Arriving in Agra early in the morning we went straight to the bus station to go to a nearby town. While waiting for one of the two buses to leave we met an English guy who was cycling down from Agra to the southern most tip of India, he was about 60 years old and impressed us a fair bit, right now neither of us could take on a cycle trip lasting longer than a morning. We got on the bus which left first,of course it only left first so that it would get our fares and just moved to another part of the station where the driver inspected the clapped out engine and the door fell off. We left soon after despite some apprehension about the general safety and capability of the bus to get us to our destination without breaking down and a lot of smiles about the door.
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| From Fatehpur, India |
The rest of the trip went without a hitch and we rattled our way to Fatehpur, a small town whose main and only attraction is a fortified old palace. After checking into a hotel and locating a non deep fried breakfast – disappointingly difficult – we headed to the palace the hard way, along the back streets.
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| From Fatehpur, India |
We got there to be greeted by a mass of touts of all ages the most persistent were the young children selling postcards or asking for our tickets once we came out (one boy offered Djalma 20Rs and a free pack of postcards for our old tickets). We climbed the many steps along with the colourfully clad Indian women up to the Mosque (many parts of India have strong Muslim traditions) which was beautiful. In the middle of the open courtyard was a tomb of a Sufi saint who predicted the future heir to the Emperor at the time the latter of which then moved his capital to this small town from Agra and built three palaces for each of his favourite wives, one Muslim, one Hindu and one Christian – as my Nan says “variety is the spice of life”.
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| From Fatehpur, India |
Leaving the Mosque behind we headed for the palace complex the shell of which is well preserved sandstone, unfortunately no sparkly things in the Treasury, I was naturally most upset.
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| From Fatehpur, India |
The buildings were pretty and there was a nice courtyard where we relaxed before my stomach started making it's emptiness known and I grumbled about imminent starvation until Djalma finally relented and we left the peaceful enclosure to face the children selling postcards, the men selling jewellery and the women begging to find some dinner. We headed back to the same stall we had our omelette at in the morning, the Indian's make an excellent omelette making a nice alternative to curry for breakfast, to sample some of the Indian/Chinese vegetable chow mein, our new fail-safe when our palates or our tummies aren't up to curry. They were delicious and we polished off a couple of plates each not leaving a scrap of food for the dogs, cows or goats sniffing around the bins and of course the bin area (the whole street) for leftovers.
We found an internet café and Djalma sent some CS requests while I tried to call my Nan, to no avail.
After another omelette for breakfast and yet another bucket shower we set off down the road and out of town to get the bus back to Agra and the most famed of buildings, the Taj Mahal.
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| From The Taj Mahal, Agra, India |
We arrived around midday, found a hotel ridiculously close to the Taj but not tall enough for a view, so we walked down to the Mausoleum and tried to go along the back by a river/lake but were stopped by some extremely annoying yet polite policemen who told us that it was a security issue to walk near the fence, what we translated as “you can't see it for free, go buy an expensive ticket for the pleasure”. We poked about a bit not really willing to listen because it sounded like of load of ripe manure but I didn't really want the hassle so we found a good café with a lovely view of the Taj Mahal from the rooftop and sat there for a good hour reading and enjoying the view.
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| From The Taj Mahal, Agra, India |
Monkeys, as in plenty of other towns and cities in India, were all over the place running around with stolen chapattis in their mouths and fighting with each other. We chilled out the rest of the evening planning to get an early night for a very early start the next morning.
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| From The Taj Mahal, Agra, India |
Up at 5.30am, delightful. We walked briskly through the dark streets to wait outside the ticket office for an hour when it opened. Because we hadn't checked the time we were some of the first people in line so we managed to get our ludicrously expensive tickets very soon and join the next queue outside the gates. I keep on going on about ticket prices, sorry about that, it's a pet hate that I occasionally talk myself out of. Indian's generally make far far less than the money Western tourists go to India with on holiday, so it stands to reason that they shouldn't pay the same price as us. However there seems to be no correlation between the prices Indians pay and those which tourists are obliged to say. Instead of saying tourists pay 10x the amount Indians do (which seems to be the rough rule in most places) it seems as though some greedy bastards have got together and worked out a number as close to the maximum amounts they think tourists will pay, and what annoys me most is that we do.
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| From The Taj Mahal, Agra, India |
Anyway, once we were through the security checks I was so excited I practically legged it down the path and through the archway where we saw our first glimpse of the Taj Mahal from the ground. It was flipping cold and there was a thick mist rolling off the lake cloaking everything in ground level clouds, it was quite mysteriously and magically beautiful in the morning light and cold.
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| From The Taj Mahal, Agra, India |
We approached down through the manicured gardens which were far too subtle for my taste (not nearly enough flowers), stopping to take pictures behind all the other tourists with exactly the same photo in mind. Usually when you are out and about in a town with other tourists and you see someone stop to take a picture you politely wait until they wave you on or they take it, not so here, it was digital dog eat dog warfare and as many people got in the way of my composition as I did in others. Not the most peaceful or harmonious experience.
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| From The Taj Mahal, Agra, India |
We decided to walk round the side and see round the back near where we had tried to go the other day, the mist was so thick the ground was invisible after a few metres and figures appeared from no-where the further we walked.
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| From The Taj Mahal, Agra, India |
Naturally on our big tourism days we got more than a little annoyed with each other and so while visiting this monument to love we laughably spent a while arguing and not talking to each other, now that is love. Luckily for us Djalma tried not to be quite so annoying and I tried not to be so uptight about my camera, with varying degrees of success) and we wandered back round the front on sort of speaking terms. Taking off our shoes we walked inside the marble behemoth to see the fake tombs of the favourite wife of the bonkers and far-too-rich Emperor Shah Jahan (the afore mentioned spouse died after squeezing out her FOURTEENTH child, ouch). The real tombs are sealed somewhere below the building and no-one is allowed in. It was very simply decorated, the walls were inlaid in floral pattern and there were carved marble screens, we weren't allowed to take pictures inside but while phones and small digital cameras were largely discreet my bigger Canon was not. The marble held the heat quite well and so the stone wasn't too cold but we did get our shoes back on sharpish once we were allowed.
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| From The Taj Mahal, Agra, India |
The sun was coming up and the light was changing colouring the marble. The most impressive aspect of the building was the marble, the design is quite similar to many mosques we'd seen travelling through the Middle East but the white marble had a special ethereal quality in soft morning and evening light a little bit like a glow.
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| From The Taj Mahal, Agra, India |
We walked back through the grounds stopping to take the obligatory and slightly unimaginative tourist shots – yes I pinched the top of the Taj Mahal, yawn and Djalma managed to kiss it (slightly less realistically given the changes in light...). After an hour of traipsing around one building, having argued and made up, I'd had enough and was more than ready for breakfast so we left and got some omelettes and tea at a nearby small café
Our checkout was at 10am so we packed up our things, got a cycle rickshaw to the train station, and a train to Delhi our final stop before Djalma headed North and I headed South.
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