Um, Did I Just See a Taj Mahal?

Oh man. I should ask for monkeys every day.  Once again, when you ask for monkeys, India delivers.

We woke up early this morning and met our driver to make our way from Delhi to Agra.  During the drive, we had to stop at the side of the road for a few minutes while we waited for our driver to pay a toll, which apparently was an invitation to every street peddler in a 20 mile radius to come accost our SUV.  It was like being at African Lion Safari, except that all the lions were Indian not African, and the lions were also selling jewelry and little drums.  Luckily, during the previous two weeks, we had become experts at ignoring all of these peddlers and just minding our business, which we did with aplomb.

That is... until the man with the monkeys came.  This man had four monkeys on leashes, and, unlike the previous monkeys we had seen, these monkeys did awesome tricks.  And they had come to our car!

First the monkeys bowed for us.  Then they bowed again.  Then we got tired of the bowing, and without us even asking, the monkeys switched from bowing to doing backflips.  STRAIGHT UP MONKEY BACKFLIPS.  Then they climbed a pole, climbed down, and did more backflips.

In case you can't tell, these were some awesome monkeys.  If it weren't for the fact that they were on leashes and the fact that there's nothing more sad than a sad monkey sadly doing backflips on a leash, I would have declared the trip over and requested to return to Delhi to await my flight home in a closet, so as to have nothing tarnish the memory of the monkey encounter.  But, the sadness overwhelmed, and when the guy started to look like he was going to ask for money, we all pretended like we weren't interested.  This was very hard for me, as I was really, really interested, but nevertheless, I bit my tongue and pretended not to pay attention.

But the thing with monkeys is that they make you pay attention, and this one monkey decided to make us pay attention by jumping up onto Cynthia's window and pressing his jumbly bits against the glass.  This made Cynthia screech like a monkey and caused me to exclaim that even the monkeys in India were fascinated by the Korean.  I wonder if this is the case with any of the other colors in the yellow rainbow.

And this all happened before we even got to Agra!

Eventually, our driver came back, the monkey jumped down, and we continued on our way.  After checking into the hotel, we met our driver and guide to go on a tour of Fort Agra, the old fort city, much of which seems to be designed to give you picturesque views of the Taj Mahal, despite having been built before the Taj Mahal.  We looked around, it was totally awesome and unreal, and, most importantly, it also has a monkey.

This monkey was a bit less active, as it did nothing but drink water out of a puddle, but I nevertheless missed a solid five minutes of the tour.  I did learn that the fort was built over a number of years by someones grandfather who was locked in a tower where he could see some sort of mausoleum he built out of white granite for his dead wife plus also it was a barracks now sometimes.  I didn't really catch the details.  Hello, I had just seen a monkey.  I was recovering.

After the Agra Fort, we drove over to the Taj Mahal (apparently pronounced Tadz Meh-hell), which was absolutely incredible.  The terrorist attacks in Mumbai basically made it feel like we were the only people there and had a total run of the place, as there has been something like a 90% cancellation rate since the attacks.  So, we ran around, took photos until our batteries ran out, and then stayed another hour to watch the sun set.  The sheer size of the thing was incredible, despite Cynthia's declaration that it looked bigger in her head.  If that thing can fit in your head Cynthia, damn, you've got a HUGE head.  But seriously, the whole thing was unreal.  If we couldn't still see it from our hotel room window, I wouldn't believe it was real.

So, its pretty clear today was amazing.  Tomorrow, we're off to see Jaipur.  Top that, India.  Oh, and dear six-pound eight-ounce baby India, please oh please bring me more monkeys tomorrow.

Monkey sightings: approximately 16 real, 1 fake, 1 Zack Efron.