India Day 5...The People

This and the next one are Amanda's pictures and I truly love them!

Check out that angry snake...yikes!

India Day 4...The People

These are the kids we gave candy to at the water buffalo pond. How could we have said no to these sweet faces?!

There's a story behind this guy! He ran out from nowhere at the abandoned city, stripped down and prepared himself to jump in a pool of murky water...for tips. We all turned our attention away from him so he decided not to jump, ha!

India, Day 3 - The TAJ MAHAL!

Day 3! Day 3! Day 3! The day I'd been waiting for since I booked the trip! After our previous night's sneak peak of the Taj Mahal, it was finally time to really see it :) In fact, I was so excited I didn't even care that we had to wake up at 4:45 in order to get there in time for the sunrise...AND we were first in line, bonus!

Of course, being first in line didn't truly mean being first in line. See, India is a male dominant country...so although we arrived well before any other groups, the staff set up two lines for men and one for the women. They let twice as many men in as women!

...and here it is! My very first shot of the Taj Mahal...albeit, not a good one, but still, its the very first one I took! The haze was totally working against me...but I promise, there are much better shots to come, plus a little history lesson. Oh yeah, I know you're excited ;)

And of course, what fun is the Taj Mahal if you don't take a few dumb pictures in front of it?!

Alright, well I was going to write the history lesson a little further down the post, but I'm thinking before I post more Taj pictures, I may as well get it over with now...lucky you!

After being at the Taj Mahal, I can truly understand why its one of the seven wonders of the world. It really is amazing! I'm going to make this short and sweet :) Completed in 1653, the Taj Mahal was built by Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan in memory of his favorite wife, Mumtaz Mahal, who died while giving birth to their 14th child. The thing that strikes most people about the Taj Mahal is it's perfect symmetry and fine details throughout. The focal point of the entire Taj Mahal complex is the white, marble structure in the center that houses the tombs of both Shah Jahan and Mumtaz Mahal. After the completion of the Taj Mahal, Shah Jahan was put on house arrest at Agra Fort (more on that later!) by his own son. It is said that Shah Jahan planned to build a second Taj Mahal, this time in black, and his son imprisoned him to prevent him from doing that. And that's that...a history lesson from yours truly. I didn't even have to refer to Wikipedia or a book for that one! That's all from memory :)  ...so chances are, my facts could be a bit off, ha!

It's a good thing I didn't wear my nice clothes to our 6 a.m. Taj visit! :) When you see a good picture opportunity, you just have to take it! One both sides of the main tomb are identical buildings (one is a mosque and one is a guest house). Here I am inside the guesthouse taking a picture of the main tomb building.

Here's the picture!

Side shot of the main tomb building. By the way, we had the most PERFECT blue skies the entire time we were in India. I couldn't have imagined a better background!

So that was it for the morning visit. Don't worry...we went back...and I have more pictures to show for it ;) After a quick breakfast at the hotel, we all cleaned ourselves up and got ourselves ready to go back to the Taj for a full tour. Little did we know, our guides had something else planned for us first...

...a Holi celebration!

So what is Holi? Why have you been seeing pictures of people covered in colorful powders? Here's the deal: Holi, or the Festival of Colors, is a celebrated among Hindus to welcome Spring and to celebrate their triumph of good over evil. To celebrate they throw paint and powders all over each other and dance the day away (many of them with the help of alcohol to keep them going...but be assured, our celebration was a sober one)!

Here's Amanda getting "holi'd" by our tour guide, Vikram.

I adore this picture of Chris and one of the locals!

Mindy, Aileen, Wendy and Kay (the woman who put the whole trip together!)

When the celebration was over, we headed back to the Taj Mahal...decked out in holi powders! I'm pretty sure I'll have to explain why I had colors all over my face and clothes at the Taj Mahal for the rest of my life :)

So in India, cows are considered to be holy...they're all over the place! Our bus had to swerve many a time on the road to avoid hitting a cow!

...and we're back at the Taj! This is the main entrance...as soon as you enter through, you see the Taj Mahal. It really is an amazing view!

This is what you see as soon as you come through the entrance :)

Here we are on one of the famous benches in front of the Taj Mahal that everyone has their picture taken from :)

Looking back toward the entrance

After we left the Taj Mahal, we headed over to Agra Fort, the place that Shah Jahan stayed under house arrest.

A monkey inside the fort...actually, I think this is the room Shah Jahan stayed in under house arrest (thanks for sharing your picture, Chris!)

