. I also heard the contradictory story that after the Taj Mahal was constructed the Emperor ordered the hands of all the skilled workmen cut off so that nothing that beautiful could be duplicated. Be that as it may, his youngest son Aurangzeb wound up deposing his dad and killing all of his brothers to boot. Dad was imprisoned in the Red Fort where he spent the rest of his life looking out across the river at his wife's mausoleum. My image of this imprisonment involved a dungeon of some sort, but, as you will later see, it was far more luxurious than that.

I find the Taj Mahal almost impossible to describe so I will talk mostly about the things I didn't know. It is set against the open sky, so nothing interferes with its beauty. The path leading up to it is on both sides of a long, long reflecting pond. It starts maybe 20 feet after you come through the gate, and continues until about 20 feet from the steps up to the monument. About halfway, there is a nice marble platform which is good for photo ops and for just sitting and looking. I don't have to tell you which roll of film almost all of our Taj Mahal pictures are on. Because I knew almost nothing about the Taj Mahal, I didn't realize that what seemed white from a distance is, both inside and outside, totally inlaid with-precious stones. The inlay work is incredibly fine and the white marble with the colored pieces of stone in it is translucent. This kind of work is still being done, and buying some examples is de rigueur for the tourists.

We put on our shoe covers, climbed the stairs and walked around. It was getting dark inside and the guards had flashlights to lend to the guides. The guide showed us the elaborate inlays. The dome is hollow and has a multiple echo. There is a old man there demonstrating the echo. He expected a tip for his efforts. There is a replica of the tomb on the first floor, but the actual tomb is down below. You can see it at the bottom of a flight of stairs, but they told us that the air circulation was too poor to allow tourists down there. After we walked out, we wanted to just stay there for awhile. Our guide wasn't done with us, so he arranged to meet us back at the gate. We walked around and then laid down in an alcove to get the feel of the place. It was a strange experience, because at a distance the feeling was mystical but up close we both could feel a lot of pain.

Our guide, it turned out, wanted to take us to a shop. We were almost the last people to leave, since we knew we would not be able to come back, so it was dark when we got out. They used to let the Taj Mahal be open at night, but now there is fear that terrorists might take advantage of the darkness. We were hustled into a marble shop, and the sales pitch began. I guess we expected it. It was the end of the day and we were tired, but so were the shopkeepers. I found some things I liked, offered them half of what they wanted and they said okay. Then we went to the parking lot to find our driver who had waited outside for us.

Our driver had acquired a friend. The guidebook had warned us that one of the important ways that people make money in Agra was by attaching themselves to tourists and steering them to various establishments in return for a cut of the resulting sales. It was clear that this man had something like that in mind. On the other hand, he knew his way around, spoke intelligible English, and was keeping the driver company so it seemed alright. By then we had lost our enthusiasm for the Taj View Hotel and asked our driver's new sidekick to recommend a place. His recommendation, the Athithi was just fine. A nice room, with an Indian-style king-sized bed and a bathtub (!) with shower for $12 a night, and for another $3 they threw in accommodations for the driver. This hotel even had its own generator, so that when power failed, the lights were back on within a couple of minutes. We bid our driver and his companion good night and arranged to meet with them at 10 AM. We were on our own.

The food was good, lighter versions of Indian dishes. Vally said that it inspired him to try to cook more lightly. Prices were higher. We spent almost what we would have spent in the US. There was a feeling that this place was so clean that there was no way we were going to get sick. It made me realize that I had felt a bit less certain everywhere else. I think the hot lemon tea cured my incipient sore throat relapse. The proprietress came and tried her spiritual one-upmanship on us. She lost, and lost interest in the conversation. The driver waited for us and took us back to the hotel for 45 Rs round trip, also high by Indian standards.

