Day 2: We woke up early in the morning to drive to Agra, a heavily populated area where the Taj Mahal is located!

Seeing the Taj Mahal was, unfortunately, a bitter-sweet moment for all of us! As you can see from the image above we were swarmed by photographers and cameramen and had 70 armed guards walking us through the throng of people! 

Everywhere we turned all we could see were crowds of people and camera's and flashing lights in our faces! (Now I know how Beyonce feels!!!)We weren't able to take in our surroundings properly and the whole experience is a bit of a blur...

However, the ‘sweet' moment was when you walk through the entrance to the Taj Mahal garden, my heart skipped a beat. There are two kinds of ‘Wow,': the ‘wow' that you say in a conversation with your girl friends when talking about something relatively exciting, and the ‘wow' that you feel when you see the Taj Mahal. It made me stop in my tracks and odd as it sounds, I had to hold back tears. It is so incredibly beautiful. The white marble gleams in an almost Godly manners and just strikes you in a way no other place in the world has. I have seen Niagara Falls, The Great Wall of China, The Blue Mosque, The Eiffel Tower, The Golden Gate Bridge, The Empire State Building, The Mona Lisa and nothing compares to the WOW you feel when you see the Taj Mahal. 

After that we had a press conference and got to see some children from a school that Healthy Kids Happy Kids helps. They are first genereation educated children who come from local slums. The school provides them with books, materials, a uniform and  food. If you teach one child, you are not only educating them, but you are educating their parent's their siblings and their children. You are helping a family to rise up against poverty. We gave each of these children a school bag to carry their books and played with them for a little bit before having a press conference about how we help this partiucular school. 

We visited a local crafts store where we saw the men who carve marble statues of the Taj Mahal. 

 It is incredible to see the different stones used in the actualt Taj Mahal are used in the miniature versions! 

This is myself and my roomie Miss Iceland 2010 Fanney Ingvarsdottir standing beside the finished marble replica! Isn't it beautiful??!!

We were so well received by the media in India and we are grateful for the time they put into writing articles about Healthy Kids Happy Kids and our efforts in the various locations we visited. In India, Beauty Queens - Miss World/Universe title holders- are held in such high regard. It was such a shock to me when we found out that Tom Cruise visited the Taj Mahal the next day and only received a small picture in the inside of the papers and we got the front cover of all the major national papers. This showed me just how much pride the people of India take in their Beauty Queens! :)

After all the activity that went on that day, it is safe to say that we all were very much looking forward to our beds that night!!! :)

Love

Emma 

xox

Purple Dress and Gold Bangles from Chica Boutique in the Westbury Mall