Cecelia's Little Brother: How we spent our Fourth of July 2015

Happy 4th of July! Celebrating our American holiday halfway across the world in India today! What better way to do that than going to the Taj Mahal!

After having another fantastic breakfast buffet, Paula and I were all geared up to go on our trip. Sanjeev met us in the lobby and took us to our driver and off we went, making our way south out of New Delhi. The drive really wasn't that bad once we made it out of the city and got onto their version of the turnpike. At least driving then seemed to be more normal, tho we were still weaving in and out of slow moving traffic on the highway. It took us a little over two hours before we pulled off the turnpike and headed into the city of Taj. Now the fun of inner city driving began!

Holy Sh@#$&*!!!! That's all I can say about it. We thought the winter driving in Kazakhstan was bad! Motorcycles, scooters, cars, trucks, tuk-tuks, horse drawn carts, oxen pulled carts, cows, goats, and what else you can imagine all share the same roads! The traffic lines mean very little, horns are constantly being used, they rarely if never use turn signals...if you fit you go, doesn't matter who you are...people walk thru the streets at their own risks! Paula was nervous and kept saying "oh my God" over and over as we veered our way thru the busy streets. A couple of traffic jams occurred when the cows decided to meander their way thru the roads, stopping traffic on both sides. You also got carts being pulled by oxen and horses over filled with crap; you also had multiple people on motorcycles zipping their way thru, even families of 4 were all on the motorcycles, the kids holding on or the mom cradling the babes as the dads drove thru. Yikes! A huge eye opener for us!!! But we did make it to where we needed to be and found our tour guide ready to take us to the Taj Mahal!

His name is Gupta and is a very friendly man. He took us up to the Taj via a shuttle since no automobiles were allowed near the sacred grounds. It was very crowded and teaming with all kinds of people; they had great security, all bags had to be scanned and we had to go thru metal detectors and get padded down before entering.

To be finally at one of the 7 wonders of the world is amazing! Its like nothing you can imagine! The sheer size and beauty of the whole complex was awe inspiring! From what Gupta told us, the whole building was made out of highest grade, pure white marble with precious stones inserted for coloring of the flowers. Everything was laid out just right, each of the four towers at the corners are at a slight angle outward, not a true 90 degree angle, to prevent the towers from falling onto the Taj Mahal itself if ever an earthquake or whatnot. Of course Gupta knew his way around and knew just about every worker that was there, he was also an excellent photographer and new all the "photo spots" around the Taj. With Paula's iPhone, he was able to get some really neat shots for us.

Though it was really hot, the day was overcast so it didn't feel quite so bad. There were some great breezes coming in at certain places around the Taj. We made our way back down towards our shuttle and then to the car. It was cool seeing all the camels pulling wagons of people around! From there, Gupta took us to a jewelry store where Paula bought a nice pendant; then he took us to a place that made handmade rugs. At that time, Paula wasn't feeling so well, the heat took its toll and we decided to head back to New Delhi (it was more of a tourist trap than anything else after the Taj).

We headed back to our city, dodging again the horrible traffic in Taj and making our way back to the turnpike to take us back to Delhi. Tomorrow, we head back to the airport to fly to Nagpur so that on Monday we can see Addie and start the process to take him home with us!