Back in our room we continued to read the guidebook. After the confusion of Lucknow, I was determined to be better prepared in Agra. An idea started to take hold in my mind. I realized that I could not face the idea of going back to Delhi in the Mahruti. I guess I could have handled the discomfort or the emotional stress, but 4 or 5 more hours of both was more than I could face. "Lets take the train back," I said. "We can give our bags to the driver and he can meet us at the train station in Delhi." We checked the book. The best train from Agra to Delhi is the Shatabji express, which leaves in the evening and takes only 2 hours. If we could get that train, we would be able to spend the whole day sightseeing in Agra.

There was one small incident in the hotel. Early in the morning I heard a very quiet explosion in the neighborhood of where the computer was plugged in. I knew that the converter had fried. I realized, to my distress, that my lap top had all of the battery power it was going to have in its two (one good, one marginal) batteries until we got back to Bombay and could borrow the converter that we had brought Matthew with the CD player. I was already so far behind on the letters. This was not going to help.

The next morning at 10 we found the van, parked in front of the hotel. Our volunteer guide was back and he told us that our driver had gone for a shave. He soon returned and we explained our plan. We drove, with expert guidance, to the train station. We went in and there was a long line. We stood there, undoubtedly looking very confused. A young man approached and said "Are you interested in getting tickets?" We explained what we wanted and he said the "The Shatabji Express is booked up for today but I might be able to get you tickets." The deal was that we would have to pay 400 Rs each ($12) for the tickets, instead of 250 Rs. The difference would be his commission. Vally's paranoia was up. We had no way to tell if this guy was conning us or not. Vally said that first he would see if there were any tickets left on the tourist quota. He shrugged his shoulders and said "Fine." It was getting a little bit overwhelming, since we didn't know our way around the station, so we decided to go out and discuss this with our consultants. For some reason, the consultation drew a crowd. Another man offered to get us tickets, on the same terms. I voted for "Lets just do it." The man asked us to follow him, and he took us back to the original young man. Apparently, he had the extra-procedural ticket concession. We followed him to a hole-in-the-wall storefront office which consisted of a battered desk with a newspaper on it and some rickety chairs. The man filled out a form and then asked for the money for the tickets. Vally was in red alert paranoid mode by then and said "I won't give you the money until you give us the tickets." The man explained that the tickets would not be issued until 6 PM that night. Things were getting tense. Finally, at my urging, we decided to trust that there would be tickets that night and agreed on a deposit of 400 Rs (half). Everyone relaxed and we headed off.

We hadn't eaten, so we asked to be taken to a restaurant for breakfast. I don't remember the name of the place but the decor was palm-fringed and we sat outdoors at a round low table. I faced the kitchen which was behind a large glass window that one of the employees was trying to clean with crumpled newspaper. The food was wonderful and we were starting to regret the fact that most of our meals in India had been home-cooked. Not that they weren't good, but this food was more interesting. While we waited for our order, Vally went out to call Eugene. He quickly found an STD booth but for some reason the computer was gone. The man looked in his old phone records to calculate the rate to Najafgarh. Then he twisted two bare wires together so that Vally could get a dial tone. It took three attempts to get an adequate connection to Dehli. Once Vally started talking, the man's associate kept the time. The conversation came out to 20 seconds, plus 10 more for the two bad connections. Then they had to calculate the total by hand. It was 20 Rs. Vally gave them 30 and the man was very happy.

Our first stop was the "little Taj" or the Itimad-ad-daulah. This was another mausoleum, built between 1622 and 1628, before the Taj Mahal, by Nur Jahan, wife of the Emperor and aunt of Mumtaz Mahal, the woman for whom the Taj Mahal was built. She had this mausoleum constructed for her Persian-born father who was the Emperor's chief minister. This building is considered the precursor for the Taj Mahal because it is the first Mughal structure built of white marble and featuring the kind of inlay work found in the Taj Mahal. I think if what turns you on about the Taj Mahal is the inlay work, the little Taj is very similar. But for us, although it was a very nice piece of work, the words "divinely inspired" did not leap to mind. We did see some monkeys there, and if we had known we would have brought them some peanuts from the vendors just outside. We explored the building and then went out to back towards the river. One of the four big sandstone gates was back there and we decided to check it out. There was an open door, and inside was a poorly lit workshop. Two men were in there, one sitting on the stone floor cutting marble inlays, using the same technique that was used in the old days. Essentially, the stone is cut with a string attached to a bow (think bow and arrow) that keeps it taut. The string was primed with a mixture of sand and water. I never figured out quite why these people were there. I think now that maybe they were hired to be part of the tour, something we failed to appreciate because we didn't hire a guide. They gave us a tiny piece of the polished dark marble that is used for the inlays and we gave them a tip.

