As mentioned in the last post we are now in northern India and explored Varanasi, the sacred city of the Hindus. A very intense experience as there are so many people in such a small place. Lots of places to visit but you can hardly see anything as every square meter is used. Varanasi is a very religious city and in many ways the center of Hindu life.

To get a good view we hired a boat on the Ganges twice - for sunset to see a ceremony and for sunrise to have a look at the pilgrims taking their ritual bath in the Ganges. We also had a closer look at the Ghats - that's where the Hindu's burn their deads. It made us feel quite uneasy and strange to watch this. Of course it's not allowed to take photos there and we were quite embarrassed to see that many western tourists didn't respect that - I wonder what they'd say if some tourist came to the funeral of a close relative to take some photos of the dead...

Then we took a night train to Agra which was a very intense experience again as the train was really crowded. We took two beds in sleeper class, which was clean and even quite comfortable - but I (Michael) had the lower bed and had to share it with three Indians that sat on my bed plus one that was sleeping on the floor - which meant that I couldn't move or get out all night. Luckily the train was on time because I started getting claustrophobia.. it was simply crammed with people.

Agra is quite a touristy place with the Taj Mahal being the main attraction and one of the most photographed sites in the world. So here is our contribution.. The Mogul Shah Jahan was such in love with his favorite wife (he had 73) that he built this mausoleum for her when she died while giving birth to her 14th child. Of course he didn't pay for it himself but introduced a new tax on the local people - but the result is very impressive indeed ;)

There's a couple of other interesting sites in and around Agra including Itimad-ud-Daula (a smaller mausoleum, even prettier than the Taj Mahal), Agra Fort and Fatehpur Sikri (a long abandoned mogul capital city) with very interesting architecture combining mogul, hindu and other elements. All these places display great geometric patterns and tilings in a symmetric fashion which symbolises the connection between Earth and Heaven - especially Steffi was fascinated ;)

Though there are many other western tourists here Steffi became a little tourist attraction herself: The Indian tourists were nearly queuing to take a picture with a blond western girl with blue eyes, especially while wearing her pink saree at the Taj Mahal ;)