Agra cadabra!

The Taj Mahal in Agra is awesome! So clean, and not too crowded before 10am. Missing only Lady Di.
The inside of the TM is very plain, dark, and remarkably umremarkable. The outside, on all sides, is stunning. They say it's "the most beautiful building in the world" and, "A teardrop on the cheek of eternity".

The high class section of the train from Delhi to Agra ($18 instead of the $6 cheap seats which were all booked up for the next 2 weeks) served a full breakfast which started with yummy British-style tea and brown bread with jam. Then, a tray for corn flakes in hot milk and a banana. Then a second tray with a full Indian breakfast: some kind of oily gravy, rice, and fried dough. I ate the cornflakes, dry.

I like the famous monuments a lot because they're very beautiful and well-maintained, becauae they really register in my head where I am on the globe, and also because many families and different kinds of people go there. I got to chatting with Jerry, a very old man from Anaheim, CA (near Disneyland/LA. He.mentioned his hockey team rivalry with our San Jose Sharks). A home appliance salesman in his day, he said the word "company" with only 2 syllables, the way my grandpa used to say. He and his wife have traveled to more than 50 countries, including a few in Southern Africa. He recommended I go to Victoria Falls. When I told him I quit my job to travel for this long, it sounded perfectly normal to him, saying: "you gotta do this stuff while you can still walk! Keep your body moving! Later when you get married and have kids, you'll be glad you did all this!"