We get into the Agra station at 9PM and hire yet another auto-rickshaw dude to drive us to the Sheraton. Yes, we are staying in a Sheraton. Agra is tourist city and using some hotel points for a free hotel stay sounded like a good plan. We still have some of these from our business travel back home and have been making good use of them at key points in our journey. The drivers name is Muskeen and he seems like a cool dude so we hire on for him to take us to the Taj Mahal the next day. We are tired and are looking forward to a comfy Sheraton bed. We eat a crazy expensive Chinese dinner at the hotel. It is good but pricey, even by US standards.
The next day we get up relatively early and start working on some travel logistics before heading out to see the sites. Our next stop is the city of Varanasi which isn't a direct hop on any of the available travel options (plane, train, etc) from Agra. The fancy travel desk at the Sheraton is zero help. They can only book expensive air flights and really pricey car service. We call up Muskeen and have him pick us up and take us to an Internet cafe. We are successful in getting an airplane ticket on one of the discount carriers booked from Delhi to Varanasi. Now all we need to do is get to Delhi from Agra. Muskeen is there to help. He takes us to a travel office where they can book train tickets. This place is pretty shady. I am skeptical but we want to get this done and get on with seeing the sites. We fork over some cash, get a receipt and head out. This travel place basically pays somebody to go down to the train station and buy the tickets for you. We know we are paying a premium for this, especially when you factor in that Muskeen gets a commission. Still beats Sheraton prices.
We get this all done and Muskeen takes us to the Agra Fort. This is a huge fort complex close to the Taj Mahal. Agra is crawling with touts. We were expecting this, but it is still really annoying. "Hello, but a coke?", "Hello, postcards?", "Hello, need tour guide?" This happens everywhere. The Agra Fort is an impressive example of Mughal architecture. If that means anything to you. Here is a photo.
The Agra Fort
And a few facts:
- 2km northwest of Taj Mahal
- Constructed by the Mughals during 1565-1571
- Walls rise 69 ft in height
- Whole thing is surrounded by a large moat
We get our fist glimpse of the Taj Mahal while touring the fort. It looks amazing. Muskeen drops us at a nice restaurant for lunch and we let him talk us into going to some marble inlay store. He finally admits that if he takes us there the store gives him some free gas for his rickshaw. This whole system if very annoying. Looking back we should have just asked him how much we needed to pay him so we didn't need to hear about any of this stuff. The marble stuff was pretty cool though. We watched them grinding down some pieces. They had these amazing tables. Too bad the one we liked was ten thousand dollars. I'm not kidding.
The stone on Chrissy's forehead is marble ground into shape by the marble inlay guys
We finally get out of the marble shop and make it over to the Taj. Muskeen drops us off and will pick us up after the sun sets. The line to get into the Taj is nuts. The foreigner admission price Taj is 750 rupees, this is compared to the Indian price of 75 rupees. I understand a mark-up but adding a zero on the end seems a bit much. One thing this does get us is "free" bottles of water, "free" paper booties to wear over our shoes while in the Taj (locals have to take their shoes off and walk on the hot marble tiles), and a "free" tour guide. The tour guide did push he way through the long line for us. We went right to the front. Even with the price hike you feel funny doing this, but what can you do.
You can't see the Taj when you are walking up to it. There is a big wall and gate that blocks you view. Then you go through this gate and are presented with what Chrissy and I both agree is the most beautiful building in the world. It really makes you almost start crying (I think Chrissy did tear up). We haven't felt this way about anything else we have seen. Not the Pyramids, not Machu Picchu, not anything. The place is stunning. Pictures don't do it justice.
This is the gate that leads into the garden surrounding the Taj Mahal
You have to fight to take a photo in front of the Taj Mahal. It is a beautiful building.
Here are some facts about the Taj Mahal:
- Is a really large tomb Shah Jahan built for his deceased wife (his favorite of a few wife's, lucky dude)
- Constructed from 1631 and 1648
- Made of white marble and covered with intricate marble in-lays
- The four minarets, set symmetrically about the tomb, are scaled down to heighten the effect of the dominant, slightly bulbous dome.
- There are two mosques built on either side of the mausoleum, only the one on the left can be used because it faces Mecca. The other one is there for balance
Yes, I did copy some of the above from various web sites. Read more here.
The whole story of the Shah Jahan is pretty crazy. He had an evil son who wanted to rule so he killed his three brothers and put his dad into prison (after the Taj was already built). Shah Jahan's prison was the Agra Fort so he got to look at a view of the Taj as he sat in prison the rest of his life. The Shah had wanted to build his own mausoleum across the river from his wife's but the bad son stopped this project. The Shah's would have been out of black marble. They ended up burying the Shah with his wife in what would have been just her tomb. His other wives get much much smaller tombs nearby.
