Happy New Year in Agra

Happy New Year from Agra. The stomach bug kept Coleman from enjoying the sumptuous buffet -- they even offered beef sausages! We took a few items up to the room, but even on New Year's Day he was still feeling badly, so we called for the hotel doctor -- he confirmed the stomach-bug diagnosis, but prescribed a few extra medications.
At midnight, New Year's Eve, we watched the local news channel NDTV ineptly showing several parties in Delhi and Calcutta and Bombay, and saw a few fireworks in the hotel courtyard. Then, the next morning we enjoyed watching CNN showing the ball drop in TimesSquare!
Yesterday we visited the "baby Taj" (built earlier, a likely model for the Taj), and went to the riverbank across from the Taj Mahal to view it at sunset -- rather eerie, with occaional bonfires flaring at the cremation site just upriver from the Taj, and the very low level of the river Yamuna increasing the pollution stench. Barb and Coleman were befriended by a young camel driver and an earnest college student selling souvenir books. Our auto-rickshaw driver drove us to "Zorba the Buddha" restaurant for a healthy vegetarian dinner, then to the hotel to rest.
We awoke at 6 in order to get to the Taj Mahal proper before sunrise -- a beautiful site then, because there are so few tourists and "guides" around.

Chris and Cole were actually quite impressed, both with the sight itself and with the knowledge that "this is one of the Wonders of the World" -- but both were impatient to leave, get breakfast... so we took them back to the hotel, and I went off to try (in vain) to change some train tickets to more reasonable times and to update this weblog. Consider it done. Hope all are well!