Day 571 - Baby time

We made up for yesterday's early start by sleeping in this morning, well as best we could with the constant noise from outside: blaring horns battling with merchants yelling, while the loud speaker at the Mosque called people to prayer at the same time street dogs made their presence well and truly felt.

Having seen the Taj yesterday, today we made comparisons of beauty by searching out the riverside mausoleum nicknamed the Baby Taj because of its resemblance to the real thing. With the sun shining we took an hour and a hald amble through the city of Agra, because as we found yesterday walking to these wonderful sights gives you a different picture of real city life. We wandered along the murky riverside that has totally given up its battle for purity and allowed its rubbish heaped banks to sink into dispair.

Scattered along the river barber stalls tended to the hairy needs of Indian men, and were probably baffled by Adam's lack of interest in their service! With a heavy industry focus along this road many cafes, whose tables were the ground we walked on, served cheap Indian fare to their hungry customers.

Eventually the ambling experience was over and we were staring at a truly stunning baby. Although smaller in size, it made up for this with its colourfully tiled walls of patterns and Arabic writing, both inside and out. The atmosphere here was different too - much more peaceful with only about 20 people there with us, compared to the thousands viewing the Taj with us yesterday!!

While sitting under the shade of one of the buildings we met Trevor, a volunteer teacher from the UK working in Delhi, and afterwards caught a ride in his hired rickshaw to a lesser known mausoleum hidden away down an alleyway lined with trees. This was a complete contrast to both of the "Tajs" - while they sported perfected marble exteriors, this mausoleum was made of crumbling red stone with only small fragements of its original tile remaining.

We joined Trevor and his rickshaw driver back across the river, where we marvelled at the rainbow of colours of freshly washed saris and sheets lining the riverbank - how they could ever become clean from being washed in this river is a mystery to us!We got dropped off a few kilometres from our hotel and wandered with the calls of touts following us where ever we went, finally finding refuge in a good restaurant!!

Adlibing Baby T.