When you visit the Taj Mahal, be sure to hire a rikshaw and go over to the village of Nagla Kachpura on the north side of the Yamuna River. It's a 45-minute drive and you can only get there by rikshaw — the streets are too narrow for cars — but it's well worth it.

The view of the Taj from this side of the river is an interesting change of pace, and the sights along the way add to the experience. The day we came here, there were people singing and chanting along the road, people living in a huge tent camp, women and children washing clothes in the polluted river and playing in the mud, many farm animals, and we were the only outsiders anywhere in sight. As an example of how few tourists come to this side of the river, a hundred yards from the crowded Taj Mahal, a young boy with a goat walked up to me and just stared without ever asking for money like all the tourist-oriented kids over by the Taj Mahal did.

A statue of Dr. Ambedkar stands in the trees at Nagla Kachpura. Dr. Amedkar was the spiritual leader of the Dalits (the lowest caste) in the 1950's, and he convinced millions of them to convert to Buddhism in protest against the Hindu caste system. Not surprisingly, low-caste Hindus praise his legacy and high-caste Hindus think he was a flake.