Brian_in_Charlotte

Wonderful read. Tagging.

johnthedorf

It's always "the people" isn't it. While it is nice to see all the "things to see" nothing beats close interactions with the locals. So many of my friends travel the "tour bus route" and miss going into peoples homes, capturing a part of their lives. Learning about all the historic parts of a city, town or countryside is important if you haven't done the research but you've got it St Cirq.

StCirq

And here we go...

I am really dying to be able to stay in bed until a reasonable hour and get over jet lag, but the way this trip is planned, that’s just not going to happen, so I just decide I’m not going to have jet lag and that’s that. I’m up again at 6 am to shower and pack for our trip to Agra today, with a stop at Amber Fort, and M is, predictably, up at 6:40 and ready when I am. We have boiled eggs and toast and butter and jam and coffee for breakfast and meet Davinda in the lobby at 7. Then into the morning traffic of Jaipur.

There were beggars in Mumbai and Delhi, plenty of them, but…and I don’t know how to say this delicately…they were “soft” and unobtrusive and almost too easy to ignore. Nothing really prepares me for the beggars of Jaipur, and we’re in a car, not even out on the streets. Whenever the car comes to a red light, there is someone at the window. First it is a teenage girl, smeared with dust, mud, encased in bright red shreds of silk, her eyes luminous with hunger, her mouth a frantically moving blister on a wan and vacant face…and she has a baby, a naked infant, just tossed, flopped, over her scrawny shoulder, its buttocks and thighs oozing with sores…is it even alive? She taps frantically on the window of the car, and as we are absorbing this (“Mom, don’t look, please” says M) on the other side of the car, there are stumps tapping, two amputated limbs rapping rhythmically. And then there are the really young children, the ones so small they can barely reach the car windows, so that all you see is the tips of tiny fingers pleading. Davinda and our driver seem impervious to them, and so we are too, but I cannot, will not ever, forget them. For what that’s worth, which is just pathetic.

We head out of town, stopping at an ATM where I get an inches-thick pile of rupees, which almost makes me ill after our encounters with the street beggars, then through the city gates and out to the countryside on a two-lane road. Soon it gets hilly and wooded, almost jungle-like, and then we round a bend and there’s an elephant on the road, with a young man straddling his neck and prodding him on with a metal crop. Now, both M and I have seen elephants in the wild in Africa, and in zoos, but there is something just a bit jarring about passing one on a road, an elephant with a purpose, not wild, not caged, just an elephant, with a rider, going off to work for the day.

Then there are more elephants, and soon we are out of the woods and rounding a bend and off to our left is an enormous, craggy, sunburnt hill crowned with Amber Fort, and with huge veiny stone walls, like miniature Great Walls of China running up and over surrounding hills, leading to outposts and lesser forts. And we’re here in a parking lot, where there is some sort of altercation going on between two men, one of whom is thrown to the ground in a tussle. Police rush over and it’s all over before we even get out of the car, but when we do we are descended upon by a flock of young men dangling bracelets and postcards and cheap turbans and wooden carvings of elephants in our faces. Really, it is like walking into a swarm of birds. But they soon dissipate, and we are hauling ourselves up onto an elephant for the ride up to the fort. Which is just about as touristy an activity as one could ever imagine, but it’s me and my girl and we’re on an elephant and we’re having a ball! Our elephant driver is exceedingly dark and handsome, and the trip up to the fort is hilariously bumpy and raucous. I just plain give up on understanding India about now. From the horror of beggars to floating up a hillside on the back of an elephant is just too much to absorb.

Amber Fort is just astonishing. The carvings, the frescoes, the elegant spaces, the attention paid to air currents and just the graciousness of it all speak to such a refined culture. I am so mired in European history, and this is all so enlightening to me, that halfway around the world similar but at the same time completely different things were happening.

Leaving Amber Fort, still within the compound itself, we pass by vendors and snake charmers and a truly hideous display of crass commercialism: a teenage girl dancing provocatively while what appear to be her parents stand in the background, the father playing a sitar-like instrument and the mother just standing in the background. They have a bowl set out for “donations” at the entrance of the little enclave they’ve inhabited for this display. It’s just appalling – Britney Spears in Amber Fort!! M says “that was just disgusting!!” India – it’s so contradictory.

Davinda and our driver are parked in the jam-packed lot of Amber Fort, and it takes us ages and ages to get out of there. Our tour director is on the phone constantly with Davinda reminding him we need to be at the Taj Mahal by 3:30 pm this afternoon, or else, and we are apparently already behind schedule. I’m not worried. M’s not worried. We’re in India. Things will sort themselves out. But we get out of the parking lot eventually, take Davinda back to Jaipur where we say a reluctant goodbye to him, and get on the road to Agra.

