As is tradition on any foreign trip, I’ve become obsessed by one particular product. My love of regional soda insists that I love “Thums Up Soda”, a generic Coke product that dominates the marketplace here. Everywhere I look, billboards insist that I drink the soda, if only to ‘Taste The Thunder!’ The soda itself is rather unremarkable, I must say, but the logo’s great. I’m shopping for t-shirts as we speak.

Without realizing it, I’ve suddenly gotten my feet under me here in India. For the first few days, it was panic and exhaustion and constant movement, and I barely had my wits about me. It didn’t help much that I’m pretty certain I got sunstroke that first day – I turned a particularly luminescent shade of red, and my notes from that day have the vague disconnection of someone battling dementia. Squinting at my shaky handwriting, the only two things I could make out were “boy, the Indians sure like Gandhi a lot,” and “Rob just called me a lobster.” Heady stuff.

A young man here introduced me to the story of Dr. B. R. Ambedkar today. I was unfamiliar with him until now, though I’d noticed the statues of him scattered along the streets. According to everyone else in the conversation, the Indian government tries to keep people in the West from becoming too aware of him. That’s the sort of statement that normally sends me scurrying to Scopes, but the fellow telling me about him had just finished getting his masters degree on Ambedkar’s influence, which makes me inclined to believe him (also, I don’t have a lot of time to trawl the internet out here).

One of the few advantages of switching to a time zone ten and a half hours off from your own is that your body occasionally makes entertaining decisions. For example, my body insists on waking me up several hours before my alarm every day despite having only gone to bed a few hours earlier. I toss and turn and try to return to slumber, but it seems to be no use, and I find myself rising and puttering around in the soft dawn light.

I’ve always envied morning people, who seems to find their fulfillment in a morning run or early work session. These people will always insist, of course, that they are not morning people, and developed this routine through necessity and determination. Which is exactly the sort of thing morning people would say.

The Taj Mahal was built by Emperor Shah Jahan as a mausoleum for his favorite wife, Mumtaz Mahal, who produced for him 14 children in 19 years, including one who eventually put him in prison. The intimation from our tour guide is that the Taj Mahal is a monument to the power of love and dedication. Our impression was that it was more a monument to the power of slave labor, but I see his point.