Staring contest...1,2,3 Go!

One of the strangest things to get use to here is that people stare at you. Is it because I am an American? Is it because I am female? Is it because I am ridiculously awesome? I highly doubt the last one but everyone stares at everyone. It is weird and creepy. To combat the staring you must engage in a staring contest. Generally once you catch a "starer" you make eye contact and stare back until the other person looks away.

The first few weeks I couldn't handle this staring and it made me uncomfortable. At the end of week five I have mastered the stare back. My favorite look to give what I call the "wtf are you looking at idiot". It is pretty much what it sounds like and this look does not photograph well so you will have to use your imagination.

When I am in the cab and I catch someone staring in at me...it is on like donkey kong. This week along I have broken at least 6 people. It is a personal record. I am tempted to try a new look this last week. I am calling it "yes, I am American and I realize you are staring" this will include me smiling and waiving back at the starer until they feel uncomfortable.

I am also a very big hit with the 14 yr old boys. Whenever we are out at tourist places they all come up to me and want to take pictures and know my name. It is yet another weird and uncomfortable thing. I have once again started to embrace this. I even stopped to take a photo with these boys.

This past Saturday I was out with Kaizer (from the Denver office who is originally from Mumbai so he speaks the language) he overheard a group of girls say in Hindi "Look how white she is". Kaizer said that they were really fascinated with how fair my skin was. I just laughed about it. Even India realizes that I need a tan.

Taj Mahal

So the internet at the hotel is super weird and crashes quite often. I finally managed to get all the photos posted.

So we arrive at the Taj and you would think that you would be able to see it from the street but the city of Agra has done a pretty good job on hiding this masterpiece. You can't drive right up to the Taj and get off at the gate because of the pollution from the cars (the people don't want the Taj to turn grey or black) another interesting fact is that there are no factories in the city of Agra for the same reason. So Asef takes us on a short walk to the gate.

We could have entered the Taj in style...via Camel but thought walking was a better idea!

There were also more monkeys on this walk!

Talk about having a monkey on your back!


Okay, we finally arrive at the main gate and buy our tickets. Foreigners are once again upcharged 750 rupees for a ticket! Indians pay about 50 rupees! This would never fly in America but what can you do. So we get our tickets head through security and arrive at the main gate. Here is a picture I took while standing in the women's security line. I am holding my camera at eye level...these women are like 5 feet tall!

Once we passed through security we got to the main gate and Asef gave us a little history lesson on the Taj.

I of course will provide you with the cliff notes, I did fact check everything Asef told us and he was correct (according to wikipedia though). The Taj Mahal was built by the third Mughal emperor, Shah Jahan, for his wife Mumtaz Mahal. She died at the age of 33 after being married to Shah Jahan for 19 years and providing him with 14 children! She died giving birth to their 14th child. Before she died she asked three things of Shah Jahan  1. Don't re-marry 2. Take care of our children 3. Build me a beautiful mausoleum.


Like a good husband he held up on 1 and 3 but ran into some trouble with taking care of the children (will discuss further down). Shah Jahan hired 20,000 workers from Iran and it took 22 years to finish the construction of the entire complex. The mausoleum itself took 17 years and the last 5 were spent on the gates and ground work. If you are ever in the neighborhood I would strongly suggest checking this place out.


Team photo in front of the gate!

So you have me, Anh, Brett, and Steven. Steven was not feeling the photo...he did have to ride shotgun with Dharmender so we let this one slide. The coolest thing about the Taj is everything is symmetrical. We are standing on the line of symmetry.


This shot is what you see when you go through the gate.

And here it is after you go through the gate

 I think it is pretty cool. After we entered the main gate, Asef took every cheesy picture possible of the group. It was kind of awesome because we all got to be in the pictures and he knew all the spots and poses to do. I will have to refer you to facebook for all those pictures.


So what does it look like up close? Here ya go

 What does the inside look like? This is a replica of the tomb. The actual tomb is below ground and not on display for the public.

 Surprisingly there is not very good lighting.

Asef told us that the orange stones below are only found in Agra and glow in the lighting. There was no good picture of it glowing but take my word...it was awesome.

 So Shah Jahan really liked what he built for his wife and thought to himself...I should have a mausoleum too (I don't blame him after seeing the Taj I kinda want a mausoleum). He planned to build a replica of the Taj across the river but instead of white marble it would be black. His son Aurangzeb was suppose to be in charge of building this masterpiece and this is what it looks like.

