Day Six

We started today in darkness because we got up at 5:30 to get to the bus for our whole day Agra tour. The bus was meant to leave at 6:30; it left at 7:30. We were meant to get to Agra at 11:00; we got there at 12:30.

We paid 2300INR for both of us on this tour, and the price should have alerted us to the fact that it wouldn't be five star, but there's a difference between five star and having a reasonable bus and tour guide. The 2300INR included a abominable bus, which vibrated so much that by the end of the day Aditi had a headache and I had a tummy ache, and breakfast, which Aditi and I didn't even eat much of because it was pretty rubbish so we ended up eating chocolate biscuits.

After the pretty abysmal breakfast, we went back onto the atrocious bus for another 2 hours of death-defying driving. Most of the big vehicles on the road have words painted on their back saying things like: Honk Please; Loud Please Honk, and Please Honk Lights (Side note from Aditi: Horn OK Please TATA. Never understood that one). I always thought that this was just one of those things that people do because they don't understand the language properly and wanted to decorate their vehicles, but I found out today that this wasn't the case. After studying the trucks, I realised that most of them don't have wing mirrors, or if they do they're pointed the wrong way, so the way they get around this easily fixable problem is to use horns. If you want to over-take a truck then you hoot madly when you're behind him and then when you pull out to over-take and they'll move over; obviously this wouldn't work in the city as everyone honks for no good reason, but on the big roads between cities it's fairly efficient but very very annoying for the passengers. Excuse the lecture on driving but I found this mind blowing (Side note from Aditi: Anything can blow your mind. This is mind BLASTING, yaar!) that this system had evolved when they could easily have just fixed their mirrors (Aditi: Yes, but this is assuming people stick to traffic laws. What's the point of having wing-mirrors when all you would be able to see behind you is utter madness? Honk if you want 'em to budge over. Simple. Confusion avoided)

Akbar's Tomb

When we finally got to Agra we were graciously told that we had 10 minutes to take some pictures of the outside of Akbar's Tomb. We weren't allowed inside. At the time we didn't know what we were taking pictures of, but that wouldn't be worthy of a tour costing 1000INR, would it? Turns out Akbar's tomb is the tomb of the third Mughal Emperor and was built to mimic the city that he built.

After our wondrous ten minutes, which our group managed to extend to 20 because we wanted more photos, we hopped back onto the awful bus and drove to Agra fort. At this point we found out that, of course, the 1000INR didn't include any tickets, hence why we couldn't actually go inside Akbar's tomb. Aditi, having already seen Agra Fort before told me that it probably wasn't worth it, so we opted out and sat on the ghastly bus eating biscuits and crisps for an hour (Aditi: We so cultural, yo).

Then it was lunch; the day got much better from lunch onwards (Aditi: Because for Laura,  food cures all ails). We ate lunch at a place, which for the life of me I can't remember the name of, but it was pretty good food. Weird Indian food, but still good. Aditi and I shared our table with this adorable old Austrian woman who was the only other foreigner on our tour. She always comes to India at this time and this is about the 5th time she's visited India - the first time was 20 years ago. She travels all over the world on her pension and spends 4 weeks in Goa after she sees the rest of India. After meeting her I realised my ideal retirement plan - travelling the world with Aditi (Aditi: WOOHOO!) and seeing everything that can be seen.

 

In any case, as we walked out of the restaurant on our way back to the horrific bus, there was a snake charmer outside with a cobra and a python. Now, to be perfectly honest I have never seen a real snake before that wasn't behind a 2inch piece of glass/acrylic and in captivity, so these snakes kind of scared the bejesus out of me. Aditi, however, just decided to go and pat them. I never thought that I'd hold a python around my neck or pat a cobra's hood. I have to say it was actually pretty cool. Obviously they didn't have any fangs left and had been trained, but they were still live snakes! We paid the guy 100INR for letting both Aditi and I hold the python and pat the cobra and jumped onto the dreadful bus for the final destination on our list: the Taj Mahal.

My namesake
Image from: micronations.wikia.com

Their namesake

For those of you who didn't do year 8 history in Dubai College: the Taj Mahal is a mausoleum built by Shah Jahan (the 5th Mughal emperor) for his third wife Mumtaz Mahal. Taj Mahal is normally translated to 'Crown of Palaces' and Mumtaz Mahal to 'Chosen One of the Palace' (Aditi: Except Mumtaz totally means 'excellent' in Arabic. Phail); which in all honesty are pretty cool names considering mine is derived from a laurel wreath. The whole of the Taj is built out of white marble which was sourced from all over the world and inlaid with jade and other stones (these form the patterns). Shah Jahan wanted to build a scale version of the Taj for himself out of black marble but by this point the Taj was costing so much money and time that they refused to let him build his mausoleum separately. Now Shah Jahan and Mumtaz Mahal lie side by side in the Taj Mahal.

When you walk in the East gate of the Taj complex you can't really see the Taj because there's the traditional huge gates that you need to walk through and they block the Taj from your line of sight. But then you walk through one of the gates and it appears. It definitely deserves to be on the seven man-made wonders list. It's almost exactly as the postcards show, but bigger. The most incredible thing about the Taj is the sheer scale. It's huge! The domes are almost perfect and it's ridiculously intricate.


One of the great things about being a 'foreigner' are the lines. You have to understand that the Taj has about 8200 visitors per day and most of them being from India, so having foreigner lines is awesome. You pay 750INR instead of 20INR but I think it's totally worth it. The police who act as the security guards actually stop the flow of people to let foreigners through. It was a pretty crazy experience considering the line of non-foreigners to get into the Taj was the length of 3 of the sides; the line had curved around the Taj. Inside the Taj, you walk into an octagonal room with two tombs inside a fence and the line pushes you to walk around the fence in a clockwise direction; this is the main room of the mausoleum. In comparison to the entire Taj, this was a pretty small room. The walls were inlaid with jade and jasper, which were flush with the marble. After you walk through the octagonal room you get to see a little bit of the rest of the Taj which is just basically big empty rooms with designs carved into the marble and the stones inlaid.

Because of the delays, we only got to see the Taj in sunlight for about half an hour, and then the sun set. Unfortunately, it wasn't a full moon so we couldn't see the Taj in all its glory. If you do ever go to the Taj then try to go on a night of a full moon, and go towards the end of the night. Because of the white marble, when there's a full moon, and hopefully not too much dust and smog in the air, the Taj  glistens and glows in the moonlight.

We left the Taj, went shopping in the semi-official Taj shop down the road and then got back onto the bus from Hades. After a 4 hour bus ride, where our bones were shaken into an inch of their lives, we finally got back to the apartment and went to sleep (Aditi: Total lie. We had showers, had a minor wrestling match, I managed to mess up Maggi-noodles, watched pointless youtube videos, wasted time. Yep)

Tomorrow, we'll be doing a crazy food walk! (Aditi: CRAY CRAAAAAAY)