Doctor's Free Time: Guess who's back? III

A belated Happy New Year to all! I returned safe and sound yesterday morning. On Sunday I was visiting the Taj Mahal and today I'm back at work, quite a contrast. The holiday was hectic to say the least, six days in Hyderabad and five days in Aligarh of which two days were spent traveling to and from Agra to visit the Taj Mahal. The first time was on Friday and unknown to anyone, it's shut on Friday so we went back on Sunday, both times having to sit through a tortuous 3hr car journey on horrible roads.

Hyderabad was a pure eating holiday. All we did was go to one restaurant after another, one function every evening, just eat, eat and eat. Not good when I should be trying to lose weight. We never had dinner at home. The choice of restaurants is quite diverse and we enjoyed all types of food. It was the first time I had been back after getting married and although the number of family members has greatly reduced over the past few years it didn't prevent plenty of dinner invites with yet more food!

Hyderabad as a city has advanced a great deal; at times it didn't feel like I was in India. There were lots of expensive cars on the road, grand houses and shopping malls. The rich/poverty divide seems to have gotten bigger, there didn't seem to be much of a middle class. Driving around the upper class areas felt like a Middle Eastern country, but then the poorer areas were even worse than what I remember. All the recent investment into the city has created a lot of wealth but only for a small proportion of people.

Aligarh felt more like India of old. It's a small university town. My wife's uncle is a lecturer at the university and we had a tour of the university itself. It's huge with every possible subject covered. Large beautiful gardens and extravagant hostels for students. It's no wonder that people from across India come to study there.

The highlight of the holiday was definitely the Taj Mahal. What a piece of work! It is truly breathtaking. It was built by Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan as a mausoleum for his wife, Mumtaz, after her death. Most women would complain about how anything else simply pales in comparison, but I would argue that not everyone has limitless funds and 22,000 people at their disposal to build grand buildings, therefore chocolate and flowers should suffice!

The queuing system to get into the Taj Mahal is a joke. First we had to queue for the tickets, foreigners are charged almost 38 times more than locals! We then had to queue to hand in mobile phones and then another queue to get into the courtyard. The whole process took over an hour and a half. However, after all is said and done, it was definitely worth it! I thoroughly recommend it to everyone and the pictures below just don't do it justice, you have to see it for yourself.

Enough about my holiday, mainly because there was a rather large piece of news that occurred whilst I was away. I'm not talking about a 3-day mauling that England received in the 4th Test of the Ashes, neither am I talking about the MBE awarded to Steven Gerrard, both news worthy items, but both completely overshadowed by the execution of Saddam Hussein.

Obviously I'm not going to deny that he deserved the death sentence, but I feel a sense of injustice with his death. The UK and more importantly USA will be delighted by his death, because it now means that we will never find out the level of support that Saddam Hussein enjoyed from both countries in the 1980s, we'll never know the secret dealings that occurred between the countries. Bush and Blair have got away with it again!

Since the illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003, it has also been announced that the US death toll has reached 3,000 soldiers, that's more than the death toll from 9/11. That means Bush's so-called 'War on Terror' has resulted in more deaths than the acts of terrorists. Bush is responsible for more deaths than 9/11. Notice how it gets minimal coverage in the media as well.

The situation is getting worse and worse with no improvement in sight. Life under Saddam must've been bad, but surely it can't have been this bad? How things will change is anybody's guess, but in the meantime, we'll continue to hear Blair and Bush going on about the need for the occupation and how it's been the right thing to do! Once Blair hands over to Brown, it'll just be more of the same. A bleak outlook at the beginning of 2007.

Being the New Year and all, and not wanting to end on such a bleak note, I'd like to end with some New Year resolutions (in no particular order) and to invite you to list yours.