You're welcome so much

Greetings from Agra.

I can see the Taj Mahal from many a rooftop here, and tomorrow that's where I'm going. I going to wear a track suit, a sun visor and hand a bunch of touristy paraphenila off me so I stand out as a visitor because I'm already tired of blending in.

It's okay, it's just a mild headache, I haven't really lost it.

The flower grower/essential oil maker who decided to stop by my table at lunch today told me I had a very Indian face. I said "oh, I'm Italian," and he responded "Ah Buona Mangiato!" (Ah, good eating!) so I laughed. I was too out of it to say "I don't understand." Since I hardly slept on that freezing train ride, nothing makes sense right now.

Did I mention how often one can find Spaghetti on the menu in India (It appears Marco Polo came through here on his way back from China with those noodles, and everyone here seemed to say "Noodles, excellent, put away the rice dishes, let's cook up some pasta!") You can find it on the menu like this: spegheti, spagehti, spagetti and spacadie.

The flower grower pretty much plopped down at our table to ply me with all his fragrant wares - I'm not sure why the sight of me clutching my head as I waited to eat so I could then go lie down did not deter him from thinking of this as an opportune time to make a pitch, but it worked in his favour, I bought a vial of Lotus oil.

He had "Jasmine, Lotus, Rose, Poppy flower which is Opium and Orangeflower. He also had citronella "very good for get rid of bugs" he said. "You better get that one" Rich said - since I still got pestered by a mosquito on the train ride here. You can't imagine how many people were on the train and that bug found me! Still, I prefer the mosquito to the cockroaches that were crawling around that first train ride.

The 10 to 11 hour train ride came in at 17 hours. I'm not sure if it was because it was moving at the speed of 10 kilometers an hour, or that fact that it sometimes just stopped and sat there on the tracks for big chunks of time that it took much longer than the estimated time to travel here.

The couple sitting next to me told me what to see in Agra, beyond the Taj Mahal. The husband taught Commerce at the University of Varanasi (actually Benares Hindu University, the biggest in Asia according to them) Everyone asks what you do for a living here - (Rich got asked what caste he was by someone on the train today. I thought that was incredibly odd.) - so I always say "journalist" because it's the closest I can get to "writer", and I suspect saying writer to someone in India sounds the same as it does to my Italian family: "Madon, she means she's a bum without a job, without a future." or if you heard my mum's take on it: "I dunno who you take after, I dunno why you this way you are." (Proving my theory that I was left on the veranda by those gypsies)

The couple shared their dinner with us, and then encouraged me to throw the cardboard box and aluminum plates out the window of the train. I said "I can't!" so the husband took the garbage from me and threw it out the window, saying "This is not a surprise. Not a surprise, you have seen."

And it's true, there is garbage and in partcular, plastic garbage everywhere on the ground here. There was a remarkable site one day in Varanasi, a trash bin- it was empty, not far from a bunch of detris on the ground. It was the first tash bin I had seen in 5 weeks here. I told him "In some places in Canada you can get fined for doing that." (which I'm not sure about now, but I thought was true? anyone can set me straight on that.)

It makes me think I should pick up the pace on my recycling when I get home. It's a drop in the bucket but every little drop counts.