My Agra Guide and I take a break
My guide was a marvelous guy, very friendly, and I even managed to talk him into lowering the number of "must see" shops he kept wanting to take me to once I convinced him and the various shop owners that I truly didn't have the money to buy much of anything, and particularly not things like rugs or large pieces of marble sculpture. For part of the day, his young son came along in the car with us, and the affection between them made for a wonderful and comfortable time. This photo was taken in late November 2001, and according to him, I was the third American he'd seen since September 11th. (I only saw two small groups while, a couple in Delhi for the first international conference on anthrax after the incidents in the states, and a guy inside the Taj Mahal who'd been bumming around India for the past twenty-plus years.) In contrast, my guide said he averaged three American customers a week in normal times. Of course, given the fact that American bombs were falling in Afghanistan literally while this photo was being taken, that's hardly surprising.
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