We returned to our car. We told the driver that we wanted to be left at the Red Fort and that he could leave for Dehli and meet us there after that. By this time it was almost 2 PM. The volunteer guide was visibly disappointed. He was slowly realizing that we had no plans to go shopping. He tried to talk us out of it, implying that there wasn't much to see at the Red Fort. Having read the guidebook, we knew better. To get to the Red Fort we had to cross the Yamuna River. From the steel bridge we could see a huge herd of water buffalos hanging out, although there was no foliage for them to eat, and some dhobis at work, washing clothes and spreading them out on the sand to dry. I have no idea how anything can come out clean that way. Finally, they left us at the entrance to the Fort, and we tipped the guide 50 Rs, which probably made him feel better. After all, he had been helpful.

Getting into the Red Fort involves running a gauntlet of very mobile street vendors. It was like being attacked, and these people were far more experienced at the game than we were. We were relieved to get through the entrance, and we didn't mind when a guide attached himself to us for 75 Rs. In retrospect, we should have held out for one who spoke good English. His English was so garbled that I begged Vally to ask him to simply explain things in Hindi and let Vally translate them for me.

Some more history. Construction of the Red Fort (or Agra Fort) was begun in 1565 by Emperor Akbar and the last renovations were completed by his grandson, Shah Jahan of Taj Mahal fame. It has thick massive stone walls and a double moat, now filled with plastic bottles and bags and other ugly junk. At first it was mainly a military fort, but it evolved into a combination palace and fort. I got a sense of what life was like in those days when the guide told us that the outer moat was filled with water and crocodiles and the inner one (not technically a moat) was populated with tigers and elephants. The road from the outer gate to the inner gate was downhill and ridged rather than smooth. The guide told us that it was constructed that way to provide traction for the elephants.

One of the places we saw inside the fort was the Hall of Public Audiences, a high stage where Shah Jahan held court. The stage face a huge courtyard with its roof supported by columns. Supposedly the position of the columns was calculated so that the Shah's view was never obscured. He had it constructed to replace an earlier structure, and, not surprisingly, it featured white marble with elaborate inlays. Outside the covered courtyard military barracks and stables, very similar to what we had seen in Lucknow, but plainer. I think they were constructed out of some kind of red brick, because we picked up a piece of rubble and it too light to be stone. At the middle of the quadrangle was the well, probably 50 feet in diameter with the water at least 30 feet down. The hardware cloth mesh cover made it a little less scary. It was constructed on the same principle as the well at Pangla, only much bigger.

Behind it was the Ladies Bazaar. We got two versions of this. In the guidebook's version it was a place where merchants came to display their wares to the ladies of the court. Our guide said it was a place where the ladies came and displayed themselves to the Emperor who was choosing whom to spend the night with. There was another room, the Hall of Private Audiences where the Emperor would meet with foreign dignitaries. The famous Peacock Throne was here until Aurangzeb moved it to Dehli. Somehow it wound up in Tehran. Another stop on the tour was the Octagonal Tower, originally built by Shah Jahan for his beloved Mumtaz Mahal. The tower faces the river and across the river you can see the Taj Mahal through the smog. There are several rooms associated with it-everything very open, no windows. This is where Aurangzeb imprisoned his father during the last 7 years of his life. Our guide said it was more like house arrest, he simply could not leave the fort.

At another place there was a big quadrangle with a huge pond in the middle. According to legend, the pond was stocked with fish and the emperor would try to hit them with a bow and arrow. However, his position was at one end, and his queen's was at the other, and he was always so distracted by her beauty that he could not hit the fish.