We spend quite a bit of time at the Taj Mahal. Our guide takes various photos of us and we take a ton ourselves. We look into both mosques and walk completely around the mausoleum. We eventually give the guide a hefty tip and head back to where Muskeen is supposed to pick us up. We are early and he is late as he went home to eat. We spend the time chatting with a nice guy who sells chai tea from a street stall. Muskeen eventually picks us up and takes us back to the travel office place where our train tickets should be waiting. They aren't there yet and we spend over an hour chatting with the guy who runs the place. Very shady. He brings up the idea of us taking some gems for him to Australia (where we are headed next). This is a classic scam. Some guy tells you that you can save him a bunch of money in export taxes if you carry some gems for him out of the country. You are supposedly given thousands of dollars worth of gems for which you put a deposit down on your credit card. Someone is supposed to meet you in your destination country to take the gems off of you and then give you a hefty payment for your trouble. What really happens is the "gems" you are given are worthless and then they charge your credit card for a few thousand dollars and you never hear from them again. Throw "India gem scam" into google and you can read countless accounts of people getting ripped off. Anyways, Chrissy and I can't believe this guy is actually talking to us about this. Now we are really concerned that our train tickets are bogus. We wait and wait for some guy to show up with the tickets. He finally gets there and I examine the tickets. They look legit except they have "wait list" printed on them as the status. The also don't have our names or any names and the passengers and the seats have been written in by hand. Uh-Oh. Chrissy and I are getting really pissed. We are supposed to leave early in the morning and it appears that we don't have seats for a train that we have already over-paid to get tickets for. We basically explode on this travel guy and demand to be taken to the train station to validate our tickets. He says over and over that they are ok. We are very angry with Muskeen for taking us to this crappy place. We get back into the rickshaw and he starts driving us to the train station. On the way there he says that the ticket counter is closed (of course, it is really late by now) and takes us to another branch of the travel office. This place looks a little better than the first office and the guy looks up our tickets on a computer and says that they are good. We aren't convinced of anything and go as far as to tell a bunch of people sitting in the office not to buy anything from these guys. We are literally shouting in their office. More angry words with Muskeen as we tell him just to take us back to our hotel. Chrissy tells him that she is very disappointed in him.
We get back to the Sheraton, and being the upscale foreigner hotel that it is, won't even let rickshaw drivers anywhere near the hotel. The hotel has these big mean looking guards that stand at the front gate of the drive leading up to the hotel to stop any non-hotel approved cars from getting through. Muskeen pulls up in front of the gate and Chrissy gets out and walks up the drive into the hotel. I get out and give Muskeen some cash and tell him that I would have paid him double that if he hadn't taken us to so many crappy places so that he could get a commission. He is pleading with me saying that he will drive us to the train station in the morning to ensure that everything is ok. That he will walk us onto the train and if there is anything amiss that I don't have to pay him at all. I tell him to forget it and not to come to the hotel in the morning. I walk away and he starts to get out of his rickshaw. The hotel bouncer who has been attentively watching this whole exchange steps between me and Muskeen and just stands there. Muskeen shakes his head and drives off. Chrissy and I go to the hotel bar for much deserved beers.
I arrange a pricey hotel car to take us to the train station in the morning (5 AM type morning). I am half expecting to see Muskeen at the station regardless of what I told him the night before. He isn't there. We hire a porter dude to carry our stuff on the train. This is usually a good idea in India. The guy will find the train for you and do all the necessary pushing and shoving. The porter guy rips me off (I think I paid ten times what should be the price), but this is still only like two dollars. Our train car is empty. No one is in the seat numbers that are written on our possibly phony tickets. We settle into our seats and the train leaves. Chrissy and I let out a sigh of relief, so far so good. Then the train pulls into another station less than an hour from where we got on and people pile in. The car is soon full with way more people than there are seats. People are standing in the aisle. Chrissy and I hang tight in our seats, sure that we are about to get tossed out of them. The ticket guy comes around. I hand him our tickets and he checks some things off on his clipboard. We are good. No one is demanding our seats. The tickets appear to be legit. We start to think back to the scene we made in the travel office and the way we treated Muskeen. Oops. We are mean people. We feel bad all the way to Delhi.
We spend a quick night in Delhi, back at the same guesthouse where we had stayed the last time we were in town. The next morning we fly out to Varanasi, the holiest city in India.
- Bill