Agra

Trip Start Dec 26, 2008
1
17
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Trip End Feb 06, 2009


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Where I stayed
(Agra hotels)

Flag of India  , Uttar Pradesh,
Tuesday, January 13, 2009

As we exited the plane yesterday at Delhi airport, we both breathed a sigh of relief - as it was cool.  No more humid, damp, sticky heat.  Finally, a temperature where after dark, a jumper is required instead of needing to wring out your shirt.  Bliss.  Our stopover in Delhi was brief, and Ted's friend Samit kindly put us up.  His family fed us to within an inch of our lives, and then we both agree we had probably the best nights sleep either of us have had since we arrived, just because it was cool.

This morning, we were dropped at the train station to catch the train to Agra.  At the train station, we were besieged by locals trying to scam us into buying another ticket, by telling us the train was delayed for four hours, our tickets were no longer valid as a result, etc etc.  Fortunately, we'd read our Lonely Planet, and knew they were pulling a fast one - so we made our way to the platform, and boarded the train with relatively little fuss.  We were in 3rd Class, A/C so not quite as plush as on the train from Goa to Cochin, but perfectly adequate for our 3 hour train ride.  We got chatting to Gary, a taxi driver from Worthing who is in India for 7 weeks and after a brief snack, we found ourselves in Agra.

Agra is like nothing I imagined.  I'd been told it was dirty, smelly and really pretty grim but I was not prepared for the harsh reality of that.  Having decided that the place I'd originally booked was too far from the Taj, we picked something out of the LP and got a rickshaw to bring us here.   We are slap bang across from the Taj and we can see part of it from the landing outside our room.

The attention here is absolutely intense.  It's a constant barrage of people trying to sell you something, asking you for money, or just generally hassling you.  It's not difficult to understand why there are so few Westerners on the streets. The hardest part is the children - it's hard to look at them and say no.  But it becomes so frequent that soon, you find yourself ignoring it, and I think that might be even worse.  It's everywhere and while the Taj Mahal might be one of the most famous travel desitnations in the world, it would be hard to imagine it were even here if you didn't catch glimpses of it every now and then.  It's the complete opposite of everywhere we've already been and it's a shock to the system. 

Tomorrow wil.l be an early start as we are aiming to be at the Taj for sunrise.  Then, it'll be a quick jaunt over to Agra Fort before we pick up our stuff and head to Jaipur on the evening train.
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