Taj Mahal or Bust!!

Happy Bakreid!!

Today is the Muslim festival of Bukreid or the 'festival of sacrifice.' Every Muslim family today sacrifices a goat and apparently there is so much blood that it runs in the streets. For the past few weeks there have been goats all over the place and sometimes their horns or their entire bodies are dyed to mark which goats belong to whom - except the dyes are neon pinks and blues. Its weird when I've been in India long enough to not think too much of a bright pink goat wondering around. Sajjid, our driver, had to ask for an advance on his monthly salary so that he could buy a goat for his family. I asked Sajjid why every family must sacrifice a goat and he said, (and I quote) "I don't know. It's like the rules or something." Very insightful. Made me want to break out in a chorus from Fiddler on the Roof of "Traditioooooooon. Tradition..........Tradition!"



My wikipedia sources tell me Bukreid commemorates the willingness of Ibrahim to sacrifice his son as an act of obedience to God. I'm down with that. And at first I kind of felt bad for all the goats, thought about buying one and saying "run free little goat. ruuunnn!" but when you think about it, goats in the U.S. are all probably going to be killed at some point. Across the world, whether its for religious purposes, consumption, or glue - any goat is pretty much a dead goat.

But the real reason I'm writing today is that I'm packing for my trip to the Taj Mahal! I'm doing three cities in five days and I'm sooo excited! Kind of nervous (cause I'm going by myself) but more excited!

Here is the plan. I will fly from Hyderabad to New Dehli and then spend one day/night in New Dehli sightseeing. Then I will drive about five hours to Agra and stay in a five star hotel there. (Excited about this cause my other Indian hotels were really cheap and the last semi nice hotel I stayed at - my sheets were dirty. These are the kind of hotels where I will be packing my own toilet paper. Need I say more? ) The next morning in Agra I will wake up and see the Taj Mahal by sunrise! I also plan on having one of the hotel ladies tie my saree for me so I can wear it to the Taj and feel all special and pretty. Maybe I'll even apply a tilak (the hindu third eye) with some bright red lipstick. (Don't know if thats frowned upon or not. Hopefully I won't bring down the wrath of the 330 million plus Hindu gods. That would make for one BAD day.) After seeing the Taj Mahal I will drive about five hours to Jaipur. Jaipur is known as the pink city because one of the sultans painted the whole city pink in 1853 in honor of a visit from the Prince of Wales.

I'm so excited but you might be wondering if I'm going to drive. No, I hired a driver. And it might have been cheaper to buy train tickets but I'm posting this video to show why I opted out of the train ticket itinerary. When we were in Bangalore, Hein (Theo's brother from South Africa) and I saw this commercial about 8 times and I kept getting offended by the name of the suitcase brand, which Hein thought was very amusing. Although slightly offensive, the commercial does have a point.



And the real kicker of that commercial is that train doesn't have air conditioning and most of those people haven't bathed in a few days - maybe even in a week or more. Thus I chose a driver.

I leave in for the airport at 4AM (so really in about six hours!) I will update you as soon as I get back with tons of pictures and hopefully some more videos from my digital camera!