Here's part 2 in which I encounter the hassles of travel and the Taj Mahal! In this case reading part 1 first really isn't necessary, this starts a totally different adventure.
I woke up at 5:45 or so to get packed, shower and prepare to go to the Taj Mahal and more. I woke Tolan up who was already packed and we headed up to Timitz Square on the ship to meet the rest of the crew. Sarah and Jill arrived at about the same time but Carson was MIA. After some sleuth work we found her, she packed very fast, and we left. The airport was about an hour away through some rough traffic but we had a suicidal driver who got us there very efficiently. I would NEVER survive driving in India. People are everywhere and no one really obeys traffic laws. There were more than a handful of times when I had to ask myself “why do they even bother putting lines on the street?”. We arrived at the airport where I had to go to the ticketing desk to get an e-ticket printed for me. In India for some reason you have to have an online receipt printed to even get into the airport and get your boarding pass. This time it was no problem for them to find me and print it out, but that would not be the case later. We got on the plane to Delhi, a 3 hour trip, and took off on our journey. We paid for breakfast on the flight which was some not so great combination of rolls and juices, but that’s ok. Apparently there was some Indian breakfast wrap which was delicious but we didn’t choose well. The flight overall was uneventful and we landed in Delhi in the late morning.
The first order of business was to find a hotel so we talked to a tourist desk who directed us to one that was about 20 bucks a person. That was a bit more than we would have liked to play, but still doable so we did it. We hopped in a taxi who drove us about an hour to the hotel, where we saw the rooms were to our satisfaction and we checked in. We wanted to figure out how we would get to Agra the next day, so we sat down with the hotel’s travel agent desk. After two hours he had us convinced we weren’t getting on a train to Agra and we weren’t going to get our train to Varanasi either. We panicked a little and paid him about 30 dollars a person to arrange a driver to Agra and decided to deal with Varanasi the next day. At that point we were tired of logistics and wanted to see something, so we hopped in a rickshaw and headed to a handicraft place downtown where we all got suckered into buying stuff. I got a cool Taj painting on velvet and a couple of gifts which I won’t disclose. Tolan spent about 2 hours pondering instruments there and eventually as he was prepared to leave got talked into buying a harmonium and two drums. These would prove to be a giant hassle from that point forward. We wanted to get the instruments shipped home to California for him so we headed to the post office and had them wrapped up. In India to mail a package you have to wrap it in a white bedsheet basically and have it sewn together. It takes FOREVER. We were at the post office for about an hour and a half and they closed before he could mail it. Now we were stuck with two awkwardly wrapped giant instruments with no end in sight. Some guy talked us into talking to the government tourist bureau about logistics so we went to the office and sat down. They told us the hotel we were at was a scam and that they could plan out the rest of our trip for $199 US. We were overwhelmed at that point and took them up on it for the security of knowing it would all be taken care of. The people started booking things for us, ensured we were on a train from Agra-Varanasi the next day, and got drivers and hotels arranged. We called and cancelled our driver we had already paid for and were happy that logistics were all taken care of. We ended up spending 2+ hours in that office meaning our time in Delhi was pretty much shot. We were all frustrated at that point and convinced that everyone wanted to scam us, but content knowing everything was planned. We ended up taking the people who helped us at that office out to dinner which was fun, then saw a Bollywood movie that had no English in it. The seats were super comfortable and I passed out pretty quickly along with everyone else. We ended up leaving at intermission, which they have in India during movies, and went back to the hotel to sleep. A little beggar kid tried to pick my pocket on the way back too and it would turn out to be the only time anyone even tried, so that was a pleasant surprise.
The tourist office convinced us that we should leave at 7:30 am even though we wanted earlier, and that turned out to be a huge mistake. Traffic was at its worst our whole drive from Delhi to Agra and the trip stretched out way longer than it should have. We were expecting 2-3 hours and instead it took 6-7. We were frustrated with the car, hungry, and ready to actually see something by the time we pulled into Agra. We tried going to the post office there to mail the instruments, but they wanted to cut open the sewn up sheet material. They said to cut it open, inspect, and redo it, it would take 3 hours and we all collectively let out a sigh which tipped Tolan off that we shouldn’t deal with shipping at that moment. We headed to lunch at a tourist trap that was not particularly good but they take all tourists too I guess. We saw some other SAS group who was doing it independently like 3 times because we stopped at the same tourist trap places. Also frustrating. When we walked out of lunch our driver was waiting with some other guy who he introduced as a tour guide. We didn’t need or want a tour guide, but unsure how to say no we just went with it. We left for the Taj Mahal, now more cramped in the car with the addition of this guy but we were really excited to get there because it was pretty much the whole point of the trip.
We parked a ways from the Taj, as close as cars can get I guess, and hopped a rickshaw heading to the south gate. After paying our 750 rupees, $17 or so, entrance fee and getting x-rayed we were allowed in. You aren’t allowed to bring in Ipods, instruments, books, magazines, or anything that might cause you to linger there longer than necessary. We walked through the gate into a courtyard where we saw the main gate into the Taj. As we walked toward it, it got bigger and bigger, and finally through the archway we could see the Taj Mahal in the background. It was very majestic, very huge, and honestly looked fake. In a similar fashion as the Great Wall and Angkor Wat, it was too huge and surreal to even believe it existed. We took tons of pictures and made our way to the entrance where we waited in about a thousand person long line to go inside. While in line we saw tons of people in beautiful Sarees which everyone took pictures of. Most of the people there were Indian tourists, we were definitely in the minority as foreigners. We finally made it inside and saw the fake tombs of Sha Jahan and his wife who the Taj was built for. The architecture was fantastic, definitely lived up to its hype. The whole thing is marble, and even though it appears to be painted everywhere with decorations, they are all made of carved marble. There is no paint used, which is why it still looks stunning today. We finished up in the Taj and walked outside to the center of the gardens to sit and watch the sunset. Tolan sang a song a capella which he had been doing at every famous site and we took some pretty awesome jumping pictures. It was at this point that our guide lost his cell phone and bailed on us to look for it. We stayed within 50 feet of where he left us the whole time, but inexplicably he couldn’t find us for 2 hours so he went to the gate. As the Taj was closing and we were panicking we finally walked to the exit and there he was. We were all furious, but just let him take us back to the cab and deal with it later. We insisted that we wanted to find cheap scarves and he seemed to understand, but of course he took us to a shop owned by his company that overcharged for everything. We were so tired of people having other motives and pissed off at our guide at this point. We bought a couple of things got in the cab and told him to take us to the train station. Our guide decided to leave us at this point and hit us up for a tip. We all took turns yelling at him about how he all but ruined our day and how we saw nothing other than the Taj because he wasted our time and he quickly retreated. He told us that it was okay if we didn’t tip (how nice of him), but that we shouldn’t be “mooned off” (pissed). We said okay whatever and got him to leave the cab. We were ready to be done with Agra and get on to Varanasi. Our driver took us to the train station, it was about 9:00 pm at this point and we had an 11:30 train. We didn’t know how much of a pain it would be to get our boarding tickets and everything on the streets looked closed, so we decided to just hang out at the station. We tipped our driver, he left, and we went to the waiting room to wait for our train.
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