We saw the private palaces too. Most of them were made of marble, whereas other parts of the fort were made of sandstone or brick. They were built for the Emperor and his daughters. Each palace consisted of perhaps 3 or 4 of rooms, all in a row, larger than but similar to what we saw in Lucknow. There was a marble floor and the back was solid, but the interfaces between the rooms and the fronts of the rooms consisted of columns and scalloped archways which had been hung with curtains. There was no hint of how these rooms had been furnished, except for the library which had built-in alcoves for books. They also had a cooling system, huge vertical conduits in the walls, with thin marble covering them, through which water flowed, although I don't know the details of how that was arranged.

Somewhere close to the palaces of the Emperor's daughters there was a special stone at the end of a large courtyard overlooking the river which was used to determine if objects purported to be made out of gold, i.e. if gifts or payments to the king, were genuine. If it was gold, it would leave a golden mark when it was scratched onto the stone. Apparently it takes some expertise because we tried it with my wedding band and couldn't figure out how to interpret the results.

By the time the guide left us, we were totally confused. I think he also cut the tour short because we were in no hurry to move on from one point to the next. We took out the guide book and tried to make sense of the map. We were sitting on the courtyard in Hall of Public Audiences, near the stage. Some Indian girls came along and decided they wanted to climb onto the stage which was about 12 feet off the ground. Their attempts to go straight up the marble wall attracted some Indian boys who got into it. The boys managed to boost each other up and clamber up the wall, and they were just about to help the girls get up when someone arrived and shooed them off. We decided to simply wander around. One of the places we saw was undergoing restoration. It had open-arched rooms below and another set above with a walkway all along in front of the upper rooms, and a metal filigreed half-wall at the outside of the walk way. On one side, the paint was dull and flaking and the filigree was an indeterminate color. On the other the paint was bright white and the filigree was a rusty brown. The difference was incredible, but when we got closer we were saddened to see that the painting was being done very sloppily and it wasn't clear that in some cases they weren't painting over inlaid marble in the interior parts. There were rooms underneath too. The guide hadn't taken us but there. We peeked through the door of a basement room that was inlaid with tiny mirrors. Supposedly, according to the guidebook, this was the harem dressing room.

It was a great luxury to be at the Red Fort. Although there were people all around, predominantly Indians, it wasn't crowded. No one was hassling anyone. A pleasant, relaxing place was rare on our trip. They had a concession for chai and we went there. It was a bunch of small tables in one of the original buildings. It was under one of those open-fronted, series of archways-and-columns areas. We asked for chai without water, and the people very kindly made it. It was wonderful. There were a small squirrel and some birds darting around looking for crumbs under the tables. An Indian squirrel looks like a chipmunk it its coloring and stripes, but it is shaped like and acts like a squirrel. Suddenly a monkey showed up. I was delighted. I went to the counter, where they had all sorts of "biscuits," i.e. plain sweet cookies, in packets under glass and asked what they would recommend that I buy to feed the monkey. I felt a little silly but the man seemed delighted that I wanted to feed him. The monkey, of course, was an old hand at this and he took every biscuit offered to him and stashed it in his cheek. He had no plans to chew until there was a significant pause in the cookie delivery. He looked cute with the flat rectangular shapes of his cookies bulging at the sides of his face. He also looked nervously around him. I finally realized why. I looked up and there was a whole colony of monkeys (rhesus, I think) at the top of the wall, about 75 feet away. This guy was clearly not part of the "in" crowd. The waiter asked me if I wanted him to call the other monkeys. I said sure. So he went out, whistled and held up a bit of raw dough. The first to arrive was a female with a baby. She did not come down, but rather perched on the ledge above us. I threw biscuits to her and the waiter threw her bits of dough. I am sure if my aim were better she would have been better able to demonstrate her catching ability. She too was looking nervously around, and soon along came another monkey, and if he could have carried a sign it would have said "I am the alpha male." It was so obvious, we cracked up. Mom scampered away, further along the ledge, and I followed so that I could keep feeding her. Then the rest of the colony arrived and a couple of them slithered down a drainpipe to the ground. We moved over to them. By then one was perched low tree and one was one the ground. I was out of biscuits, but the cafe people kept me supplied with dough. I especially enjoyed feeding the one in the tree. It was perched just about the level of my face, and when I fed it the dough balls, our hands touched. With the first monkey it had been more grab and run.

