Bangalore, Day 7 & 8 of Trip

Our plan was to arrive in the hotel in Bangalore in our sumo suits to greet Rahul before the wedding, which we did, but only after standing around in the lobby for a good thirty minutes waiting for him to show up; we were such a novelty the staff was calling people in off the street to come look at us.

After our sumo ambush we only had a few hours before the beginning of the wedding and needed to buy appropriate clothes so we rushed off to Fabindia, which apparently is the place to buy stylish things of the like. Like any guy, Rahul grossly underestimated the amount of time it takes girls to make a decision about an outfit, especially for a wedding, so we ended up being really crunched for time.

The wedding was in some ways very much like what I had pictured an Indian wedding being like, and in some ways very different. Today was only the first part of the wedding, but the whole thing was very similar, so I will describe it once for the whole time.

For starters, it is forbidden to dance in Bangalore, so that kind of gives you an overall impression of the wedding right there; it was heavy on tradition and light on party. It was really cool seeing all of the traditional aspects I had always read about, such as circling the sacred fire seven times, and the marigold canopy people are supposed to be married under, but by the time the second hour of classical music was winding down, all of Rahul’s friends were feverently apologizing to us for the boringness of the wedding.







What sets Indian weddings apart from the rest is the everyone-is-family feeling that is lacking at most western weddings. Although we had absolutely no connection to the bride and groom, and had never met them before, we were included in everything, and not just because we were foreigners, but because everyone was included. People went out of their way to make sure we felt at home – we even had a food coach: one of the cousins of the bride came over to us every time food was served and explained to us what everything was. Despite this we were drinking our soup the wrong way, and at the end of the meal two little old ladies came over to instruct us on the proper way to slurp soup from your palm. The food was indeed one of the highlights of the wedding, that and having a bigger room than the bride and groom in the hotel for some reason.


South Indian Food is very different from northern food in that it is rice based, not wheat based, and it is eaten almost entirely with your hands. Never use your left hand to raise food to your mouth, since traditionally that is your “dirty” hand. The food was served on a banana leaf and consists mainly of rice, three or four main curries, a few chutneys, soups, and ‘salad’, which was basically veggie raita. Throughout the entire wedding we were stuffed with food by men carrying pails of the curry around the tables. They never took no for an answer on second or thirds, by fourths you could sometimes convince them that you were full. Our favorite looked like an Indian Harry Carey and was always popping up right when we thought we had at last cleaned our plates to delightedly pile on more food.


Since there was obviously little revelry at the wedding itself (the bride and groom spent three quarters of the time outside – bad sign), all the young people bought cases of Kingfisher and had a party afterward in our room since it was the biggest. After a few beers rishi was persuaded to read his speech for the wedding to Ani, who was there – even for us who didn’t know ani it made us laugh till we cried. At the end of the night we spent a good thirty minutes trying to take in-air pictures jumping on the bed, much to the chagrin of the “boring couple”.

Agra, Day 6 of the Trip

We arrived in Agra at 10 am and first went to go see the fort, which is right next to the train station. For me this was not that cool architecture, except for a mosque inside which was kind of cool. There were however amazing views of the taj. Once you look at it from a distance you realize that Disney completely ripped it off for Aladdin.



After doing a speedy tour of the fort we took a rickshaw to the main tourist area inside the walls of the old city. I had to use the overseas call to try and change my flight to after NYE, and after I had been on hold for 15 minutes and almost gotten everything sorted the phone started making fax noises and I had to hang up. Once I told the guy I wasn’t going to pay for the call because his phone was crap and I had to start over again he told me that the sound I heard must have been the hold music, which it obviously wasn’t and that it was my fault I had hung up, his phone was fine. We obviously got into a huge fight since him telling me I had confused hold music with a fax noise was utter bullshit and he wouldn’t back down from this claim. Even with Gardiner and Steffen backing me he wouldn’t admit his phone had messed up – it was ridiculous.

We were all pretty pissed off, especially me, so we went to a rooftop café with view of the Taj to calm our nerves. The view was very choice and went a long way to making me forget the incident. We also dressed up in our sumo suits and took pictures – people down below in the town were coming out of their houses to stare and point at us. . Once the waiters saw how much fun we were having they wanted to join in, so we let them have their sumo moment as well.


View from our restaurant

The Taj was incredible, so much so it is impossible to describe and you will have no idea what I am talking about unless you go to actually see it. I would say it was even more awe inspiring for me than Angkor. The whole thing is so white, and so much bigger than I ever imagined it would be.


The symmetry is also striking, down to the trees that are planted around the main building.
The only unsymetrical thing in the whole compound is the placement of the two coffins. Since he was planning on building his own Taj across the river from his wife, there was only room for one coffin in the symmetrical layout of the interior.

Location across the river where his tomb was to be constructed

Once he was added after his death his placement beside her is the only thing that throws off the symmetry of the entire compound.

We took a ton of pictures on the way out, mainly of Indians posing, but also some of ourselves, and we jumped into a bunch of random peoples photos, which they thought was very funny.



This guy was trying to recreate the picture that I am doing above, but little known to him all of his friends were doing this, he couldn't figure out why we were taking pictures of him but finally he turned around and realized it.