To the Taj!

We spent Friday and Saturday traveling to Agra to do some more sight seeing. Agra is home to the Taj Mahal! It was truly incredible. We also visited the Agra Fort which was home to the emperor who was responsible for the construction of the Taj Mahal. One of the unique experiences we had was visiting a store that constructs ornate marble designs using the same techniques used to build the Taj. It is an intricate process that takes days just to design a square foot of marble. The Taj Mahal itself used 20,000 artisans from Persia to construct the Taj...a process that took over 20 years! Because it was an Indian Holiday, the Taj was packed, just to get inside the monument was an hour wait! Luckily, David had hired a tour guide with connections. The guide snuck the group inside through the back exit, stating "okay, now we are going to play a little trick!" We made it inside the beautiful Taj and were able to spend a little more time appreciating it than everyone else!







As we traveled back to Delhi, we couldn't pass up the opportunity to make a quick pit stop at McDonalds. Since there is no beef, the most popular dish there is the McVeggie.

ARRIVED!

Last night (Feb. 24th) we made it safe and sound and we only lost one of our bags. Our host, David Lall, had to wait for us as we tried to communicate and describe our lost luggage. When we finally finished all the paperwork, David was there to welcome us--he even had flowers for Ashley. We arrived several hours before some of the other people who we are going to be traveling in India with, so we were brought to the hotel to enjoy a late dinner and go to bed.

Today we traversed around Delhi. We saw Parliament House, some monuments, temples, and even Ghandi Gardens (the place where Ghandi was assassinated). There were some nice photo ops and great food. We'll be putting up some pictures and more details later.

Pre-adventures in India

Getting ready to depart for a foreign country is never easy. Especially when you are applying for your visas 6 weeks before you depart and you realize that since becoming married, your wife's passport has not been changed to her now changed name. It was only after the fact that we now realize changing your name on all legal documents is the single most important task after getting married. If you don't change your name, it means you can not apply for a visa until the passport has been changed-which is a two week process. It actually takes longer if in the middle of the processing the government decides it doesn't want to accept your only copy of your marriage license as proof of marriage. This would mean that you must reorder another marriage certificate from the state you were married in (which in our case is a different from the state we reside) and wait for them to ship it to you--only to ship in out again the very next hour at exhorbitant shipping rates.

Once we recieved our renewed passport we only had 10 business days before we departed to get our visas--the same amount of days required to process our application. Luckily, we recieved our passports yesterday. This saved much stress, but still goes to show that changing your name on all your documents after you get married is the single most important thing to do.