Day 7 - Agra

Obligatory bench photo

We set our alarm early to go and see the Taj Mahal at sunrise. We only had to walk around the corner to buy a ticket and get the tourist shuttle bus there. It was truly incredible - just breathtaking. It was hard to believe that it was really there and was really that beautiful. We spent ages outside, just looking at it. The gardens and surrounding buildings were also spectacular and the beauty and symmetry of everything in sight is really striking. It was really quite foggy and that gave the whole thing a dream-like quality.

On the Taj Mahal, you can walk onto the building and around the first platform surrounding the dome. The view from there across the river as the fog lifted was really magical;  we tried to take pictures but just couldn't capture it. 

There's always someone
in the way

Inside, the main space that you could see was quite small and mostly consisted of the burial places and surrounding decoration. A few people had described it to us as quite disappointing but I quite enjoyed seeing it.

We sat outside for quite a while longer, watching the light change and the building become clearer and glow with a more orange light. We walked around the edge of the gardens which were full of chipmunks, pigeons and love-birds, as well as quite a few bits of rubblish they'd obviously chucked to the side as not to spoil the view.

Back at the hostel, we were shown the construction work that they were doing to extend he hostel by another floor and the view across Agra. The father of the family was really proud of the work and again, could not do enought to help us.

Anji & Vickv

The family helped us to organise a tuktuk to see the rest of Agra's sights. It was driven by a really quiet, unassuming man and with him he had a very lovely boy called Vikcv, who was really chatty and smily and bright. He told us everything we needed or wanted to know and made us laugh a lot.

First, we went to Agra Fort. Since we had missed the fort at Delhi, we were quite keen to see it but, although it was quite impressive, we just struggled to get too enthusiastic about it when we were there.  There were also a few monkeys running wild and bothering people so that made us pretty nervous.  Overall, we were glad to see it but would probably not want to visit the forts that exist in pretty much every town.

Baby Taj

After the fort, Vikcv took us to L'timad-ud-Dabilah (known as Baby Taj). This was actually the first Mogal tomb to be faced in white marble and was the inspiration for the Taj Mahal.  We took our shoes off and went inside (Matt was made to wear feet covers but couldn't pay for them so had to run away from the man) and it was was incredibly pretty with lots of detailed patterns and two tombs.

It was much more peaceful than the Taj Mahal so we wandered through the small gardens and sat looking over the river for a while, watching the buffulo wade through the water against the backdrop of the cityscape. There was also a crazy boy playing in the mud as though it was sand and wading through the greasy water like he was in the sea.

Later, we were taken to the Chini Ka Rauza. This was another interesting looking building but this time we did not want to go inside. It was decorated by an Iranian painter but we felt like wandering around the pretty gardens instead. The edges of the garden looked overlooked some slums where children and animals waded through rubblish as well as  some areas where people were working the land.
Everywhere we go, children shout 'hello' and 'how are you?'.  Often they ask for chocolate and pens and sometimes, like at Chini Ka Rauza, they just follow us round, trying to shake our hands and asking us questions.

Vikcv then suggested the 'backside of the Taj', a view of the Taj Mahal from the other side of the river we had seen that morning. The Mehtab Bajh Viewing point was just down a little road and was quoite strange because, other than the view, there was little there but the customary stray dogs and some barbed wire, though again, we got besieged by children on the way back to the tuktuk.

Back at the guesthouse we coud not believe it was only about 3pm and we would be in Agra until 8pm the following evening, especially when we had already done everything. We tried to get some laundry done but there was 'a problem' which meant that we had to persuade one of the younger boys of the family, Bilal, to take it somewhere else to get it done. This actually turned out very well since it was a chance to get to know Bilal better and by that afternoon, he was calling me Auntie Anji.

While we were sitting around deciding what to do, we met Le and Berthier from Cananda and an Argentinian American guy called Sebastian.  After saying goodbye to a couple of the boys from the evening before, during which we were tempted by the idea of Goa, we all went in search of some food. After wandering the streets for a while, we came across a shopping centre (the first and only one we've seen so far) and ended up eating in McDonalds. This was quite an interesting experience in a country where they don't eat beef or pig and we ended up enjoying a paneer burger. After checking out the cinema  times (where they had sensory seats which moved and jibbled) for the following day, we wandered back to the guesthouse and noticed the full-moon.

Indian Charlie Sheen

We had read in the guidebook that they do full-moon viewings at the Taj and since Le  was a photographer, he really wanted  to see it. Of course, it wasn't straight forward. We went back to the ticket office which seemed to be being guarded by at least ten men who were sat around smoking and twiddling their guns. After a long and confusing conversation, we eventually ascertained that there were full-moon viewings, but that you had to go somewhere 7 km away to get the tickets and then come back to the Taj. So instead we bought some rum and sat around chatting, greeting the new Japanese guy, Yuhay, and commenting on the fact that Yusuf, the elder son in the guesthouse, looked like an Indian Charlie Sheen - which he loved!