After
a 3.5 hour train ride from Delhi in which I shared a car with three young
Indian men (somewhere between 18 and 24, I’d guess) – one of whom was quite interested
in chatting with me about why I was in India, while the other two shot me
glances out of the corners of their eyes – I got off at Agra’s main train
station and was greeted by a mass of individuals eager to “help” me, just as my
the guide book and Wikitravel page had predicted. It’s a strange situation, to
be repeatedly approached by strangers and have to choose between firmly telling
them to leave you alone and then ignoring them (and maybe adding a little bit
of a scowl, as I do) versus losing time and money through myriad scams. I
choose the former, and it raises some feelings of guilt to go along with the
frustration engendered by the scammers themselves.
I’d
arranged for a driver to pick me up at the train station, as I’d done at the
Delhi airport. After wading through the throng of individuals asking to take me
to my hotel – or a hotel of their recommendation, if I didn’t yet have one – I
spotted the sign with my name on it and got in the car. Then came my
introduction to Indian driving, which a later driver told me requires three
things: A good horn, good brakes, and good luck. Even when a street has two
lanes, cars and tuk-tuks (motorized rickshaws, basically) form three or four
lanes and communicate with each other by honking their horns whenever they are
behind someone or passing someone, which is almost always given the traffic
density. Inches separate vehicles on all sides, even at the high end of their
city speeds, and bicycles, tuk-tuk’s, motorcycles, trucks, cows, and
pedestrians all mingle into the chaos. But, ultimately, it seems to work, and
it seems to be the best system for an infrastructure that does not have enough
space on its roads and has scarcely any traffic lights.
Agra
is best known for the Taj Mahal, which I could see from my hotel room, standing
in the distance beyond the road pollution and congestion below.
I’d naturally
heard of the Taj before the trip, though I probably associated it more with the
Las Vegas casino than the Indian mausoleum. I also had a perhaps ethnocentric
assumption that the Taj couldn’t be as impressive as some of my favorite
European buildings, like Sacre Coeur in Paris. I was dead wrong. It was
unequivocally the most beautiful and impressive structure I’ve ever seen, and
it was perfectly framed by gardens and fountains, as well as a few smaller
buildings, including a mosque.
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| Apparently this obnoxious photo pose has spread across many cultures |
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| Adjacent to the Taj |
The
other main attraction in Agra – the Agra Fort – was also impressive, both for
the architecture and the group of monkeys running around at the gates.
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| Inside the Fort |
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| Inside the Fort |
One of
the most endearing parts of the visits to the Fort and the Taj was being
approached by Indians and asking if I would pose for a picture with them, or if
I would take a picture of them. The first request was at the Taj, where a
school teacher told me that his group of ~20 eight year old boys would like to
take a group picture, with me in the middle. At Agra, a group of brothers
approached me for a picture, and they explained that they wanted a picture with
a White person, and I seemed easy to approach because I was alone. Also at Agra,
a man had his wife take a picture with me, and a small boy asked me to take a
picture of him.
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| The fourth brother is taking the photo |
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| Boy who asked me to take his photo |
There
was a funny twist on this at the “Baby Taj,” a Taj Mahal prototype of sorts on
the outside of town. A group of older women working in a garden asked me to
take a picture of them. I smiled and agreed, and then they demanded to be paid
for being photographed. I laughed and gave one of them 20 rupees. I’d be
curious about how they divided the single bill.
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| "Baby Taj" |
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| Adjacent to Baby Taj |
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| I really wasn't planning on taking this photo until they asked me to. |