Don't squint your eyes or e-mail me to re-post the picture...you are looking at absolutely nothing. Yup nada. Aurangzeb, the ungrateful child overthrew his father and never built the mausoleum. I can't recall what exactly what went down for Aurangzeb to overthrow his father but happened at this point I had been listening to history for 2 hours and when I looked it up on wikipedia there wasn't much there. 


In summary, that is the Taj Mahal. It is absolutely amazing and a beautiful piece of architecture. The best time to see the Taj Mahal is during the full moon. Tickets sell out a month in advance and is limited to 250 people with half hour intervals. Asef said that the moonlight makes the Taj glow and it is breathtaking (not sure if he said breathtaking but that is what I imagine). One interesting thing about it that I didn't realize is that it isn't made 100% out of marble. It was first constructed with brick and then marble was put over the brick. Now it is Agra fort time.


Agra fort is where Shan Jahan and Aurangzeb lived. At the time it was considered on of the most important forts in India. Once Aurangzeb over threw his father he imprisoned him in Agra fort in a room that looked directly out at the Taj. In the words of Stephanie Tanner "How rude!"

The fort itself was pretty cool. It is the largest fort in Asia, about 1.5 miles long/wide. Here is a shot of the entrance and the grounds.

The fort wasn't just used for imprisoning people. Other governmental affairs went on here. This is where important meetings happened.

I have no idea what this next photo is of but I just thought it was really cool.

For 10 rupees the monkey below will translate the sign to English

Just kidding! The monkey is just hanging out and I know animal shots have been requested. After all the sightseeing time to get back into the car with Dharmender for the drive home. He of course wouldn't drive to the other side of the street to pick us up and we had the fun adventure of crossing the street in front of the fort. Here is some video for your enjoyment (curtsy of Steven...I rarely take my iPhone out in public)

Overall, it was a pretty awesome birthday weekend. So here is some slightly bad news. Everyone knows that I have extremely bad luck with digital cameras. I somehow managed to lose the cord that connects my camera to my computer so there won't be many more photos from me posted. I've already ordered a new cord from amazon and I will be able to upload photos when I am back in Atlanta!!!

Happy birthday to me!

 I know I am writing this post about a week and a half late but the birthday weekend was pretty jammed packed that it required its own post.

Since everyone was at work on Saturday I decided not to sit around the hotel all day and venture out on my own (yes, shocking I am at the point of leaving the hotel by myself). I was in desperate need of eyebrow threading and a haircut so naturally I headed to the mall.  India is filled will malls and everything you ever need is in a mall. What we think of as a strip mall is called a mall and the actual mall is called a mall. Saturday afternoon I headed to the largest mall in Gurgaon, Ambience Mall. This mall has 4 floors and I would estimate it is 1.5 football fields long. You can pretty much get anything that you want here and the mall is organized by store type. For example, all woman’s clothing stores are on floor 1, electronics floor 2, etc. Security is also tight at the mall. The car gets checked before you enter the drop off or parking area and when you enter the mall you go through a metal detector and get wanded.  Nothing too eventful to report at the mall I got a haircut which doesn’t look great (I already have an appointment with my normal guy back in Atlanta – thanks Alli) and got some gelato…nothing too crazy but a good first alone adventure.

Once the team got off work we headed into Delhi to do some scarf shopping. I bought a few scarves at a place called Shaw’s and Sons the week before and I really like what I got and decided that we should go back and buy more. The actual store is like a tiny hallway and the upstairs of the store is filled with scarves. It reminded me of being in China town and buying knock off handbags. I got a few good scarves and helped the guys pick a few out. Since everyone was buying a few items we used the power of negotiation to get 60% off the sticker price…don’t get too excited in our negotiation skills the sign on the wall gave everyone 50% we only managed to squeeze 10% more out of these guys.

Once we made our purchases it as off to dinner at Zook which has become our favorite local hang out. This place has the best food I’ve had in India and the music is pretty clutch. Ferhardkit, the band we went and saw at the Hard Rock who was launching their new album was having another launch party and we decided to see them again. The show was at the mall (note that even bars and clubs are in malls) that is less than 1 kilometer from the hotel (1km = .62 miles). I was really excited that it was so close because I didn’t want to stay out late since we were leaving for Agra at 5 am in the next day! I stayed at the club for a few songs but it was already almost midnight and a few of us headed back to the hotel early.

So the plan was to meet in the lobby at 5 am for the 4.5 hour car ride. I of course arrive in the lobby at 5 am to find no one from the group there. Steven comes down at 5:15, Brett at 5:20, and Anh rolls in at 5:30...these guys can't show up on time for anything. For the trip we didn't have Manmohan (our normal driver) who takes us to/from work everyday and into Delhi on the weekends. We had Dharmender who turned out the be the worse driver in India. Here is a little comparison and contrast between Manmohan and Dharmender.

