Snuggling up with Nani

I have to again apologize for the tardiness in posts. Since arriving in the middle of the night on December 20, I have been running around the country with Vineeta and her family. It's been an amazing experience thus far and I wouldn't change a thing.

We arrived at Vineeta's grandmother's house - by way of her cousin Avinash (a DELL service tech who goes by the alas Peter) around 3:30am. After a brief three hour rest, it was off to Agra with her dad to see her aunt Saroj, uncle and cousins. My first impressions of driving through the "countryside" between the two cities was not pleasant. I thought, ok, prepare yourself for culture shock. Immense poverty aside, the smell is by far the worst of all of the physical evils. Burning of all nonessentials fills the air with a putrid rancid odor that would make anyone sick to their stomach. The road to Agra is lined by some barren and some not so barren fields. Many poor people make their homes out of mud and straw along the highway. Children play in the filthy water, dirt or disheveled construction or deconstruction sites along the way.

We arrive at Saroj Massie's (aunt in Hindi) for lunch where the mandatory food consumption was no less than three helping of everything on the table. The food was quite excellent so for this, the first meal of several we would have there, it was able to fill my quota. We had a quiet afternoon of family talk and chai before heading out to a small hotel restaurant for dinner. The following day was special as Vineeta's 15-year old cousin Vineet took us up to the Taj Mahal. It is truly one of the most magnificent sites I have seen in my short 25 years. It was crowded with foreigners, NRI's (non resident indians) and locals alike on this particular day, but I managed to get a couple of good shots before heading back to the house. We were not able to go back during the night time or during a full moon to see the special properties of the pure white marble against an Indian night sky, but I still feel like I can now check it off the list.

We ended up spending a couple of extra days in Agra because Vineeta's dad got sick with food poisoning. We spent some time driving around the city and of course eating about ever hour on the hour. I got a lot of time to sit and chat with the boys about school and life in Agra which was really nice. We left on Christmas Eve to head back to Delhi for a couple of days. It was sad to leave the small city and the first home that I was welcomed in India behind, but I promised Saroj Massie that one day I would return with Vineeta and our children and she could really cook some wonderful feasts for us then.