The Blog Is Alive, Long Live The Blog!!!

This is a terrible drive-by shot of the Red Fort. To finish the story of the Taj...Shah Jahan was so bereft after his wife died giving birth to their 14th child, that he spent the rest of his life waging war to raise money to build her tomb. It took 22,000 workers over 20 years to complete the process. His goal was to have an identical tomb built for himself out of black marble, across the courtyard from the Taj. However, his bad son Aurenzgrab had other ideas. He killed all his brothers, put his dad in jail and took the empire for his own.
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Hey everyone, we're baaaaaaack!!  The South India trip was a bust (something about a tourist warning in the place we were visiting) so I've spent the last few days laying low and recovering from the bug.  I am now completely well and excited to get you caught up on all the fun we had in Rajasthan.  Judging from all the comments and emails we have gotten, you guys are having a great time following along with us, and we want to keep you happy!

When we left off, we had just finished the Taj Mahal on April 14 (hopefully you saw the update to Delhi Day 2 and the Eternal Teardrop entry).  I will go back and fix Delhi Day 1 soon, but in the meantime, let's get back to Agra where we were on Tuesday morning.

Here I am in our Agra hotel room, ready to face the day. Note my Trix shirt. A gift from Tracey.
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Tuesday we got up bright and early, ready to see some more monuments, tombs, forts and palaces.  And we were not disappointed.  There's not a lot to see in Agra, but we drove by the Red Fort (again), stopped in at the Baby Taj, checked out the backside of the Taj (looks just as beautiful from across the river) and hit the road for Jaipur.  Along the way we stopped at Fatehpur Sikri, an abandoned city that was Akbar's capital for 10 years, before they ran out of water.  Finally we made it to Jaipur where I got the worst massage of my life (but a massage is still a massage) and crawled into bed.  Here are tons of pics from these places...