LCBoniti

I've not been to India but your narrative makes me feel that I am there. Thank you for continuing.

crefloors

I'm so glad you're continuing your report, I've been looking for it.

I don't know if I could take India. It's a "modern" country, turning out engineers that are sought after from countries all over the world, and at the same time, poverty, misery, and dispair that I just can't imagine in my wildest dreams. I can't figure it out.

This is just a wonderful read, thanks for finishing. I'll be checking back.

crefloors

ttt I want to keep this active so StCirq will finish it. I'm loving reading it.

StCirq

October 15 – Taj Mahal

It’s another 4-hour drive to Agra on similar roads and highways to those we’ve been on already, with similarly uninspiring scenery, but I’m already inured to Indian traffic and unexpectant when it comes to beautiful surroundings. What grabs my attention are the towns and villages we pass through, where we have to slow to a crawl to maneuver through traffic and we can get a glimpse of the everyday lives of people. I confess I just stick my camera out the window in many of these places and just randomly shoot whatever we are passing by. It seems like the best way to grab bits of the mayhem that is India. And when I get home and look at my photos, I’m glad I did this. A camel chained to a post, a young woman making patties out of cow dung, a boy turning a water wheel, a front porch lined with old shoes, women in a field of conical haystacks, men squatting by the road….

We stop in yet another tourist restaurant for lunch. To be fair, there really aren’t choices along the main roads. Everyone stops at these places. And it’s not so bad to be faced with a massive shopping opportunity, where everything you might reasonably want to buy in India is arranged neatly, and at fair prices, in one space. We order vegetable thali and chana masala, which M says is her favorite food on earth, and we make sure the waiter knows we want it “Indian standard,” which we have come to know means please make it hot and spicy the way YOU would want to eat it. We notice right away that it takes the cook a lot longer to prepare our meal, so we wander around the gift shop while we’re waiting and buy a few scarves and two silk shirts. In the restaurant a man is holding a prayerbook of some kind and chanting softly to himself. In the restroom there is a girl of about 10 offering bright pink napkins to dry your hands with, and holding out her own hand for a tip. Outside, villagers from somewhere nearby congregate to try to beg from the tourists who stop here. The thali is delicious, piping hot with dahl and spicy chunks of chicken and raita and some sort of dark bean with lots of ginger. The chana masala is divinely complex, and M tears into it and declares it the best she’s ever had.

Back on the road, and our tour director in Delhi is calling our driver constantly for updates on our whereabouts. He apparently is very concerned that we will not have enough time at the Taj Mahal, which closes at 6:30 and will not be open the following day. Our driver responds by driving at breakneck speed for the next hour and a half, coming to a brake-screaming halt every ten minutes or so for a pothole or a random pedestrian or a cow or a detour. We make a few stops to pay what appear to be tolls of various kinds – a toll for tourist vehicles, a toll for a stretch of new highway, a toll for using a bridge. And then we pull over in the middle of nowhere at a small grouping of ramshackle huts to fill the tires up with air. A group of men strolls up to the car window to investigate while our driver gets out and negotiates with a man who has an air pump. I am about to get out and stretch when suddenly one of the group of men leans into my window and before I know it there is a monkey splatted across it, wearing a leash that is attached to the man. I am startled, but not frightened, and I motion to the man to get the monkey off my window so I can get out. He does, and I get out of the car into this group of curious men, who are all the more curious to find out I am not fazed by them or their stares. M stays in the car, buried in a book she’s reading, glancing at me as though I am a total nutcase from time to time.

One man asks me for pens, for his kids, for school, and I reach into my purse and give him two pens. Another hangs an arm loaded with cheap bracelets in front of my face, then thrusts out his right hand to show me that he has two thumbs. “I make these bracelets,” he says. “I do double work with this hand!” The man with the monkey circles around and stares into the car. “Your sister?” he says? “My daughter,” I reply. “OH,” say all the men, “Is she married?” And M sticks her head out of the car window and says no, she’s not married, and the men all cluck and mumble among themselves. They pester us with questions about where we’re from and what we’re doing and are clearly both amazed and confused that we are traveling “alone.” I take a picture of the monkey and give its owner a few rupees, apologize to the man with two thumbs for not buying bracelets for him, and we’re back in the car and on the road again, with a bemused group of men waving to us as we head into the dust again.