Free living monkeys are common in India, although we did not run into many. In Nagpur, there were baboons. Vally remembers troupes of them, maybe thirty at a time coming through the neighborhood, maybe once a month. The children were fascinated by them but didn't try to touch them. Occasionally a child threw rocks at them and then all of the other children got out of the area quickly since they had no interest in finding out what angry baboons do to children. Vally doesn't remember anyone getting hurt. Vally's mom, on several occasions had the experience of looking out her open, barred kitchen window as she was making chapatis and seeing a baboon watching her. She knew that if she turned her head for one instant, a chapati would be gone. She didn't find this humorous at the time.

By the time we finished wandering around, my bladder was sending urgent messages, so we headed off to find a bathroom. Approaching the bathroom in a public place always an occasion of mixed hope and dread. This bathroom had a rude wooden door which looked like it had no particular reason to stay closed. Inside, lined up along the wall to the right of the door were one enclosed stall with an Indian-style toilet and two, utterly exposed female urinals. The stall was occupied, with a small line in front of it. The female urinals look like Indian-style toilets, white bowls set in the ground, but there is only a wide slit in the bottom and no capacity for solid matter. I had seen them once before and I had no idea, and still do not, if you are supposed to face the wall like men do, and expose your back, or face front. Vally was no help on this one. I had to guess. I guessed "forwards." I carefully squatted down, trying to keep my long skirt and my sandals dry and trying not to topple over at the same time, when a voice above me asked "What did you think of that restaurant last night?" It was the yogurt-eating woman. What do you say in a situation like this, as you are coping more with the absurdity of your predicament, and wondering how exposed you really are squatting down there? I managed a brief "It was a trip," and asked her where they were from. "Long Island," she answered, while quickly extricating herself, saying that "Everyone is waiting for me outside."

