Heartlands of India

Part 2: On the move again! Agra and Delhi

        Just left the desert city of Jaipur and am headed into some of the heartlands of India, Agra and Delhi.  Hopping the first train I can catch to Agra and then gonna try and figure a way to get to Delhi the same day when I get there.  It doesn’t look far on google maps, I'm sure I can wing it.   

There are, however, some downsides to not being able to book train tickets in advance.  

*Travel hint for India: getting tickets in advance is near impossible unless you have an Indian phone number. 

I settled for a general ticket for the 5 hour train ride to Agra.  I imagined I could put up with any condition for 5 hours and...it was all they really had left. Now, a general ticket in most places isn’t too bad…however, this is India and in India general ticket means literally fighting my way on to the train. (grabbing the door rail before the train stopped and then pulling my way on, past the others trying to claw their way on around me)... I realized all the seats were already full and grabbed a spot on the metal shelf above the seats.  I was lucky to find this spot as well, since all the shelves filled up in minutes and everyone else...was stuck standing.  You don’t want to even imagine trying to use a toilet on one of these things!  This made for a very long and sweaty 5 hour trip...

Classic Indian train toilet.  Imagine using one of these while sick as a dog on a bumpy train...Fun times

          Finally I arrived in Agra, feeling sick and sweaty but determined to both find this famous building and then head out of town to make it to Delhi.  I stopped in the train station to check tickets but before I got anywhere a rickshaw driver came up and started a conversation.  He tells me he can take me to the Taj Mahal, get me a bus to Delhi, and even hook me up with a hotel room, all through a friend he had in town.  I thought about it for a while, but, after realizing I wouldn’t get to Delhi until midnight with the train, I figured I may as well go for it.  He charged a huge tourist price of 500 rupees for the ride but I wasn’t in the mood to argue so I went for it anyway and we were off! 

          First stop in the city, the Taj Mahal!   The building is situated in the middle of a busy part of the city surround by cheap souvenir shops and crumbly looking hotels.  I had only one hour to visit since I had to catch a bus, so the rickshaw driver dropped me off and told me he would wait in the parking lot.  I walked towards the entry gate down a street packed with tourist and shop owners. It seemed every five minutes some 10 year old kid would approach me trying to get me to stop in "their" shop.  "Only look no buy" they would say.  I ignored most of it and continued on wading my way through the crowd to the gate… Finally I have my ticket and make it to the gate…only to be stopped by security for my backpack, which apparently I could not bring in with me.  I knew I was short on time so I rushed back up the street until I found a small hotel.  They would not let me store my luggage but a room was only 200 rupees for a night ($2) so I rented a room for the night to use for the hour, dropped my stuff and ran back to the gate, this time making it all the way in. 

And to the jewel of India, the grand and glorious Taj Mahal!

So for those interested the Taj Mahal was built as a mausoleum to the wife of an ancient Emperor of India.  It is made mostly of white marble and has a grand garden in front of it and the Yamuna River behind it.  So I know this is the most famous attraction in India, and perhaps it was the other great and amazing temples I had already seen that jaded my view, but I don't really get it!  I think really the idea behind it is much more magnificent then the building itself.  The fact that all of this was built to house the body of a single person is a bit romantic.  Of course the king did not have just one wife, he had 8!  I kinda feel bad for the other 7...But this was the wife that bore the son so, tough luck to the others. 

Anyway, I looked around, walked in and saw the tomb, took a gander at the river and rushed back out to catch the bus to Delhi.

 **I am going to try a different style of writing at this point for a while.  You see, I keep a hand written travel log as I go and, while I normally am reiterating events from that journal, I think it would be nice to add in some exact excerpts here and there.  I did a lot of writing on this bus, so here are a few slightly more real time'ish, stories from it.

May 21st. ~6pm The Bus Ride

          I'm sitting on a Bus from Agra to Delhi that I purchased a ticket for an hour ago from a friend of the rickshaw driver whom I met two hours ago at the train station.  I was only in Agra for a short stint and am more like passing through on my way from Jaipur to Delhi. This is my first Indian bus ride! The interior is very beaten up and damaged and it is completely packed…but, it has AC and some nice scenery outside so I guess its not too bad.  We just passed a temple that looked like a chunk of Las Vegas it had so many neon lights on it!  The sun has now set so I will continue later…

          We stopped in the city of Matsura for a 30 minute break and to see a Vishnu Temple in the area.  I decided to seize the moment and try to find some much needed food that I could actually manage to eat and keep down.  I found some watermelon and stocked up on apples and oranges for the next few days’ supply.  Should be enough for now. 

