We awoke in the gloom to the sound of my alarm clock heralding 06:00 hrs. As we gathered up all our belongings as quietly as possible George suddenly squealed and leapt on to his bed. Something large and furry was scuttling about on the floor after leaping from the wastepaper basket. We grabbed our gear and made a rapid exit, completing our dressing in the yard.
We walked down to New Delhi Railway Station passed people still sleeping on the streets, totally covered in blankets. We found the train on platform 2 and found our seats fairly quickly. The short 3-hour trip to Agra Cantonment Station was a refreshing change from the long hauls we had become accustomed to.
Agra is a city on the banks of the Yamuna river in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. It is 206 kilometres south of the national capital New Delhi. Today Agra is the fourth-most populous city in Uttar Pradesh and 24th in India.
We saw our first horde of monkeys alongside the track as we neared Agra (but I had seen a lone one on the way up to Srinagar). At the station, the pests awaited. While the train was still decelerating, they leapt gleefully aboard like pirates at the sack of a foundering rich merchant vessel. “Good morning, sir. Cheap hotel? Cheap taxi? Cheap trishaw? Want to buy something? Want to sell something?”
Agra being such a prime tourist destination made it a hot spot for these human flies. We steamed resolutely out of the station, ignoring them as best we could, and this dissuaded all but the hardiest. We joined a pack of other European walkers and soon pulled ahead at all but two persistent trishaw peddlers.
“Times are hard”, they beseeched, but despite a steady reduction in price as we proceeded (down to 50 Paise to any destination!) neither they nor the sun managed to break us down and we reached the quiet sanctuary of Jaggi’s open air restaurant and ordered egg curry and pullaw rice. I discovered that Jaggi’s was mentioned in the Lonely Planet traveller’s bible and we decided to give it a try with a double room for 30 Indian Rupees.
At first glance Agra appears to be relaxing town with wide streets and few motor-driven vehicles. Pedal power holds sway and it does not seem to be half as commercialised as I would have expected. We checked into a pleasant twin bed cell and set of for the tourist mecca, the Taj Mahal. The Taj Mahal is an ivory-white marble mausoleum on the south bank of the Yamuna river. It was commissioned in 1632 by the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan (reigned from 1628 to 1658) to house the tomb of his favourite wife, Mumtaz Mahal; it also houses the tomb of Shah Jahan himself.
Construction of the mausoleum was essentially completed in 1643, but work continued on other phases of the project for another 10 years. The Taj Mahal complex is believed to have been completed in its entirety in 1653. The Taj Mahal was designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1983 for being "the jewel of Muslim art in India and one of the universally admired masterpieces of the world's heritage". It is regarded by many as the best example of Mughal architecture and a symbol of India's rich history.
As soon as we stepped off the hotel premises a parasite pounced. Following us up the road in his trishaw he bickered away, proffering letters of recommendation from other satisfied customers, but we were determined to walk. Scarcely had we shaken him off than he was replaced by a gem salesman on a pushbike. We argued and refused his services to almost the gate of the Taj Mahal park before he pissed off.
We paid our 2 Indian Rupees at a well-concealed booth and entered, at last into the grounds of the Taj Mahal. We passed through an ornate gate house and looked upon the famous waterway and gardens leading up to where the magnificent white tomb sat serenely beneath an azure sky. We toured the dim interior, which was quite plain compared to the outside.
A large marble tomb was set centrally with a larger one offset to its left. The sweet smell of an obscure scent was pleasing to the nostrils, but we were not so pleasing to the tomb-keeper as we left without leaving him a cash offering. A longstanding myth holds that Shah Jahan planned a mausoleum to be built in black marble as a Black Taj Mahal across the Yamuna river. The idea originates from fanciful writings of Jean-Baptiste Tavernier, a European traveller who visited Agra in 1665. It was suggested that his son Aurangzeb overthrew Shah Jahan before it could be built.
Ruins of blackened marble across the river in Moonlight Garden, Mahtab Bagh, seemed to support this legend. However, excavations carried out in the 1990s found that they were discoloured white stones that had turned black. A more credible theory for the origins of the black mausoleum was demonstrated in 2006 by archaeologists who reconstructed part of the pool in the Moonlight Garden. A dark reflection of the white mausoleum could clearly be seen, befitting Shah Jahan's obsession with symmetry and the positioning of the pool itself.
We went outside to the rear of the Taj Mahal and sat in a wide courtyard with our backs to the wall which cut it off from the Jamuna river. Water buffalos wallowed in the muddy water near steps to our rear left. Despite the sombre nature of this great shrine, the Indians shout and jabber, while their tinny transistor radios loudly spout the Test Match commentary (Cricket 2nd Test, West Indies Tour of India at Delhi, Oct 29 - Nov 3 1983).
The sun beams down mercilessly and the river scene behind us looks like a travel agent’s poster of the River Nile. Families do their ablutions and women do the laundry in the muddy brown water.
At Srinagar the back of my camera had come open and as I didn’t know where I was on the film framewise, or even if it was in a usable condition, I thought it wise to fit a new 35mm transparency film. I launched into taking the classic textbook photographs of the Taj Mahal when I realised that the film was not winding on properly. Cursing I pissed about with the film and after a few minutes I wound the end of the film into the case, thereby rendering it totally useless.
I raged in frustration for a while before giving into the idea that there was nothing that I could do to rectify the situation and thus I tossed the knackered film into a bush and set off in a calm, resigned mood of acceptance. Que Sera, Sera (Whatever Will Be, Will Be), karma and all that!
We wandered back, incessantly bothered by more trishaw drivers and salesmen. We gave up looking for the elusive General Post Office and returned to our hotel. As we sipped cold Coca Cola’s up the road a shaking shifty-looking employee from the hotel approached us for a “15 Indian Rupee loan until tomorrow”. We declined and sought refuge in our room, but even in here a sly smiling fellow invited himself in and started making low bids for our possessions.
We finally got shot of him and shut the door to relax with only a couple of lizards for company. Earlier today George took a photograph of three snake charmers in action and we fled with their cries for money ringing in our ears. Supper consisted of an egg curry with a couple of insubstantial bread rolls in a restaurant which must boast the slowest service in a supposedly profit-making concern. It was lucky that we had some books with us!
George got ripped off for a number of sugary dainties and we returned to our room after ascertaining that beer prices were far too expensive for us. We slept well despite a few alarming scratching and gnawing noises during the night.
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