Traffic in Agra is just stultifying. It goes on forever. I can understand why the tour director was concerned about us getting there on time, because once we reach the city outskirts we are in the most massive traffic jam I’ve ever seen. Our driver, normally a retiring and quiet sort, is as agitated as can be – really, the only time ever in India we experienced anything even remotely like road rage, though if ever there were a country to have that affliction, this would be it. He drives on sidewalks, over medians, whatever it takes to get around this massive logjam. When we finally reach the hotel it’s about 3:30 pm, and our driver is a wreck. A local tour director affiliate is there to meet us, and he tells us we must just drop out bags in the room and come right back out. So we do.

We jump back in the car and meet our local guide. Her name is Anna. Well, her name, she tells us, is 13 syllables long and there’s no way we could pronounce it, so we are to call her Anna. She’s short and stout and very opinionated and we don’t like her from the start. All the way to Agra she explains that her family is from the warrior caste and makes that sound very superior, and that there are only a handful of female guides in India and she is lucky to be one of them because her parents were supportive of her even though being a guide means being exposed to foreigners and foreign men in particular. And then she “preps” us for the Taj Mahal by telling us that we will be accosted by people selling things and we should ignore them completely and she will tell us where and when we should make purchases if we should wish to. M looks at me and rolls her eyes.

And then we are in the parking lot and getting into a tuk-tuk for the short ride to the entrance. Anna tells us to stand in a particular line while she gets the tickets and then gets into a loud argument with the ticket seller in Hindi, which of course we can’t understand. But we get through the short line and into the courtyard within minutes, after a cursory examination of our purses. The courtyard is large and impressive, but you really wouldn’t know you were about to enter through it to the Taj Mahal. The surrounding buildings are dark red and austere, and the grassy interior is just plain. Anna starts off her description of the place with “And here you see the three entrances…east, west, and north…” and when she says “east” she points to what is obviously the west entrance (heck, the sun is starting to fall low just behind it), which doesn’t lend her a lot of credibility in my book.

And then you walk through the beautiful entrance gate, and there it is. The Taj Mahal. And whether you never gave it a thought or spent years researching it, it just stops your heart. I had goosebumps. The hairs on my arms stood up. My chest fluttered. I gasped. So does everybody. You can hear the little throaty exhalations all around you. It’s just that amazing. And it really does “float.” The immensity of it, the whiteness of it, the absolute symmetry, the reflection in the pools that lead up to it, the setting on a hill overlooking a river, they all contribute to making it look as though it had just been dropped from heaven and hadn’t hit earth yet. It just dangles there, deliciously dazzling and yet amazingly simple and pure. And knowing it is a monument to love, you cannot help but think of the immensity of emotion that went into its creation, how powerful a vision and an attachment this man must have had. To think that someone would make this for the woman he loved…amazing. And somehow I am thinking back to a few days ago in Switzerland, being perturbed by a different kind of perfection. Somehow, in India, of all places, in this land of unutterable chaos and squalor and imperfection, there is this, this impossibly perfect jewel, and perfect in good part because of its total lack of pretension and the sheer goodness of heart that went into its making.

And of course I’m also thinking, because I am a naughty rogue, when I find out that the Shah’s wife died during the birth of their 14th child, they might have called it quits at a dozen or so, y’know, and he wouldn’t have had to have poured forth his misery and his money into all this. But it’s still a great story. And there’s no question that this is the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen.

I could go on about our tour, but we saw all the things everyone does, the interior carvings and the replica of the tomb and the mosque and the guesthouse that flank it, and the river behind. It was all fascinating, but really, what stays with you is that first moment that you behold it.

As we leave the area, we are indeed accosted by dozens of touts, and M decides she wants to buy a t-shirt for her brother, so she does some half-hearted negotiating with one of the young men and ends up buying a half-dozen t-shirts for about $20.00. Anna, on the tuk-tuk ride back to the parking lot, lectures M about this, saying if she had listened to her advice, she could have bought them for half the price. Then, when we arrive back at the hotel, Anna, unlike any guide we've had so far, jumps out of the car and stands next to it holding her hand out. I'm now confused as to what the correct protocol for tipping is with guides, but I'm not going to give Anna a tip. She mentions as we head into the hotel that she won't be our guide tomorrow because she has another job. Good.

Back at the hotel M and I are exhausted and opt again for room service: mutton curry, dahl, chapatti, Kingfisher beers and a glass of Indian wine each, too (not bad). We each take a bath because the water pressure here is the best we’ve encountered, and there’s really hot water! We are intrigued with the toiletries. Over the years, we’ve spent so much time in hotels we really aren’t interested in the toiletries; in fact, I’ve always thought it was kind of tacky for people well-to-do enough to stay in nice hotels to pack away tiny little toiletries when they leave. But the Indian toiletries are fascinating to us: brown Himalaya toothpaste, various talcs, spicy aftershave, jasmine oil, almond soap…yes, indeed, we’ll take all of it, thank you.

