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I SURVIVED VARANASI. Just barely. After I finished that blog post yesterday, I went back to the hotel and we went to the train station. As soon as we got to the train station, I was seized with the overwhelming urge to puke. I didn't even make it to the bathroom - I puked in a garbage can outside the tourist bureau in front of a lot of other backpackers. I then ran for the bathroom, and - this is about to get sort of graphic, skip to next paragraph if you don't want to hear - before I could make if to the toilet, puked all over the sink, bathroom mirror, and everything around it. Then I had to spend 10 minutes cleaning the bathroom, with people knocking on the door outside wondering why I was taking so long. Ughhhh it was gross. Immediately after this I had to board the 15 hour night train to Agra... perhaps not the best place to be with a stomach bug. Once the train started going, I had to run to puke again, this time in the dingy train bathroom with no light, so I was aiming for a hole in the pitch dark. Oh my godddd. But then miraculously, that was it. I thought I was going to be up all night puking but that finished it and I actually got a great sleep on the train and felt a million times better when we got to Agra.

Everyone said the night trains were freezing cold... which is sort of true. I was sleeping on the bottom bunk (there are 3 levels) and I was next to the window which didn't shut properly so a cold breeze blew in all night. But fortunately I had a shawl, a sleeping bag, and a high fever so I was pretty warm. I felt almost back to normal in Agra... seriously, something about Varanasi was just killing me. Micah and I had dinner with a girl tonight in Agra who said the same thing happened to her... she was really sick within 2 hours of getting to Varanasi, described all the same symptoms as me, and she was better as soon as she left. And some people in Varanasi were talking about "the Varanasi sickness" that seems to afflict some travelers, just in Varanasi. WEIRD.

But anyway, Agra! Taj Mahal! Oddly enough we started out seeing the Taj Mahal from the back, not the front. Technically you can't even go around back, there are guards. And a barbed wire fenced, and a shoddy path that if you fell off, you'd fall into the gross river behind it. But Micah and I went back there, and Micah begged the guard to let us go through, which he finally did after protesting that it was "too dangerous". So we walked all the way around the back, behind the barbed wire fence. There were NO tourists. We were the only people back there, seeing the Taj from the rear. Sort of funny. We walked all the way around to the other side. We decided it was too early to go in yet (we wanted to get there later in the day for sunset) so we wandered down a side street, where we were attacked by crazy rickshaw drivers wanting our business.

One of the rickshaw guys was SO CREEPY. He kept hitting on me. In Hindi! Fortunately my 4 months of teaching myself Hindi came in sort of handy here... he said I was a very pretty girl and that he wanted to marry me. AHHHHH. Then he said in English that I have good legs and we should have 10 children. I was so grossed out. Micah was no help either, he was like "Yeah! She's single!" He then asked me if I wanted beer. Or hashish. Then he told Micah he could take him to a special massage parlour with lots of women. What a skeeze.

We escaped them finally and went into the Taj, which honestly is really awesome. It's worth seeing, for sure. My one disappointment though - here in India they have this great TV commercial on all the time with Abhishek Bachchan (hot Indian film star), where he is playing a tour guide at the Taj Mahal. So all I wanted at the Taj was for Abhishek to show up and be my tour guide, but no such luck. Sad. Regardless, it was great, and we spent a good 4 hours in there. We stayed till it closed and they kicked us out... we were the last people to leave! Us and this one Chinese girl, who kept insisting "One more picture! One more picture!" (She was cool - same aforementioned girl we had dinner with tonight.) Micah and the girl were taking a million pictures so I just laid down on a bench for like an hour with a sweet view of the stars, the moon, and the Taj Mahal. Coooool. One weird thing about the day - even though we're not in Bangladesh anymore, and India is overrun with tourists, especially at the Taj Mahal, the random celebrity treatment still happens to us. I got stopped 3 times while wandering around this afternoon by people who wanted to take photos with me. That's so freaking weird, every time. I just want to yell "I'm NOBODY!" Haha. It's sort of fun though. Sometimes it makes me feel cool, other times it makes me feel like a zoo animal. I can't decide.

Tonight we had a nice dinner in a cute restaurant that was playing Casino Royale on a big TV. Or at least it was, until the power went out (which it does fairly often in India, it seems) and we had some impromptu candlelight ambiance. Haha.

Other random observations about India - the women are SO nice here. Every time a woman talks to you, she is either genuinely curious or friendly, or being exceptionally helpful or kind. The men, on the other hand, 9 times out of 10 if a man talks to you, he is trying to sell you something. Or he'll talk to you for 30 seconds and then demand a tip for no reason. The men can be soooo shady! I am figuring out fast that if I need directions or helpful, honest information, I am way better off asking a woman. Which isn't to say that all men here are sketchy, cuz that certainly isn't the case, but seriously it's like 9/10, especially in the touristy places. The women are so cool though... the lady sitting with us on the train shared her homemade dinner with Micah last night, because she said the train food wasn't very good and he shouldn't get it. Sadly I couldn't have any because I was puking. But still, soooo nice of her.

Other random observation - India is jam packed with other backpackers, but they're all hippies! Holy crap! Everyone has dreadlocks and wears baggy striped Aladdin-style pants and looks stoned all the time. I am wearing jeans and makeup every day just to avoid being mistaken for a hippie.

Okay, this internet cafe has just been painted and I am being knocked unconscious by fumes. I'm going to bed. Delhi tomorrow! I can't wait to be in a city! (Note: I know I need to post some photos but these internet cafes I've been in lately haven't been letting me do it. I'll do a big photo post when I get a chance.)