Agra & Christmas at the Taj

Growing tired on reaching Agra, we realised as we drove past flash looking malls and shopping centres, Pizza Hut and McDonalds, that there was plenty of money in this city and it was a great deal larger than we had anticipated. We inadvertently stumbled upon the tourist office where two men inside were vigorously competing for Lana's attention when trying to convey directions to a cheap hotel we had sinfully selected from the lousy planet guide. After navigation which started out good, we found ourselves having gone to far and in the wrong direction. We eventually found the right way ending up in the evident tourist strip. The area was rammed full of hotels boasting roof top restaurants on painted boards outside, and fairy lights all around. We found the Shanti Lodge just as a power cut hit, and with the dirty diesel generator splurging out thick black fumes into the alleyway at the side entrance. We moved the bikes inside an internal courtyard area of the new wing of the hotel, and transferred our gear into rooms in the older section. Our room didn't have any windows to the outside world, but judging by the noise and volume of traffic from the street below this was a good thing. At least there was hot water and we could have bucket showers and get clean for the first time in several days! After some casual enquiries with hotel staff, Adam became convinced that being so close to Delhi now, he would be able to locate an Indian team cricket shirt. Despite hunger and cold of the night we mounted a rickshaw and headed down town into central Agra. The first shop was a let down - faded approximation of a replica. We were then redirected to the Nike shop in the mall next to MacD's.The mall was open, the shop long closed. We ate dinner at an inevitable rooftop restaurant, feeling it would be rude not to, and looked around indignantly in the night mist or smog for signs of where the Taj Mahal would be. Our treat would be morning time on top of our own hotel's flat roof top.

When we walked out the next morning, Christmas Eve, our jaws definitely dropped! The stunning white perfection of the Taj was directly in front of us and almost within arm's reach. A stark contrast to the messy haphazard collection of hotels and residencies of the surrounding city. It looked as though it was just floating majestically in front of us. In the morning haze over the city it didn't look real. How did the architecture of Agra in the years following the Mughal reign and construction of the Taj Mahal become so far removed so as to appear almost derelict even when new? We thought an early morning visit would beat some of the queues and large tour groups so decided Boxing Day before we got back on the road. The morning was hazy but bright which made photographs tricky, but we watched for a long time, the masses sprawling around the gardens and around the outside, tiny as ants, while we drank the worst chai in India from our hotel's diabolical kitchen. We had a relaxing day walking around this run-down town end of Agra, and came across an area where the stone masons were carving new sections for the dusky red stone walls encompassing the Taj Mahal, and for new walls being built around commissioner and government buildings in the vicinity. Using only a hammer and chisel the dust-coated stone workers were transforming slabs of raw rock into lengths of smooth precipices, and shaping in elegant curved arches into square slabs. We drank chai from a tea stall set in the middle of this outdoor workshop and wondered how the owner coped with the constant clunking of metal on stone for 10 hours a day. Discovering a pale mint green mosque on a hill we took in some of the views and action around an old twisted tree which had been made the centrepiece for worship in the garden and was draped with strings of deep gold marigold flowers. The side streets away from the main touristy strip were quite interesting and packed with small general stores, shops selling lentils and rice, flour and semolina from big Hessian sacks, pharmacies and small restaurants with large woks bubbling out front. Plenty of mobile fresh fruit and veg stalls (carts with large wooden wagon wheels, being hauled around by small framed, frail looking men) were all over, selling pale green guava, papaya - sliced open into a star shape revealing the blood orange flesh inside, piles of deep green chillies and long white radishes. We voluntarily stopped in a small jewellery shop where only 4 people could fit standing up, and soon found ourselves cornered by the somewhat notorious, red-eyed proprietor, Nicky Chill out. On selecting a temporary replacement for Adam's wedding ring which he had left on a window sill in the middle of Nepal, we were subjected to a sporadic account of NC's life story and world philosophy; from his career as a 'roller' in five-star 'brown cafe' in Amsterdam, to Nostradamus and how the end of the world would commence in Sydney in 2012, the 4 million dollars in a Swiss bank account and how he was organising an anti government's legislation on marijuana party for 1 million people. Hey man, we've met people like you before, cut down on the chillums yeah?

There were preparations going on in the main street for a Muslim festival. Two separate sets of loud speakers had been rigged up perhaps 100m apart on lamp poles, and started playing Islamic prayer music, at an extremely impressive volume at 2pm. At one end of the street the music was marginally mellower with more complex melodies, but the speakers directly outside our hotel boomed out heavy bass and drums and strong female vocals. If the volume hadn't have been so great it hurt, it would have been good. From the street below you felt as if you were bleeding from your eardrums. We stood, half deaf, at the hotel doorway for some time and watched a small gathering opposite where some plastic chairs had been set out under a white canopy half jutting into the road, were constructing a float which looked like a colourfully decorated fairytale tower or elaborate cardboard birthday cake. Both adults and children would arrive periodically bringing garlands of flowers and other decorations to add to the cake tower. Large hump-backed gunmetal grey buffaloes turned the corner being herded down the street past the speakers. The distress in their expressions (wide rolling eyes and a rolling shake of their massive horn crowned heads) was obvious. If they could have rolled over and stuffed their hooves into their ears they would, but nature having failed them in that capacity, the only thing they could do was to run. To us it looked like a stampede, these hulking mammals, weighing well over a tone a piece, tore down the street and if the people and traffic had not have taken cover rather than just honking horns and continuing, the buffaloes would have flattened anything in their path.

