I never thought I would see the Taj Mahal a second time. I was wrong. And it was so soon. This time I was with friends. I had the joy of experiencing it again through their eyes. There is something about the ambiance of the place, all that white marble behind which is such a great love story.

But it was different for me. Maybe it was because I was worried about watching out for everyone else. Maybe it was because our guide this time didn't tell the story with so much eloquence. Maybe it really was different. It did not seem as magical. I noticed more mundane things. I was watching the people around

me. And hearing them too. One American voice, not from my group, exclaimed about the smell of feet in the staircase. We were all barefoot, leaving our shoes outside as we were told. He was right. And there is something about stinky feet smell that keeps you from feeling too romantic about a place.

But the touts and the taxi drivers and the system were the same. As we left the train station we were barraged with offers for taxi rides. I was trying to avoid the scheme. We would taxi only to the Taj and work our way from there. What they want is to snare you for the entire day as soon as they can. If they have you in their car they can take you shopping. The stores and the restaurants give them rupees to deliver customers, especially the paying kind.

My group really liked Hahn, the driver. So we paid him to give us the guided tour of the Taj and to tell us that story. Like on my first trip, he discouraged our visit to the Red Fort saying there was nothing to see. I understood. The Red Fort would not give him a kickback, and he would rather talk us into spending time where we might spend money. He was wrong. The Red Fort is an amazing piece of history to witness. It is the place where the builder of the Taj was held prisoner until death when his son decided he was spending to much family money on marble structures and took over ruling the country. Hahn gave us a guided tour of the place and we all enjoyed it.

So somehow we ended up attached to this taxi driver and the other Indian men in his company. They took us to Indiana, a tourist restaurant where the food was good and safe. Then they took us to a marble “factory”. And it was the same one I had been to the year before, the one where the owner claims to be a descendent of the original builder of the Taj, of the craftsmen who did the stone inlay work, the pietra dura. At J.K. Cottage Industries, we watched as the workers cut tiny stones and chiseled out places in the marble for them from a pattern in his head. All of the products are hand made in the most rudimentary style, just as they have been done for centuries. There has been no modernization of the process.

Last year I bought a big table and had it shipped home. They took good care of it as it arrived all in one piece, shipping and customs all paid for, included in the initial price. The only thing that didn’t show up in Illinois was the set of matching coasters I had been promised in the bargaining. When the owner learned of the mistake, he gave me a set on the spot without question.

We were in the car on the way back to the train station when we somehow ended up in a jewelry store. “Just five minutes.” That turned into an hour. The man behind the counter knew we were trying to catch a train and that we had been waitlisted. He called his friend, Gore, a travel agent. He called in the tourist status of our tickets to make that quota, which I couldn’t do over the internet when I booked them. With our tickets confirmed, we had more time to spend in the shop. Half of us bought jewely. We all watched and listened as two Indian men played music with a drum and a funny looking, long string instrument, the sitar. Sara got a lesson on it. They brought us tea. Everyone was happy.

I learned that the owner behind the counter lives in California and was home to help his father with the family shop. He had gone to Berkely for a business degree and sells pizza slices on Venice Beach. He is amused by the Americans who won’t buy his $0.99 slices because they must be no good if they are so cheap. They go instead to his other place, where they pay twice the price for the exact same pizza