Yesterday I booked a taxi to take me to see one of the seven wonders of the world. The trip to Agra is 4 hours by road and my driver picked me up at 0600 for the journey. The hotel arranged the driver and it cost approx 50 pounds, not bad at all, especially when the tourist info place tried to charge me double that. Luckily the car had air conditioning as temperatures during the day reached 38 degrees, rather too warm for a delicate little flower like me! Agra is in the state of Uttar Pradesh and here there are no industries as the government are trying to protect the Taj Mahal from the damaging effects of pollution. You also have to take an electric car the last half a mile for the same reason. The Taj Mahal has been described as the most magnificent monument to love ever built. It was built by Emporer Shah Jahan as a mausoleum for his wife Mumtaz Mahal, who died in childbirth at the age of 38, having already produced 14 children! He was said to be heartbroken and work started that year, but took 22 years to finish, with 20,000 people working on the building. Some of these later had their thumbs amputated to ensure that the perfection of the Taj could never be repeated. The construction bill is said to have run to approx 40 million pounds at todays equivalent. The Taj itself stands on a raised marble platform and decorative carved towers stand at each corner. These lean out slightly, so that if ever one of them fell, it would fall outwards, therefore not damaging the main structure. It is constructed of semi-translucent white marble, carved with flowers and inlaid with thousands of semi-precious stones. It is a perfect exercise in symmetry, the 4 identical faces feature vaulted arches embellished with quotations from the Quran. It is topped off with 4 small domes surrounding the main central dome. Conservationists have taken to using a centuries old recipe for a face pack to clean the marble. It is smeared with multani mitti, an ancient Ayurvedic beauty treatment made of earth, milk, cereal and lime. After 24 hours it is washed off with warm water, taking with it impurities and discolourants. I did not know this, but maybe some of you do, but the Emporer planned to build an identical mausoleum in black marble for himself across the river. The two were to be linked by a marble bridge, half black and half white. However, the emporer was arrested by his younger brother who wanted to be ruler and only the foundations were completed and can be seen today across the river. The drive back was fairly uneventful, except for the presence of a very strange looking animal on the roadside. It looked to me like a cross between a horse and a cow!! Don't know if this is actually biologically possible, but if so I guess it would be called a how or a corse!! Anyway, hope that wasn't too detailed and boring. Amazing to think that the only purpose of this is to house one dead body! Do any of you remember the famous picture of Princess Di sitting in front of the Taj Mahal, well there is now one of me! Software being updated for downloading photos this week, so hopefully should be some more next week. Hope you are all well. Sherry xx