Taj Mahal and Agra and other cool things

I have been to India four other times before this trip, but those previous trips were in 2000 for business while at Intel and living in Hong Kong. I did not venture out much past the airport and the Oberoi Hotel where we would stay.

This trip is different, staying with a local family, great home cooked meals, not to mention the icy cold Kingfisher beer, and getting to see the sights. This week we went to Agra, home to one of the famous structures in the world the Taj Mahal and one of the seven wonders of the modern world. The Taj Mahal was built by Shah Jahan as a memorial for wife Mumtaz Mahal who died in 1631 giving birth to their 14th child. Construction started in 1631 and was completed in 1653. Soon afterwards Shah Jahan was put in jail, get this, by his son Aurangzeb. He lived the rest of his days viewing the Taj Mahal from his jail cell at the fort down the river. In these times it was apparently quite common to overthrow the old man to gain power.

The fort can be seen in the background

Getting to the Taj Mahal takes about 2 hours by the Shatabdi Express, fastest train in India, hitting speed of over 100MPH. Now getting tickets on this train is no easy feat since we decided we wanted to go to about 2 days before. We first went online to book our tickets, makemytrip.com, found the schedule, found we were waitlisted but decided to buy the tickets anyways. We got all the way to buy the tickets and it said, local issued credit card only. Maybe this is a time to talk about security in India. A few years back, Nov 2008, India had a major terrorism incident when a few, let’s call them foreigners, decided to come to Mumbai (Bombay) and cause some problems. Over 200 people were killed, the Taj hotel was on fire for a few days and it was a tragic mess. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Mumbai_attacks. These foreigners used pre-paid cell phones and unsecured wifi connections. That has now changed. To get a pre-paid phone you must fill out a form, provide a passport picture, copies of passport and visa and basically sign over most of your worldly possessions. All wifi connections now have locked connections so no stealing an internet connection now and again. Also bars, hotels, and coffee shops no longer provide free wifi. If you want to use wifi in the coffee house you need to bill it against your mobile account, I mentioned above what takes to get one of these. Usually when I travel overseas I can find one or two places to snag a wifi connection for some free internet, not in India. Additionally, every shopping mall and metro station I go through I can the complete pat down. Not as bad as TSA, but it is still a body pat down. Men go in one line and women in the other. X-ray scanners are at all of these locations to to examine all bags. In the metro station there are piles of sandbags in strategic corners where you will frequently find an AK-47 touting military person. What is scary about this is the gun is always pointed into the crowd. In my past gun safety classes that was always a no-no, but I don’t set the rules here.

OK now back to the train, because of security issues we can’t buy the ticket with an out of country credit card. So now we figured we would go to the local ticket office, a 10-15 minute drive down the road. We get in line only to be told you need “the form”, I wondered what “the form” is and where to I get one. That happened to be next door, we got “the form”, filled it out, stood in line for 30 minutes only to be told there were no more tickets. When the ticket guy saw me and figured I was tourist he mentioned there are special seats that are reserved for tourists. Short side bar, I did not mention in past postings I’m traveling with Hanumant, who is from India, speaks the language and is also a US Citizen, we use all of that to our advantage every chance we can. Both of us whipped out our US passports we said we’ll take two tickets. Of course you cannot get the special tickets here, you had to go to the Delhi train station, behind track one, upstairs in the corner that is where they sell these tickets, oh by the way they close in 20 minutes. So the next day, this is now the day before we are scheduled to leave, we take the metro to the train station, walk to track one, which happens to be at the far end of the train station and we find the tourist ticket place. As we get in line we’re told do you have “the form”. Lucky for us we still had “the form” from yesterday, we get in the 15 person line. “The form” from yesterday is not the same “form” we need for today, so we get the “other form”, fill it out wait inline. We finally get the counter, and ask are there any ticket left and they said yes, we paid the money and metro’ed our way back home. We now have our tickets, train leaves at 6:15am the next day. We head back home.

As I have mentioned, dinners are really late here and we have a 6:15am train ride and Hanumant’s parents have set up a dinner engagement with friends that starts at 8:30. We get to the house, of course there are the rounds of scotch, complaining about the local government, and how well India is doing in cricket. Then it’s appetizers followed by dinner, we got home around 11pm. Quickly, we get to bed as our 5am taxi time quickly approaches.



Cow ready to board the train

The train ride was great, decent food, newspapers, Nepali servers, coolies (porters) helping load peoples 100lb suitcases onto the train. Two hours later we arrive in Agra, we have a driver assigned to us all day to take us to anyplace we want, for only 2700rupees ($60). Its’ going to be hot today 100 degrees, so we set off for the Taj first. What an amazing building, and complex, so hard to explain in words, it’s a must see. One interesting part is I have to pay 750rupees ($17 USD) to get in and locals only pay 30rupees (68 cents). Hanumant now turns from a US Citizen to an Indian in a blink of an eye. I said that I was Hanumant’s cousin, can I only pay 30rupees? I was quickly told, “if you two are cousins, than you both pay 750rupees, I quickly became a cousin-less tourist.

Next we head Fatehpur Sikri (FS), 40km south of Agra, this was the capital of the Muhgal’s from 1571 to 1585 during the reign of Emperor Akbar. On the drive down to FS, there are thousands of people walking down the middle of our lane in the road. We ask the driver what’s the deal, we are told these are pilgrims that are walking 250kms to a celebration, it will take them 5-7 days of walking. They estimate there are 2 million people on the road. Some are children, some our elders, and some are barefoot, 100 degree heat and barefoot, that is suffering for your religion. But this means that all traffic, which includes city buses, large buses, cars, autorickshaws, motorcycles have one lane and a ditch to travel, there is a lot of traffic since this is the only way between these two tourist sites. It’s amazing to watch all these people walk, from my air conditioned comfortable seat, but it does take us much longer to get to FS.

Pilgrims on the road, we share one lane with the tourist bus

FS is also amazing, the mosque next to FS is breathtaking, but it’s hot here, miserable hot. We tour the site get in to our AC van, stop to get some roadies and head back, again through the thousands of people walking.

Mosque

When we return we have lunch, several beers, catch up on some cricket and back to the touring around. We next decide to go to Itimad-ud-daulah or the baby Taj, buried here is Mizza Ghiyas Beg, the grandfather of Mumtaz. It’s not as impressive as the Taj but it’s pretty darn cool.

Baby Taj

It’s not heading towards sunset and we decide, let see the Taj from across the river, off we go standing along a small army encampment with a small group of about 20-30 seeing the Taj from the other side, once again amazing as the sun sets.

Taj at dusk

After sunset we still have an hour to kill, we go get a beer and watch some more cricket. We board the train at 8pm to head back home. As I mentioned above the big challenge was getting tickets on the train and we would have been on a waitlist, we get on the train and it’s less than 50% full, we are at least now on the way home.

  

Please move your camel, we can't get out

The next day we wake to the excitement of India vs Pakistan in cricket, this is beyond cricket, there is politics involved. Front page on the morning paper is the story of how the PM of Pakistan is asking his team to not fix this match, nice. There are people trying to sell their kidneys for a ticket, people are praying and even fasting for a win. A country of over 1B stopped to watch the match yesterday and INDIA WINS! It sounds like fourth of July at our house for over an hour, fireworks everywhere, people shouting and screaming, just nuts. Next up is Sri Lanka, winner is the world champ. The finals are on Saturday.

The local market, India stopped for several hours yesterday to watch cricket

I have been bragging about the food here for some time, today I went to the meat market to pick some uncooked chicken tikka for dinner, on the wall where the goats getting ready for future meals, mmgood.

Goat at the local shop