This is the view Shah Jahan had of his beloved Taj Mahal from inside Agra Fort.

And that, my friends, is a recap of day 3 in India! :)

India, Day 1 - All around Delhi

I'm just a few days back from what I would consider to be a "trip of a lifetime" and my only regret is that I didn't get to experience it with Matt! I hate to admit that visiting India was not on my top 10 list of places to travel to when we moved over to Singapore. I hate to admit even more that India was not on my list of places to travel to EVER in life. So when Kay, a woman who teaches cooking classes here in Singapore, put together the trip and invited me to go along, I admitedly thought long and hard about whether I wanted to invest my time and money into a place I didn't really think I was very interested in. Ultimately, I decided to go because I was afraid of missing my only chance to see a completely new part of the world...and WOW am I thankful that I went!  The things we did and saw were so unique and the experiences we had were completely new (to me) in every way. 

The trip lasted for 8 days and we certainly accomplished a lot within that time...I have nearly 2,000 pictures to show for it (but don't worry, I won't be posting every picture on the blog...I'll narrow it down to maybe 1,500...just kidding)! I'm going to blog about India in a slightly different way than I usually do. I'm still going to do a day-by-day recap, but I'm going to break it into two seperate blogs, one for the things we did and one for the people of India...because it's the people that captivated me more than anything else. I could have spent an entire day on the street in the same spot photographing the people without getting bored. They were friendly and full of color and one look from a sweet child was enough to consume my thoughts for the rest of the day. 

So let's check out day 1 in India!

We departed Singapore at 11 p.m., flew for 5.5 hours and settled into our hotel rooms in Delhi around 4 a.m. After 3 hours of sleep, we forced ourselves out of bed and set out to explore the first major city of our trip!

Upon our arrival at each hotel we stayed in, we were given a traditional Indian greeting and a red dot was placed on our foreheads.

I was so thrilled that 3 of my very close friends were there with me!

(Amanda, Chris, me and Cara)

The first place we went to was the Qutb Complex. The focal point of the complex is the Qutb Minar which was built in 1193 by Qutbuddin Aibak to announce the advent of the Muslim sultans. Later, Iltutmish, Alauddin Khilji and Feroze Shah Tughlaq added other buildings so today the complex is a fusion of Hindu and Islamic architecture. (I definitely stole this information from one of the books Chris lent me...I'm good with remembering info, but not THAT good with remembering names!)

The Qutb Minar

Inside the Qutb Complex

I'm absolutely in love with the bright colored saris the Indian women wear!

On our way to our next stop we were able to take pictures of this place from the bus. This is the Lakshmi Narayan, a temple built in 1938 by GD Birla. (Photo credit goes to Chris)

This is the India Gate. It was built to commemorate the Indian and British soldiers who died in WWI and those who fell in battle in the North-West Frontier Province and the Third Afghan War. Right behind the 3 flags is an eternal flame that burns in memory of unknown soldiers.

After we left India Gate we stopped off at Delhi Haat, a market that sold mostly local crafts and then we went on to one of Kay's favorite stores to shop for traditional Indian clothing. Our bus was too big to take us down the narrow path to the store so we all had to take rickshaws!

There is a McDonald's right next to the stores we were shopping at. I had to snap a picture - not a typical menu item in the states! Actually, there is no beef sold at McDonalds (or anywhere) since the cow is considered to be holy among Hindus. It was strange not seeing hamburgers on the menu!

Our first night's dinner was SO delicious! We had fish tikki, tandoori chicken, lamb kebabs, black dahl, and of course, naan, among many other dishes! I wish I had taken a picture of the meal, but I was too busy eating it to remember. We skipped lunch on the first day so we were all starving by the time we got to dinner. See those smiles? That's because we know food is on the way! :)

Chris and Cara at dinner

Our final stop for the night was the Red Fort in Delhi to see a light and sound show. As the story is narrated over the loud speakers the surrounding buildings light up, sometimes one by one, sometimes all together. I would like to say that the show was great, but I can't say for sure...I fell asleep...as did everyone else, ha! After an over night flight, 3 hours of sleeping and an ALL day tour, we were pretty much done by this point!

We had an awesome first day! The sights and sounds were enough to overwhelm us in one short day and we could not wait to see what the next day had in store! We settled in for the night and woke up the next morning to start our 5 hour journey to Agra to see the...TAJ MAHAL!! :)