the next stop for devin and me was agra, the home of the taj mahal. it truly is beautiful. there were thousands of indian tourists there. rather unexpectedly, almost every single one of them wanted to get their pictures taken with us. so all morning we posed in pictures. definitely the most popular i have or ever will be in my life. some don’t even ask – they just put their arm around you while their friend takes the photo. and oddly, it is not cool for an indian to smile in a picture. it was outrageous and, needless to say, got a little old after a while.
so we sat on a spatially isolated ledge under one of the minarets for a good while where only one indian tourist could gain access to talk to us at a time. later devin got violently ill, which was rather unfortunate. we then took the night/most of the next day too train to varanasi. we met a girl named lauren from new york where we were staying in agra, with whom we’ve been hanging out with ever since. varanasi is a remarkable place, but i think that will have to wait for the next post because i’m getting tired and we have to get up really early tomorrow…..