We don't really know how to convey to anybody who wasn't there just how excruciatingly loud this street music was, there is absolutely no exaggeration here. We are reasonably sure it was not entirely necessary for it to be played at over 180 decibels for it to still be effective in the message it was eliciting, and possibly not even essential that it should be played at such a volume on a street lined with hotels. As previously mentioned, the religious music began at 2pm, Christmas Eve, the last Friday of the month being a special time for the Islamic religion also to celebrate, and continued (on repeat may we also add - a series of 3, 20 minute songs over and over and over) at an unrelenting 180 decibels, until 6am Christmas Day morning. Would it be paranoia to consider that the Muslim population of Agra was just having a loud F-U at the westerner tourists who had descended upon them to visit the Taj Mahal on 'Christmas'?? PC or not we're advocates of freedom of speech, and intend no disrespect or aggression in this statement.

We somehow managed to adjust ourselves to the din during the evening and watched some cricket over a few beers and samosas. Lana felt unwell at around 8pm, and headed to bed, only to be woken by a fit of vomiting. Adam came in drunk as a You-Tube squirrel, from a bender around Agra with some Europeans, at 2am, after spending 20 minutes sending street children climbing up the windows of the hotel trying to get somebody's attention on having been locked out. No amount of shouting or hollering or beating of doors would have ever been heard over the booming racket outside. Happy Christmas :)

Christmas day was sunny and warm, and pleasantly quiet! Being a Friday this year, the Taj was closed, but it looked so serene and still with no people moving around. We had opted for a lazy day, and looked around several places after a breakfast of eggs on toast, for somewhere to hang out on a roof top where they also sold less-inflated beer. There was no real Christmas feeling, it was almost as if we were waiting for something to happen but didn't know where to find it. The highlight was probably making phone calls home to family which somehow surged up feelings that we would rather have been somewhere else, with close friends, with family and celebrating with crackers and paper party hats. An early night following a subdued day, Lana still feeling lethargic and nauseous, we aimed to flee the following morning after our visit to the Taj.

A beautiful if not slightly overcast Boxing Day, we were up a little later than planned but only had to queue for around 20 minutes for the security checks at the entrance. The ladies' queue was for once longer than the men's. Adam having gotten inside before Lana witnessed a cat-fight at the gate as a small Chinese woman slapped an English woman across the head for queue-jumping and proceeded to attack her verbally in Mandarin much to his amusement...Safely through the gate the peaceful space opened up to a square paved courtyard with a garden bordered by miniature privet hedges, protecting manicured green grass. To our right, we approached an elaborately decorated red stone archway and the entrance to the gardens of the Taj Mahal. Framed with marble and decorated with coloured stone inlay in a floral design, this is the classic portrayal of the first view you get of the TM, through this archway. Here the crowds had already started to mass and go crazy with their cameras. We stepped out and down the steps and 'Wow!' It certainly lives up to its name as one of the 7 wonders of the world, directly in front of us behind a colourful flowerbed at the base of the stairs, the classic and well-known oblong water feature stretched out, lined either side by tall cylindrical bushy fir trees, reflecting the Taj Mahal in the still water from the far end. With white marble all around and after some frantic attempts to acquire some photographs which do justice to the perfect, symmetrical beauty of the architecture and grounds, we walked on. The water feature extends and there are actually two more oblong 'ponds' either side although these were dry. Despite the number of people the atmosphere was calm and quiet. Having removed shoes and refused to pay the shoe keeper for what had been declared a free of charge service at the gate, we left our shoes outside of the designated area and walked up the white marble steps. The surface just makes you want to touch it. Large panels are carved with delicate, pretty floral patterns, and the inlay design into the marble was repeated here on the external walls of the Taj, in deep blue, red, green flowers and foliage flowed and twisted delicately around doorways and arched windows. The windows were carved marble grills, and the ornamental grilled panels surround an octagonal area inside which encloses the rather simple, marble tombs. Inside lays Mumtaz Mahal the second wife of Emperor Shah Jahan, for whom the Taj Mahal was built around 1650, and subsequently the Emperor's own body was laid to rest here.

Reclaiming our shoes we scooted away, as larger crowds had started to arrive. Filling up on a large Indian Thali for breakfast we packed up at the hotel, strapped our loads to the bike and met Chris outside, all ready to hit the road. Destination: Delhi.