There’s a grinding of gears from the front, and the bus pauses, then jerks forward sharply, sending all of us lurching out of our seats again. One of my hands clutches the camera; the other holds a death grip on the seat back. I click frame after frame out the side window, hoping for maybe a miracle or two out of several dozen blurred nothings.

The bus swings to the right as we switch lanes again, this time venturing for a short period into the oncoming lane and threading between motorcycles and rickshaws that honkingly announce their displeasure at this sudden behemoth with “TOURISM” splashed on its windshield.

I surrender to the inevitable and stow my camera away as the bus finally wobbles back over into its rightful land, trying not to sigh as potential photographs slip below my window and whisk away down the road.

As we shudder to a stop at yet another checkpoint, the navigator scrambles out of his bucket seat and climbs into the cabin with us. We are perhaps halfway between Delhi and Agra, on our way to see India’s crowning jewel, the Taj Mahal. What we were assured would be a three-and-a-half, perhaps four-hour journey has proved to be much more than that, and our enthusiasm is waning.

Slashes of  sunlight are drifting slowly across the wood paneling of the hotel lobby. I have nothing better to do, so my eyes chart their course across the wall, across plastic Greek columns and printed hotel paintings shipped in from wherever they print hotel paintings from.  At night, the nightclub next door beats its insistent thump through this room, but in the morning, it is quieter than most funeral homes. Only the whisper of cloth as the hotel workers pass back and forth breaks the silence.

The sharp change that comes from traveling halfway around the world has yet again briefly turned me into a deeply unwilling morning person.  I found myself fully awake well before the sun rose, and a few hours of tossing the sheets about and burying my head under the pillow later, I was finally forced to admit that sleep will not return.  So I’m slumped sleepily on one of the alarmingly vibrant love seats that dot the lobby – they’re decorated with a fabric I have entitled “Dizzy Zebra” – and am now trying to motivate myself to face the day.