We actually dreaded leaving the fort, but it was time. We ran the gauntlet and hopped into a rickshaw cab. The last bit of bargaining took place with the cab in motion as Vally held the merchandise and offered some money. The vendor, who was running alongside, had the choice of keeping the money or grabbing back his goods. He took the money. I can't remember how the driver wound up taking us to a marble factory, if we asked or he suggested, but take us he did. We knew we were in for a sales pitch. We were introduced to the proprietor who took us to a building in the back which had a big sign on it that said "Marble Training School" and below that "Demonstration of Marble Inlay Work, UP. Govt Marble Goods" then "Marble Art Palace" below that. I didn't remember that, I took a picture. It was after hours, but we got the tour. It was an outbuilding about 10X20 with the door at the corner of one long end. To the left of the door were two rows of the same sort of cutting bows that we had seen at the little Taj, each the minimum distance possible from the other. Near the door there were sort of workstations where people used small carving tools to dig out the cavities in the marble where the inlay pieces that had been cut with the bows would be set. Everyone sat on the floor to work, but this place was much better lit than the one at the little Taj. The inlay pieces were very tiny. We're talking about cutting a piece of a semi-precious stone to a size as small as a half of a cucumber seed and then setting it perfectly, as part of a design, into a piece of flat marble. Almost everyone had gone home, except one young man who was doing some carving. I had the feeling that I was being conned. What the man, who would later try to sell us items that were made in the factory, was trying to have us believe was that this was a wonderful place whose purpose was the preservation and practice of an ancient art (called pieta dura, by the way). The feeling I kept getting was that this was a place where this man exploited a lot of people and made a lot of money. The tour was interesting because it was clear that all of the marble stuff that we had seen for sale originates in places like this. Then came the hard sell. We were escorted into the showroom. It was full of beautiful marble objects, carved, inlaid and both. The man and his assistant kept hauling things out to show us. Everything seemed on the one hand expensive and on the other cheap if we were to buy the same thing in the US. Unfortunately we don't buy those sorts of things, however beautiful they might be. Vally kept saying "Find something you like and then we'll make him an offer." I decided on a small inlaid box and then left. I had gotten into leaving for the bargaining phase because basically it was too painful to watch. I went out and sat in the rick. The driver didn't speak English but he thrust a document at me. It was a letter, written by a Swiss tourist, certifying that our driver was completely honest and trustworthy. It was touching to see how much the letter meant to this simple man. Meanwhile, I spotted another shop across the dirt road. I think it had the word "Maharishi" in its name. When Vally found me, I was looking at some Mughal painting. These are paintings on silk which depict scenes from the times of the Mughal Emperors. Vally told me that the man was unwilling to lower his price and that he wanted $40 for the little box. We picked out a couple of Mughal paintings and I left again so that Vally could bargain. They came to an agreement and we got the paintings. When we got back to the rick we were a little burned out on marble vendors, but the driver insisted that we give the adjacent shop a try. Apparently the whole thing used to be one shop owned by two brothers but they had quarrelled and a partition had gone up and now there were two shops. We went into the second shop without much enthusiasm, expecting an instant replay of the high pressure, uncomfortable experience of the first shop. We were not looking for collectibles, we were looking for trinkets to give as gifts. Surprisingly, the second shop had some little marble pendants which were perfect trinkets. Too bad they wanted more than we felt like paying for them. I had already left, of course, but he and Vally went at it, and wound up agreeing to disagree. Just as we were about to take off in the rick, the proprietor decided to reconsider and we got 5 little marble pendants. In India people always want to know what you paid for things, so they can tell you that you overpaid. Vally used to tell them ridiculously low prices and they'd be left wondering whether to believe him or not. Matthew told us we overpaid for the pendants.

Now it was time to see if we really had tickets. It occurred to us that we weren't completely sure where the office was. We had been led there without paying much attention to where there was. The rick took us to the vicinity of the train station and we had to cruise the neighborhood for awhile before we got oriented. It was 6 PM, and we were at the office where the whole process had started. It was open and no one was there. We sat down to await our fate.

We waited by ourselves in the office for a few minutes and then a few other people, Indian men, came in and started waiting too. This, I took as a good sign. Vally went next door to a street restaurant, a U-shaped high, narrow, wooden counter behind which a variety of dishes were being cooked. This was not place that catered to tourists. Vally chose something involving dal (split lentils) that was too hot for me to eat, which was good because we were in that dangerous grey zone of "street food." He also ordered naan which is a pita-type bread that is cooked in a huge clay tandoor oven which was built into the counter area. Picture a red clay jar the size of a full keg but narrower at the top and bottom. The oven, which is heated with a wood fire at its base, wasn't yet hot enough, so Vally never got the naan. While we waited, I worked on these letters. To give you an idea of how far behind I was, I was working on our trip to Cochin. Also the numbering had gotten confused and I was working with two documents at once. I was using the weaker of my batteries, confident that the computer would beep to tell me to save and exit quickly before the battery died completely. Also, I was confident that the automatic back up would keep me from losing too much work if the computer did die. I don't have to tell you after this build up that that was not what happened. The battery died quickly (probably because of the two documents) and the backup file turned out to be the other document, not the one I was working on. I was probably as miserable at that moment as at any point in the whole trip. I couldn't even think about putting the other battery in and continuing. Meanwhile, power had failed but the office had its own generator sitting just outside which kicked in automatically, filling the office air with diesel fumes. Somewhere in there, our young concessionaire raced in, said that the tickets would be ready in 15 minutes, i.e. 6:30 and raced back out. Our confidence level climbed to 95%. Eventually he did return, and we all got our tickets, but not until Vally received a brief lecture on trust. Then we wandered out to amuse ourselves until 8:30 when the train was due to arrive.

