Kelly and I boarded a train from Jaipur to Agra, home of the Taj Mahal. It was time to get SERIOUSLY TOURISTIC.
We had bought a 2nd Class fare (the lowest class available – around 100 rupees apiece for this trip) and wedged ourselves in with the locals. It was definitely tight in the car, but not the worst we’d encountered. We sat across from a family that shared their sweets with us and helped us find our stop. Nice folk! In the detraining shuffle, we didn’t get to thank them or say goodbye. Drat!
Our nice-person quota was filled for the day. Now, time to say hello to a spread of cheating, lying touts at the Agra train station.
After winging it for weeks, we actually reserved a room in Agra just to take the guess work out of things on arrival. Our new home was Hotel Sheela Inn, the additional property to the Lonely-Planet-recommended Hotel Sheela. I think the latter may have been a better bet – though the staff was friendly and the room was pretty clean, we didn’t have hot water for the duration of our short stay.
At Agra’s train station, smooth talking touts wanted 250 rupees to get us to Hotel Sheela Inn, claiming that our ride to our hotel was 7 km (the map showed something closer to 3 km). We started a bidding war between autorickshaw drivers and finally got the rate down to 120. The defeated young tout-faceman that had initially tried to cheat us with the 250 rate ran alongside our vehicle of choice and shouted at us:
“Why do you come to Agra if you have no money?”
We didn’t have money for cheats, much less for jerks.
We slept for a few hours, awoke in the morning, and the fun continued.
8:30 AM – Feb 7th, 2012
Kelly was due to fly home from Delhi at 9:30 PM that day, and we had to figure out a way to see the Taj and then get her to the Delhi airport, or alternatively, push her flight.
She was feeling quite ill (we had traded off turns on being the sick one for the past two weeks, and her number was up), so we tried to contact her airline to see if they’d let her push her flight a day for health reasons. We expended an hour on the phone and internet trying to reschedule her airfare, unsuccessfully. This meant she needed ground transpo to Delhi.
9:30 AM
We tried to book a train to Delhi. Par for the course, the train booking website wasn’t working correctly, and the travel agents wouldn’t help us with train tickets as they can’t charge heavy commissions on them. Fine. A bus ticket then.
We found a guy that did bus ticket bookings. He needed to take us back to his office to process the ticket, though.
“Only 2 kilometer away”, he said.
It was more like 7 km.
Kelly bought a 2:00 PM bus ticket to Delhi for the inflated price just to get it over with (300 rupees). The landing time was slated for 6:00 PM, giving her 90 minutes to get from bus stop to terminal after the bus arrived.
We proceeded to the west gate of the Taj Mahal on the double – only about 3.5 hours were left for our use in Agra.
10:30 AM
More inflated prices awaited us. We knew admission to the Taj cost more for non-nationals, but it’s actually pretty out of control. 750 rupees for foreigners (approx $15 US), and 20 rupees for Indian nationals. That’s 37.5 times the price for Kelly and I.
Taj Mahal: Foreigner price, 750 Rupees.
Again, I’m fine with paying a bit more. And $15 isn’t much to cry about to see an architectural wonder of the world. But I’m curious who sets up these price structures and believes they’re even-handed and appropriate.
Taj Mahal – Indian price, 20 Rupees.
Yep, we saw the Taj Mahal. It was nice. The white marble bounces the sunlight in a nice diffuse way, and the symmetry and depth of the building is quite pleasing. The inlays in the marble were also pretty amazing – ornate and detailed, but not overly busy.
We spent about an hour and a half a the Taj. There’s not a ton to see there, and the chambers below ground level are locked off. So, we snapped our “here’s the Taj Mahal” wide shot, wandered through the gardens (not as colorful or nice as I dreamed, but it hasn’t been raining), see the (false) tombs of Shah Jahan and Mumtaz Mahal inside, mill about a while on the white marble terrace in your white shoe-booties, and move on.
12:00 PM
Kelly’s bus was scheduled for 2:00 PM, so we didn’t have a lot of time to waste after the Taj. But time found ways of wasting itself. We stopped in a small restaurant near the south gate of the Taj Mahal and ordered up. Our 10-year-old server took about 45 minutes to get the malai kofta, daal and hummus on the table. Now it’s 1:00 PM, and Kelly’s bags are still back at the guest house, which we needed to retrieve prior to bus time. The bus station? An unknown distance away.
Here I am at the Taj Mahal, look at me I’m right over here
1:00 PM
Meal consumed, we stepped out and hailed an autorickshaw. The first we got didn’t seem to recognize the name of our hotel. The second said he knew where it was, and would get us there for 30 rupees, so we climbed aboard.
