I know two people who made the bad choice to stay up late
watching Die Hard 3 last night. It was
very tough waking up this morning to pack before hitting the road to Agra. Stewart had suggested we go to the Taj Mahal
this weekend, and I thought it sounded like a great idea to get out of town for
a little bit and actually see some sights.
The Rays came along as well. It
was suggested that we leave very early but we decided 8:30/9 sounded early
enough. We got the Xylo packed and
headed out of town. Sunil went with us
which was great because 1) its super scary driving along those highways and 2)
he’s a great guide. He pretty much told
us what we were doing, and we were perfectly okay with that.
Driving through the Indian countryside was very different
from the states but, at the same time, it was similar. There were large expanses of green fields and
farms but there was a lot of littering and an overall “dirty” feeling to
it. There were dilapidated walls all
over the place and straw and mud huts as well.
The roads were in poor shape and there were frequent potholes and bumps. An interesting part is that there isn’t
really a speed a limit. Sunil knew about
how fast he should be going because if you go too fast than the police could
pull you over and give you a ticket.
But, generally, everyone is going different speeds. Obviously, the man on the bicycle or being
pulled by a horse is not going to go as fast as us. We shared the road with cows, animal drawn
carts, motorcycles, bicycles, tuk-tuks, people, big trucks, and other passenger
vehicles. Oh, and we were on a divided highway
so everyone should have been driving the same direction but they weren’t. It would also make sense that if they were
driving the wrong way, they would be doing it on the shoulder but they
didn’t. We had several people driving
towards us. It was quite the
experience. We kept seeing men dressed
in all orange, usually barefoot, walking along the road carrying decorated
poles with water baskets hanging on each end.
Sunil explained that these men are part of a religion where they will
walk for hundreds of kilometers to have water blessed. We noticed that some of the men had bats as
well, and Sunil explained that it was for protection in case anyone tried to
start a fight. In some of the towns, the
villagers will walk with the men for protection too.
We stopped at a rest area for lunch where the Rays got to
ride a camel! It was just a random place
in the middle of nowhere that had a restaurant, little playground, gift shop,
rooms, and a driver’s canteen. I really
had to go to the restroom and got my first experience of having to pay to use a
very dirty bathroom. Yuck. We had lunch which was pretty good. On the way back to the car, I asked Sunil and
question about something I had seen there, and he explained that he didn’t know
because he was limited to only going to the driver’s canteen. I couldn’t believe it and am somewhat upset
about the fact that they restrict where the drivers can go. He assured me that the canteen was very nice
and had good food and showed popular Hindi movies. Still, not cool at all.
We drove along for a ways and arrived in Agra. Sunil told us that we were first going to go
to Akbar’s Tomb and then he would take us to the hotel. Akbar’s Tomb was very nice but, at the same
time, it was hot as heck out there! The
main tomb was in the middle of the grounds.
We walked through the main gate and headed down to it. Along the way, we saw deer, monkeys, and
peacocks! When we got to the tomb, we
took our shoes off and headed down a dark passageway. It was so incredibly dark, I had to hold on
to Stewart to make sure I didn’t walk into anything or fall. When we got to the tomb, we could barely see
anything since there weren’t lights anywhere.
A man came up to us and explained everything about the tomb and then
told us we owed him money – another first for us. He never asked if we wanted to hear about the
tomb, he just started talking! People
ask for money here all the time and assume that you have a lot of it based on
your skin color. We went back out and
watched S while Teresa and Tyson went in the tomb. People came up to S to take pictures with
her! It was so funny because she had no
idea what was going on. We didn’t stay
too long at the tomb because we were all pouring sweat and ready for some air
conditioning.
We headed off to the hotel which didn’t look like much from
the outside but was so amazing on the inside.
We were told by one of the hostesses that it was a very, very old hotel
– built in 1975! Everything about the
hotel was fantastic. The staff was the
friendliest I have ever experienced.
Teresa and I were going to get pedicures at the salon but they were
booked and couldn’t fit us both in, darn.
I could definitely use some pampering!
We explored the hotel and headed up to the roof where we could see the
Taj Mahal. When we went back downstairs,
they were beginning a daily celebration with dancers and music. It was to celebrate the day and welcome a new
evening and day. We watched for a little
bit but poor S was getting so upset that she couldn’t be with the dancers
too! We headed to the hotel restaurant
for dinner. We had been warned that Agra
is expensive and we definitely saw that at dinner. The food was good though. And the dessert! Teresa and I split a grand truffle cake. Basically, it was a chocolate cake with
cardamom, chocolate ganache and rose petal crème brulee in the center. It was quite decadent. Dinner took a while, and it was 9:30 by the
time we got back to the room. We had to
get to bed early because we were meeting Sunil at 5:30am! Yikes.
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