I am happy that I completely passed on the temple and instead spent most of the time relaxing around the town.  Despite the slightly funny smell of the place (mix between curry, cow, and piss…) it seems like a nice town!  The bus is moving again and it’s too bumpy to write so will have to continue again later…

*Later that night. ~11pm 

          Ok so we have stopped yet again! Yet still not in Delhi.  This time for food but I don’t think my stomach is up for it.  It’s almost 11pm now and I have discovered why we are stopping at these different Hindu temple sites.  Apparently this is a Hindu Temple Tour bus full of happy Hindus.  We stopped at another city before the food and the driver talked for nearly 15 minutes in Hindi before the whole bus cheered some type of praise Vishnu chant!  We got off the bus and there was a parade of idols going through the town, each placed on top of a float that looked no different than the parade floats I see back home (apparantely there’s some kinda festival or something going on).  I decided to go with the group this time to see what this was all about.  We were there to see a specific temple to Vishnu.  I have no idea why this temple was significant since the entire intro was in Hindi but I met a couple new friends on the bus who were happy to explain some of it so I figured why not go ahead and go along.  We were visiting a really old and important temple is about as much as I could pick up…

So Yeah...that happened.

I took my shoes off at the temple door and went inside to observe the ritual.  Upon entering I received a blessing in the form of a yellow chalk dot on my forehead and some mumbled words that I did not understand, then everyone sat down behind a closed curtain and listened to the priest preach in Hindi for a few minutes before he dramatically pulled back a curtain revealing an idol of Vishnu covered in gold ornaments.  The priest then proceeded to ask for tithes for 10 minutes before each person placed a flower wreath at the foot of the statue and received a crumbly sugary substance as a holy food to be eaten as a blessing.  It was quite an experience overall!   

           After all this we piled back on the bus and here I am… now sitting on this bus at a cross roads restaurant in the middle of who-knows-where India wondering what in the world I just witnessed and when in the world I am going to actually make it to Delhi!  The guy that sold me this ticket must not have known it was for a tour bus because he said 1 hour and it has now been 5!   Going to try and get some sleep now, I think we still have a long ride.

*End of Excerpt* 

Saturday May 23rd.

Sitting in the Delhi airport enjoying a couple raspberry sangrias while I wait on my flight.  This time heading off to the mountain town of Sri Nager!  I thought I was leaving yesterday, but, upon closer examination of the ticket I had bought a week earlier, I realized I had planned for a day in Delhi and forgotten all about it!  I discovered this just as I was packing up my bags at 8am and immediately celebrated by going back to bed!  

The Hindu tour bus had not arrived in Delhi the night before until nearly 2:30am!!  Fortunately the bus cleared out a few hours before since it dropped people at different places, and I was able to stretch out in the back seat.  When we arrived I awoke to the bus driving down a main avenue packed with neon hotel signs attached to somewhat tattered looking old buildings lining a rough but quiet street.  I saw a Dominos, McDonalds, and Pizza Hut all within 5 minutes and I knew I must be in the capital.  Only here could India have this high of a concentration of western restaurants on a single block.  At least that I had seen so far.  Honestly…It was a strangely comforting site for some reason...

The Delhi airport is actually very nice and modern feeling.  This seems befitting of a capital airport, yet contrasts sharply with everything else I have seen of India.  Even the capital city was unlike any city I had seen before.  I guess I expected it to have fallen victim to the big city syndrome where the mere size of the city make it merge into this similar global big city culture, like how London, New York, and even Shanghai have many similar big city traits such as their architecture and fast paced city life, but then, I realized oh yeah, I am in India.  

The streets were just as chaotic as every other city, if not even more so.  Full of cows, and rickshaws rushing in every direction side by side.  The buildings were tightly packed, slightly crooked, and tangled in electrical wire.  Some of those wires looked like the only thing holding up some of the buildings!  There were no Skyscrapers, no giant busses, and a lot of chaos...This is a true capital.. Its just like the rest of the country just bigger!

 

After I woke up in mid-afternoon, I decided to leave my hotel and just take off into the streets.  And it wasn’t long before, of course, I wondered my way into the slums.  I found myself in arm length width wide alleyways with people sleeping on either side in rooms no larger than a closet.  Closet sized shops with goods spilling out into the streets, stray dogs and cows wondering aimlessly.  WOW what an environment...The cords hanging down blocked out the sunlight and the kids ran naked through the street playing tag.  And here in the midst of it all is the most beautiful sample of genuine human happiness that is rare to see… anywhere.  Everyone going about their lives without a care in the world.  They offered the gift of a smile as I quietly passed through and for many, I imagine that is all they had to give.

Anyway plane is about here so I'm hopping on and taking off for the Himalayas!

*End of excerpt*

So I didn’t write this in my journal for some reason but for the sake of keeping a logical order to this thing, I should mention that I am going to Sri Nager, Kashmir to escape the heat for a while and booked a ticket through a travel agency during my time in Delhi.  I had heard good things about the area of Kashmir so I thought….why not? 

Also I checked out a few of the nicer buildings of Delhi like some of the grand temples and monuments.  Here are a few pictures from that as well!

You can look for the next leg of the journey coming out tomorrow as I head into the disputed borderlands East of Pakistan to the great foothills of the Himalayas! 

Thanks for reading!  And Check out the rest of my journey in my earlier blog entries!