We walked through the dusty, smoky twilight, towards the train station about a block away, threading our way among street vendors and pedestrians. All of the vendors here sold food and other items useful to travellers. Vally spotted a chai stand, a simple free-standing wooden contrivance, almost like an adult version of a kids' lemonade stand only much older, tended by a thin, elderly, bearded man. Vally lit up. I took one look and thought "No way." Vally was undeterred, and I sat down on a crude bench nearby, peering in disbelief through the fading light as Vally's chai was prepared. This was almost a repeat the kulfi in Lucknow, except the bacteria had the disadvantage of some steps involving heat. The man had a little kerosene stove and he had a mixture of water and milk which had been sitting in a nearby aluminum pot, unrefrigerated, for an unknown number of hours (or days). He took his dipper (vintage and cleanliness unknown) and removed a portion of this mixture which he dumped into a pan which he had probably rinsed in his bucket of water, but we didn't see him do it. He heated the milk and water mixture over his stove until it boiled, then threw in some tea leaves (with his hand of course) and boiled the whole thing for a couple of minutes more. Then he poured the result through a strainer (also unwashed) into one of a collection of upside down filmy glasses of unknown provenance, all of which he had undoubtedly rinsed several times before that day, in that same bucket of water. It was about 2 Rs for this performance/opportunity to get sick. Vally survived unscathed although he said that the tea wasn't as good as what he remember getting from the man's counterpart at the Nagpur train station when he was younger.

Vally was excited about this chance to show me the Indian trains. Trains are central to Indian life and, unlike many other essential service in India, basically, they work. According to the guide book, the trains carry over 10.5 millions passengers per day. The Indian railway is also the world's largest employer with 1.6 million employees. The railway serves both the rich and the poor, so that it possible to travel either in relative luxury if you have money or essentially jammed into something like a human cattle c are four varieties of trains in India, passenger, mail, express and special. Our train, the Shatabdi Express was a special train, and what I am about to describe applies to the other three. According to the guidebook and Vally, you don't want to take a passenger train, unless you enjoy spending a lot of time in small town stations. They stop at every small town and sometimes in between for no apparent reason, although rumor has it that often it is because one of the passengers, finding himself close to home, has pulled the emergency cord. The express, mail and special trains are much faster, averaging 47 km/hr or more, compared with 27 for the passenger trains. Ordinary travellers on all 3 kinds of trains have the choice of first or second class but that doesn't begin to describe the variations. Overnight trains have sleepers and day trains do not. Our train was a day train. Had there been sleeping cars we might had seen the following varieties (the mixture depends on the train): first and second classes both two and three tier with and without aircon, and cars with bench seats which recline in first class. Sleepers are all reserved but bench seats come in reserved and unreserved flavors, with the nominal ticket price being a function of the accommodations, and the reservation fee, which varies according to the circumstances, adding significantly to the cost. When Vally was little, and probably now, getting reserved seats was in what was at the time third class was like getting seats to a concert that you knew was going to be sold out. A couple of days before the tickets went on sale, months in advance of the trip, people started lining up. You got on line, or probably sent your servant to get on line. This being India, a certain percentage of the tickets were black marketed and if you had the money, you didn't have to stand in line at all. To do this you have to know the right people. The price would rise as the date of the trip approached. Third class has been folded into second class now. If you were willing to travel unreserved, the process was different. If the train originated at that station or if cars were being added at that station, you could bribe a coolie to help you out. He knew where the cars or the empty spots were and for a fee he would place a blanket or something on an unoccupied seat, effectively reserving it for you. There was no limit to how many people could travel in the unreserved cars, although you had to have a ticket. This was complicated because the cars were so crowded that if you didn't have a ticket, no one could get in there to check. On the other hand, at some stations tickets were checked as people got off. If you were caught without a ticket, you went to jail for 15 days, although while they were busting you, several other ticketless travellers could get away. For many penniless people, it was a good deal. If they squeezed on without a ticket, they would either get to their destination or spend 15 days not worrying about how to eat and then continue on.

