A very dignified man poses for a photo in the yard of the Taj Mahal.

Journal by Colin McAuliffe, photo by Nancy Olson

So, here I am in India. We left Varanasi at 5 a.m., and I am currently in the back seat of our vehicle en route to Agra, home of the Taj Mahal, the greatest monument to love ever built. It’s raining on and off, and we have somewhere between five and ten more hours of driving ahead of us.

I think India is the one country where it is better to drive in the rain, basically because all the Indians, cows, goats, and assorted riffraff stay inside instead of cluttering the roads and making life miserable for those driving it. In fact, I think rain actually doubles the speed at which you can travel from an average of 20 m.p.h to 40.

Yesterday was an interesting day; we got up at four, which in India has become the norm for us, and headed out on a shoot with the team. We headed down to the Ganges and rented a boat for a sunrise cruise. There we saw all the expected things one might see on the Ganges: bloated floating dead bodies of people and animals, assorted carrion-eating birds, people bathing and brushing their teeth in that same water, and probably about three hundred people pooping on the river banks, which for some reason we all found hilarious. After that, we took the team to the burning ghat to see and learn about the cremations, which they hadn’t experienced the day before.

Once the shoot was over, I took off and did some shopping. I eventually ended up in a silk store, where Neil, Adam, and I had a blast with the guys that worked there. I ended up with a bag full of purchases, including a disguise for Kashmir (see top photo), and a cool custom made gift for my moms. I hope she likes it because it was rather expensive.

By the time I was done with all that I was extremely tired, I crawled into my musty bed (all beds in India are musty) and curled up with my current tome of choice East of Eden, by Steinbeck, which by the way, I am heartily enjoying. By nine I was asleep, only to once again be woken up at the crack of dawn by that all-too-familiar-by-now hotel desk wake up call.

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