Manmohan	Dharmender
Speaks English	Does not speak English
Does not honk horn	Honks horn at every moving and non-moving object
Drives at a reasonable speed and does not slam on breaks	Drives into oncoming traffic. Hits every pot hole and speed bump at about 60 km (40 mph)
No accidents	About ended a guy’s life on a bike. Accident avoided but it was a close call.
Does not pick up strangers off the side of the road	Read down a bit

About half way through the drive Dharmender decided to pull over and jump out of the car without saying a word. It turns out that we were at the Uttar Pradesh border and had to show paperwork before getting on another highway. The cool thing about this border stop was that there were several guys walking around with monkeys. This was to be the first of many monkeys on the road to Agra. The last hour and a half of the ride was much more uneventful than the first...until we arrive in Agra.

Dharmender pulls over once more and a stranger hops into the car. There were several thoughts going through my mind but before I could react the stranger asks us is if we want breakfast. We say yes as we don't know what this guys is all about. The stranger takes us to this fine establishment below.

At this fine establishment no one ate anything and we had a team meeting as to what we needed to do about the stranger. Since Brett had great negotiation skills the night before at Shaw's and Son he was naturally elected to figure out what this guy was all about before we got back into the car.

It turns out that the stranger is Asef and was hired by the company to be our tour guide. The company had already paid for his services and only if we felt it necessary we should tip him at the end of the day. After hearing this, I was okay with letting Asef back into the car and it was Taj Mahal time!

We were only a short distance from the Taj and I was surprised that I couldn't see this massive building from the road way. Here is a shot of what the outside of the gate looked liked.

I have to cut the post short...I can't load photos right now. Stayed tuned for part 2!!!

Holy moly

Today has been an interesting day. Several of the roads we take to get into the office were closed this morning. We spent 2 hours in traffic and then our driver found a back road. We went through this really small village on a dirt road and when we got to the main road saw that there were riots. Small fires in the roads, street poles torn up from the ground, and concrete blocks throughout the road so the police couldn't get through...it was really crazy. We turned around and headed back to the hotel. By the time we got back to the hotel, the security was beefed up. There were police officers with weapons standing at the main gate.

I have no idea what the riots are all about and I haven't received any updates from the US Embassy or EY firm security. We are leaving in a little bit to see if the roads have opened back up. I will try to find out what this is all about and keep you posted.

Update - here is what the riots/protest/traffic jam was all about (taken from my Ey firm security e-mail)

Significant traffic disruption on 7 February was reported on several roads in the city of Gurgaon (Haryana state, National Capital Region) as a result of demonstrations by local residents and businesspeople in the Udyog Vihar area. The protests are being undertaken in opposition to the proposed demolition of illegally constructed buildings in the vicinity of an Indian Air Force (IAF) ammunition depot. The thoroughfares affected by the rallies include Atul Kataria roundabout and Bata Chowk, which lead to Old Delhi Road, MG Road and the Gurgaon-New Delhi Expressway. In addition, traffic on National Highway 8 (NH-8), which connects the capital Delhi to the city of Mumbai (Maharashtra state), has also been disrupted by the demonstrations.

Get your sparkle on!

The long awaited return of a post. Sorry to keep everyone in suspense about what is going on in India. I have a really long post that I need to do about the trip to the Taj Mahal but I wanted let you start your weekend off with a fun game we like to play here.

Men in India wear what is called a “sparkle sweater vest” which is made out of astro-turf type material and comes in your basic colors (black, beige, burgundy) plus an assortment of incredibly un-manly colors (bright pink, yellow, and baby blue). I haven’t been able to capture the more un-manly colors but trust me they are out there and we see plenty of them!

For whatever reason the guys that I am with really want one but we can’t seem to find them in any of the malls or markets. They even went as far as asking the team at work where they could get one. Surprisingly, no one on the team had seen one of these vests. We've taken the team out for a few meals or what they like to call "treats" and they want to do something nice for us...I told my team that it would make my day if they got all the guys a sparkly sweater.

Our car ride to work has no turned into a game of spotting the sparkly sweater vest. Remember punch buggy no punch backs? Well here you yell… green sparkle at the Tuk Tuk! You punch the person you are next of course. Yesterday on the way to work there were about 12 people in these amazing pieces of fashion and today the elevator operator had one on….it has been an awesome two days! The video below was an accident but was too funny that I had to post anyway.

***If you are at the office put the volume on low or have headphones on!

This one is great because Kaizer is actually saying chazzle dazzle.