Of course the people in the unreserved cars had a stake in making sure that no one else got on. To that end, they would frequently, literally, bar the door, locking it from the inside. They would also lock the windows when the train was in the station, although that meant it got pretty hot inside the car. If the windows weren't locked, there was a chance that you could hire a coolie to shove your luggage in through the window and then shove you in afterwards. This was best accomplished just as the train was beginning to pull out of the station. Wherever your luggage landed became your seat.

The Shatabdi, on the other hand, is an all-reserved, second class train, the choices being air-con or open windows and dust. We chose air-con.

We walked around, taking in the sights. Some people were laid out on the floor, asleep. Whole families were camped out, surrounded by tied bundles and suitcases. There were piles of big, burlap-wrapped cubes of freight at one end of the station. Everywhere, groups of men lounged around, talking comfortably. There were also beggars. We were snared by a shoe shine man. Vally asked "How much?" in Hindi, a phrase I had begun to recognize. "Whatever you want to pay?" was his response. While he worked on Vally's shoes, his associate convinced me that he could do something with my very scuffed up white Nikes. We stood there, one foot propped up, as the shoe shine men mixed potions from their seemingly meager and dried up stock of polishes. I don't think it really did much for my shoes, but the attention was nice. While we stood there, a beggar boy came up. I have never seen anything like his deformity, although it seemed like if it wasn't called elephantiasis, it should be. He was about 5 or 6 and his feet were hideously enlarged. Imagine a small boy wearing large swimming flippers, except they are his feet, enormous and swollen. We didn't give him money, because we knew that if we did, every other beggar in the place would attach him or herself to us and we would not be able to get rid of them. Also, the money usually winds up in the hands of the begging equivalent of a pimp. Vally gave the man 20 Rs or something like that. He was indignant. We walked away. Matthew told us we had paid too much.

I was thirsty and wanted a lassi. We canvassed the station, but there was no sweet lassi to be had. We finally setting on a drink stand, one of the stores along the wall which sold milk drinks in bottles shaped like old glass Pepsi bottles. They did have lassi, but it was salted, spicy lassi which I didn't want. The drink I chose was a spiced almond-coconut milk which was very good. As we left the stand, we spotted a young couple, an American-looking woman and an Indian-looking man who were also looking for something to drink. Although I like starting conversations with strangers and finding out their stories, in India I did very little of that. It is easier when there is some pretext, and in this case, since they were looking for a lassi, I had one. I told them that this stand had salted lassi and about the drink I had had. We found out that they lived in New York, where he is a graduate student. He told us that he is (whispered with an isn't-it-absurd-laugh) Pakistani. Being Pakistani in India is not a comfortable situation. His wife, it turned out, is American and they have come to India so that she can stay until June, on her own, to work on her dissertation in Indian temple art. She told us "the ultimate Indian tourist horror story." When she first came to India, 5 years ago, she was on her own. When she arrived in Delhi (via Hong Kong), she had been travelling for 40 hours. A Bangladeshi couple on the plane had befriended her and when they learned that they were going to the same place, they offered to share a cab with her. They arrived at about 2 AM. This innocent American tourist was unaware of the first rule of travel in India. A woman does not get into the front seat with the driver. The couple apparently missed that one too. They got in, the couple proceeded to konk out in the back seat and she was alone with the driver who attempted to fondle her. There she was, totally jet-lagged, driving on the wrong side of the road in the country without traffic laws, watching the driver dodge oncoming cars while she attempted to dodge the driver. She said that by 5 AM, when she realized that she was not going to be raped or killed, the absurdity of the situation set in and she began to laugh (probably hysterically). Unfortunately, the couple was travelling in a different car, so our conversation was cut short. I do remember being impressed by the husband telling us that he was not afraid to drive in Karachi. Also, they had taken the Shatabdi in the morning, and when we told them that we heard the food was good, they rolled their eyes. Breakfast hadn't been.