The beds in India are the most comfortable I’ve ever encountered in traveling. Who would have known? I think it’s because they are platform beds, essentially, with thick mattresses that are basically oversized pallets. Whatever it is, the moment I crawl into one I am so comfortable I fall asleep in minutes. Not before hearing M say “Mom, we actually went to the Taj Mahal today. Is that the best thing ever, or what?”

crefloors

I'll bet pictures don't begin to do it justice. India certainly has many contrasts it seems. I'm not sure I could stand it so I really enjoy seeing it through your eyes.

StCirq

I don't know, crefloors. I never had the "I don't think I could stand it" feeling about any place, but I understand what you mean. And I find it interesting that, after so many years of traveling in Europe, I am now much, much more intrigued by going to less developed places. I will always love Europe, but I find there is just so much more to learn by going to places where I really can't have any expectations, where every day is a surprise, where I have to test myself all the time. I guess the older I get, the wilder I get. Must have something to do with coming of age in the Woodstock generation. Or maybe I'm just nuts.

rhkkmk

wonderful adventure...it reminds me of our time there...

absolutkz

A wonderful report. I too love your writing style.

waynehazle

What a great report! There is nothing like the glory of seeing the Taj for the first time.

godmother_lr

Hi StCirq, I know it has been a while, but do you have some specifics of logistics. Guide companies and planning tips? You may have that somewhere else on the forum, and I will look for it. But just in case not, I would love to know how you planned this out. I would like to go to India this year, if I can find a travel partner, and am feeling overwhelmed.

Great report. I wish I had your writing skills.

StCirq

godmother, I am actually planning to get back to this shortly and finish this up...mostly because I want to have the record for myself, but I'm happy to share also.

I didn't really plan it out much at all. I came here to Fodors to ask basic questions, got some really good advice, and then went with a tour company that would be very unobtrusive, meaning they would let me design the itinerary and just meet me in certain places and make sure I got on trains and such and provide drivers for long hauls and guides for places when I got there. But I really wanted to be fairly independent, even though India was a bit of a stretch for me.

live42day

Wonderful report StCirq. You are a very gifted writer. We are planning a trip to India in Jan 2010 and just wondering..how much did you pay for your carpet? Not sure if I really want one, but have no idea what the going rate would be if we do decide to have one shipped home.
Do you have your pictures posted somewhere?

magical

Wonderful report, great writing style, StCirq.

I agree that the Taj Mahal is truly unique, and something to behold...at least once in one's lifetime. I am lucky to have seen it many times, from different angles and locations, but the first impression is the best.

Even though India is changing, it will always be an ancient and fascinating country with many cultures within the same country. Europe is many countries each with it's different culture, but in India there are many different cultures all in the same country.

Looking forward to reading the finish.

TiinaN

Wow StCirq! What a good read this has been! I can't wait to see the rest posted here soon! I am planning to go to India over Christmas and New Year and I feel like I'm already there when reading your report!

Like you, I want to be as indipendent as possible. I was actually thinking of doing it all by myself, using trains and booking hotels via internet etc. but it seems a tour company is still the way to go. That way you will have drivers to take you around and local guides. Can you (or anyone else reading this)recommend a good one? And do you think it might be a problem to use a tour company even if I travel alone? I don't want to be dependant on some group as I want to make my own itinerary and choose my own hotels.

BostonGal

I love that this report got brought back to the top. I've only read the first few paragraphs, but I cannot wait to dive into it completely.

I. CAN. NOT. WAIT. to go to India, and your initial paragraphs sucked me in and now I only want to go more! Thank you

StCirq

Live4today: I paid about $3,600, shipping included, for 2 carpets. They are gorgeous!

Most of my pictures are posted in the Lounge. I can repost them here, too, when I finish the report.

jujubean

StCirq, I took your suggestion to research France through your name and I came serendipitously upon this report. I loved it thank you. When I was 20 I lived in India for a while, yes it kicks you in the gut - and I'd say in the head too. Once there, if you really open yourself to all that it offers, you are never the same, if you're lucky. While you didn't visit my 'home' city, reading your report took my imagination for a ride down memory lane.

While I can't decide on where to go in Europe, I already have a dedicated savings account for my next trip to India. In eight years, I'm going back when I turn 50 with my kids and husband. It'll be the best birthday gift ever.