Day Ten:
February 16, 2005: Taj Mahal, to Delhi
Agra did not show us India's best face, and we had a tricky introduction to the Taj Mahal. First of all, the place is crowded.
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Also, our book had given us a few mistaken impressions. What the Rough Guide failed to mention about the Taj is that they frisk you and take away all of your electronics. We were not happy when we had to put cellphone, Palm Pilot and iPod in a locker, and grumbled all the way through the security line, sure we wouldn't get them back at the end of the day.
The Rough Guide also suggested that one could spend all day luxuriating in the gardens around the Taj, calling them "the most blissful place to spend a day in Agra." Once we got inside, though, we discovered signs indicating that it is forbidden to trespass on the grass.
The place was crawling with people, thronged, crowded, like being at a carnival. The sun was hot. They'd taken away our digital gadgets. And we couldn't sit on the lawn. But okay, we were at one of the architectural wonders of the world, so we determined to enjoy ourselves, crowds notwithstanding.
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We walked through the gardens (staying on the paths, as per the signs), doffed shoes and circumnavigated the mausoleum (marveling at how the round room amplified the shouts, conversations, and loud tweeting whistle blasts of tour guides).
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We admired the carved marble, the exquisite inlaid flowers, the inlaid quotations from the Qur'an that move up and down the walls. We sat in the shade outside the building for a while, and watched the tourists pass by. Here, too, some Indian tourists wanted to take snapshots with us.
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We wandered through the righthand mosque-copy (not actually a mosque, but built to match the mosque on the left, to preserve symmetry) and through the lefthand mosque (especially cool was the floor, inlaid in a pattern that looked like rows of prayer rugs). The inlay on the mausoleum itself was pretty spectacular, too; apparently each petal or leaf may contain as many as sixty inlay fragments, and the inlay is all semi-precious stones, which came from all over the world. Only the carnelian is actually Indian in origin.
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(We heard the tour guides give this explanation so many times that we memorized their schtick without really trying to, and amused ourselves by turning to each other, at different points in the day, and launching into the standard spiel...)
It was about two in the afternoon when guys in khaki wearing turbans started shooing us out. They shooed us back to the Taj, where a guard yelled "hurry! Hurry!" and ushered us in at lightning speed, zipping us around the room. It was oddly amazing to be in there alone, but we had no time to savor it; they pushed us through and out, and started moving us, along with the rest of the crowd, out of the gardens.
In typical Indian fashion, no one offered an explanation, and the crowd left. We were deeply annoyed; we'd spent a bunch of money to get in (it's cheap for Indians, but quite pricey for us), the town was hot and crowded and full of children hassling us for money, and our train didn't leave until after eight. So we asked what was going on. Turned out the president of Italy was visiting, and they wanted to show him a perfectly empty Taj Mahal, so they were kicking everyone out!
We demanded our money back, to no avail; then we asked if they'd let us back in. (The Rough Guide is quite clear about the fact that tickets are only good for one entry; if we wanted to leave and return, we'd have to pay again, which we didn't want to do.) They shrugged and said, "okay, whatever, come back after four-thirty." We didn't believe them.
We left, grumpy. We wandered the Taj Ganj quarter, where the Rough Guide had warned us not to eat because there's apparently a poisoning-tourists scam going on (the cheap places make you sick, rush you to a "hospital," and then keep you on an IV drip to keep you sick while they bilk you for money). In the end, we decided to try the Taj Restaurant, where we were the only non-Indians there; we ordered what everyone else was having, e.g. thalis (a fixed multi-curry meal, with rice and chapatis, served in a partitioned metal cafeteria tray), to approving nods from our neighbors. The food turned out to be fantastic; we stayed for dessert, another lassi for me!
Then we spent an hour reading in a small municipal park littered with garbage. We had to cross barbed wire to get to the hard grassy ground, and a few kids pestered us for rupees (one wanted to sell us sachets of bottled water, for ten times what bottles of water cost), but it was relatively peaceful. Kind of. In an India way.
Then we went back to the Taj, checked our electronics again (which had, surprisingly, been returned to us), and queued up to get back in. We didn't really think they'd do it, but they waved us back in! We were there from about 5pm until sunset, and it was pretty stunning.
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The late afternoon light was gentle to the marble, and removed the burning harshness we'd seen in it at midday.
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The reflecting pool was still, and actually reflected the building in all its symmetry.
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The inlay gleamed.
And then, behind the mausoleum, we peered down to the riverbank and saw monkeys.
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Which proceeded to climb the bamboo scaffolding and overrun the pavilion.
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They stared at us, weird reflections of our own faces. They allowed us to photograph them. And then they started rushing towards us, we receded nervously (not wanting to even contemplate the barrage of shots a feral monkey's bite would necessitate), and they ran off towards the mosque-copy building. Within a few minutes they had vanished, as though they'd never been there. It was the most surreal moment of the entire trip. (Once the monkeys started showing up, we got a lot of laughs out of quoting Skullcrusher Mountain to each other. Jonathan Coulton is just the bomb. That "too many monkeys" line has come in handy more times than I can count...)
So yeah. We tried to hate the Taj, especially once they kicked us out with no explanation, but in the end its stunning beauty won us over. Well, that and the monkeys.
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We went from there to the train station, where we sat with our bags waiting for the Shatabdi Express, India's fastest and best train. We'd booked ourselves seats in an A/C Chair Car, and were excited about getting to Delhi, where we'd be staying at Claridges, an old English five-star hotel that our friend Dina had recommended.
At the train station I bought a cup of chai: three rupees, and it came in the clay cup I had been expecting a few days previously! (I saved the cup, actually. I'm psyched to make chai sometime soon and sip it in my Indian clay cup.) Our train was late, but eventually it came, and we settled in to our chairs (individual chairs, cushioned) and enjoyed the meal we hadn't known was coming (bottled water, tomato soup and breadsticks, then rice and curry).
Unfortunately, even India's fastest and most reliable train is still in India, and it broke down outside of Agra. We sat on the tracks, unmoving, and glumly watched the minutes of our last night of good sleep tick away.
But when we got to Delhi, finally, around 1:30am, the driver from our hotel was waiting for us with a sign reading "MS ZUCKERMAN," and we climbed with profound relief into his swank leather-upholstered car. When we got to the hotel, it was exquisite and full of life (piano music, people wandering the lobby, the vodka bar jumping with customers), and we settled with a happy sigh into our gorgeous bedroom.
Or, back to the index.