Agra, India

We left Delhi early this morning for Agra — the highlight of the trip for most people. The road to Agra was long and rural and since we went mostly by highway it was hard to take pictures for you. We saw hundreds of small mustard and wheat fields and since it was harvest time for both we watched families harvest by hand and bind up the sheaves to be sold for fuel to the many brick factories that we also saw from the road. I didn’t think there was enough of a market in the whole world for the amount of mustard that we saw just on this trip. Apparently most of it is used to make mustard oil with which I have no acquaintance.

We arrived in Agra, the home of our guide, Raj, after a rest stop, which true to form in India, had no beef in the burgers. They do not eat the cows because they are their mothers, Raj says.

Raj had a special treat for us this afternoon. He took us to the public school where his wife teaches. We got to interact with the kids and meet all the teachers and see how the one free meal per day is cooked at the school. We loved getting a first hand look at a part of the education system.

These ladies were the school cooks. They had an inside kitchen but preferred to cook outside using the traditional dried buffalo dung for fuel. Dale and I both enjoyed the school visit and I could have stayed here for hours. Even Raj agreed that the education there wasn’t the best but it is better than the alternatives for the kids and many of them use it as a springboard to greater education and opportunities.

Before the highlight of the day we visited a rug making co-operative. I think they said there were 2000 looms in Agra making rugs of all sizes and patterns which all come through this co-operative for the finishing procedures. And procedures there are! It’s hard to believe all the tedious work that goes in to making a hand knotted oriental rug! We watched the very skilled knotters working at lightening speed to follow a complicated pattern and make hundreds or thousands of knots (depending on the thread) per square inch. They were indeed artists in my opinion.

The rug the women were working on was to take them over a year to make and then other craftsmen would shave it, fix the lines of every design in the carpet and finally bind it.

I had been to that co-operative 12 years ago with Dan and I bought a small rug at the time which Dan now has. I was tempted to buy another one because they are such a piece of art but I resisted knowing that I don’t need one. And interestingly enough the man who was explaining things to us asked me if I had been there before. I had thought I recognized him but that would have been easy since he was in his same position but out of the thousands of people there in the meantime for him to recognize me made me think there must be something very strange about me. Now I have to figure out what it is.

We left just in time to get embroiled in the traffic which was all heading the same place we were.