The driver started taking us what felt like the wrong way. It was. He pulled up to a hotel that was decidedly not Hotel Sheela Inn and looked at us like he’d done something wonderful. We were visibly unhappy.
Autorickshaw driver wanted to charge us additional to return us to where we started our ride with him despite the fact that he’d taken us to the wrong place. Another autorickshaw driver that spoke better English pulled up, saw our distress and tried to capitalize, telling us it’d be 150 rupees to our hotel, which he said was at the east gate of the Taj Mahal (not true, it’s 0.9 km south of the south gate. hah!).
This thick, double layer of bullshit was becoming a bit much.
“I HATE INDIA!” Kelly shouted at the two cheats after a month of enjoying it.
We piled out of the autorickshaw and stormed up the road on foot.
1:15 PM
At the next intersection, we quizzed an unrelated rick driver, and he knew where to go. 80 rupees to Sheela Inn? On the double!
1:30 PM
Now at Hotel Sheela inn, packs are grabbed and hotel bathroom is frantically utilized (there haven’t been bathrooms on any of the buses we’ve hired in the past).
I grab my pack too – Agra be damned – I’m leaving and coming to Delhi today.
The original plan: Kelly and I were supposed to part ways in Agra – she would head to Delhi to fly home, I would stay in Agra for another night and visit Agra Fort and possibly nearby Fatehpur Sikri, the old Mughal city. But too much irritating stuff had happened. I was done with Agra, at least for this trip. We hopped back in the tuk-tuk and sped off to the train station, distance unknown, and 2:00 PM leave time.
1:50 PM
“No seats available” was the consensus at the ticket counter. What, something going wrong, today?
After some additional pleading, the bus man let me pay 300 rupees to split a single sleeper berth with Kelly. Cramped quarters, with legs dangling in the aisle – all for two to three times the actual price of the seat!
The French tourists in the double berth opposite ours kept smoking cigarettes out their window as if no one could tell. At least someone was having fun.
10 Rupee truck stop coffee and fried peanuts, midway between Agra and Delhi.
The bus was running over two hours late due to a breakdown and nasty Delhi traffic. We made friends with a Mumbaiker named Vishal, also trying to get to the airport for a 9:15 PM flight. He led the way as we hopped off the bus in traffic as it passed a Delhi metro station. Two rapid-fire metro connections and we were on the airport express line.
Why was I coming along for this wild airport terminal ride? Not 100 percent sure – I had no flight to catch that night. But I sprinted up and down staircases and through stations with Kelly and Vishal all the same, backpack bouncing along. I guess I didn’t have anywhere better to be in Delhi at the time!
9:27 PM
We arrived at the airport at 9:27 PM (for Kelly’s 9:30 PM flight), and all the Gulf Airlines staff had left – no one to talk to and no regular ticket counter. “Call in the morning around 10 AM,” we were told, and slunk back to the metro. We headed to the Paharganj area of Delhi – a Lonely Planet-cited spot with a bunch of cheap lodgings and a few bars that would still be open for another hour or so.
11:15 PM
“MyBar”, a dive-y little dump down that seats foreign backpackers in the window as bait (all the tables in the front had “reserved” placards on them) delivered on a few beers and a reheated vegetarian thali, and we repaired to the room for the night a 1000 rupee splurge of a double at the Cottage Ganga Inn.
The following day (February 8th) was spent changing Kelly’s flight at the Gulf Air office near Connaught Place. A few hundred bucks put Kelly on the 9:30 departure on the 8th. Ok.
With a few hours to kill in Delhi, we made a quick visit to the Jama Masjid and took a gander at the Red Fort from the top of a minaret of the Jama Masjid (no time to tour the fort as my flight to Goa was at 5:45 PM).
the market outside Jama Masjid.
This friendly young man in the market outside Jama Masjid saw me eating mutton biryani with the locals (20 Rupees) and requested that I take his picture.
Pushing it as always, I got to the Delhi domestic terminal (completely separate from the international terminal – beware!) and jumped through the numerous security hoops with 15 minutes to spare.
Kelly made her flight home that night and got treated to dinner by an Argentinian who was offloading his remaining Rupees, too. Good deal.
Kelly – it was a lot of fun traveling with you. Good luck with your new gig.
After all the insanity of our last days in the north, I now find myself in the laid-back state of Goa, wondering why the lazy, smiling beach combing tourists don’t share in my panic hangover.
NEXT STOP: Goa
