Agra – days 3 and 4

Meaghan and I met up with Chelsea and Michel at there hotel in Delhi. Our first trip in an autorickshaw in India. It was a little terrifying but we arrived in one piece. We left in out hired car for Agra – a 4(ish) hour journey. At one point we stopped so our driver could pay a fare and were accosted by many sellers of things banging on the windows and trying to get into the car, and entertained by a man with a cobra in a wicker basket and man with a small rhesus macaque on a leash(well, I was entertained – Michel and Meaghan, who are afraid of snakes were not so much). On our way into Agra our driver exclained “the only thing that is beautiful in Agra is the Taj!”
Our hotel had given away our reservation so Meaghan and I settled on a dive of a hotel near to the Taj for about 15CAD a night. The sheets literally felt greasy and when we got up in the morning, several men (we assumed hotel staff) were sleeping in the foyer by the front door.

Sooo, it seemed to have eluded us that the Taj Mahal was closed on Fridays L but… we saw the Taj from the outside. To my surprise it was much larger than I had expected. Our next day started super early as we wanted to view the Taj at sunset so we arranged a morning Rickshaw and headed to meet Chelsea and Michel on a rooftop restaurant. Agra was so peaceful and serene at this time of day.

We spent the day driving around with a highly recommended rickshaw driver – Vijay. Our first impressions of Vijay is of this very friendly, happy and welcoming man. We were looking forward to our day. After some shopping and sight seeing, Vijay invited us to his home for tea and to meet his family. We were honoured and took him up on his offer. His home was modest and he his parents and 2 children were curious about us and watched us drink tea and eat crackers and cookies, in semidarkness I might add as the power was out. Oddly though, Vijay never introduced us to his wife who puttered about cleaning. After this mildly awkward experience we headed off again and Vijay requested that we stop to see a “programme”. Unsure of what a programme was exactly and feeling adventurous, we agreed. We entered said program and Vijay escorted us up to the front area that was blocked off for what appeared to be special guests. Up at the front was a man yelling out something in Hindi – this appeared to be a political rally. We took out seats near the stage in the VIP area. Our presence caused a bit of commotion as all the cameramen who were filming the speaker turned and came towards us and stood for what seemed like 10 minutes filming and photographing the four of us. We endured about 20 mins of this extremely awkward experience and then convinced Vijay that we needed to leave. After more stopping at Vijay’s favorite places so we could meet everyone he knew in town (“yes, we go to see … now, he is a very rich man”) we finally ended up at Chelsea and Michel’s hotel and quickly fell asleep. Vijay, who was supposed to return at nine to take us to the train, came at six requesting that we go meet his (rich) friends. We politely declined and went back to sleep. When he picked us up at nine we were unable to talk him out of a detour to this friend’s place. They were very nice and the owner brought out his German luger to show us, Vijay had us look at their many cars and then we left for the train.

The Agra train station was busy for so late at night. We got on the train and found our way to our beds, which were up top. Meaghan and I managed to make our upper bunk beds with the linen that was provided under the light of the overhead florescent without stepping on the man that was sleeping on the bottom bunk. We chained up our bags by our heads and fell asleep. It had been quite a long day.