Taj Mahal - Agra, India
Agra, India
Sleep is what it is and before it's anymore than that, we're up. Time and sleep are screwed for us by all the travel and the fact that the initial flight to the other side of the planet literally reversed the clock on us. Actually it sent us 13:30 hours ahead of ourselves. If we continued traveling in this direction long enough we would not only be exhausted, we would be pubescent. The ride to the ticket office is relatively quick but once there, everything stops. They don't open the ticket office until seven - exactly the right hour to get everyone who has sacrificed a decent night's sleep for the sunrise view to brew up a little anxiety espresso to start their day. The ticket office itself shows all the spit and polish of a bowling alley shoe rental counter. It's really unworthy of the attraction. When the ticket office finally opens the staff starts putting out various fires regarding what is or isn't allowed on the grounds, how to secure a locker for the stuff that isn't, who gets what ticket, etc. Once we have our tickets we have to head out and catch a shuttle bus to the start of a three or four minute walk to the entrance where we will get on another sunrise arrival-challenging line for security and admission. After twenty or so minutes of what-the-******* with other tourists the line starts to move. Security, divided as always by gender, leads the visitor through a miserably beaten metal detector and, for men, onto a worn soap box for a pat down or, for women, behind a curtain for the same. We endure security's familiarities, straighten our clothes and re-group. The upkeep here is of no higher standard than any other point of historical interest that we have seen in India, which means neglected.
Let's talk about that for a moment. Again, we'll go back to SE Asia about eight years ago for context. When we first visited Siem Reap to see the Angkor Wat Temples, the city was a dusty little no horse town. There were a few hotels and some small businesses, but the roads were un-paved. They called one street Pub St. because that's where the pub was. But the Angkor Wat Temples are a world class Unesco World Heritage site and, since their re-discovery in the 1940s and subsequent preparation (mine removal, temple complex infrastructure development, etc.) have been Cambodia's biggest tourist draw. They are, as a side note, worth every second of the travel it takes to reach them. Four years later we returned to Siem Reap for reasons unrelated to the temples, but who gets that close to something like Angkor Wat and doesn't go see them again? None, that's who. But this time, again, only four short years later, Siem Reap is ready! The streets are paved, multiple new hotels have opened and Pub St. is now a district of alleyways full of restaurants and shops. For all its notable faults as a government, Cambodia is displaying some savvy. Phnom Penh is the capital and a business center, but this is where we're all (read; the Chinese) are coming to call.
Now back to the Taj Mahal. This building provides the most iconic image for India. It fills the frame in the "Incredible !ndia" posters. It has been romanticized, fablized, cinified and glorified. If you're playing Pictionary and want to convey India, you draw this. But India in all of its governmental dysfunction, in all of its systemic low self-esteem, can't even pull its **** together enough to polish their crown jewel. The grounds are unkempt and litter can actually languish. The entrance, rest rooms and other facilities are wincingly low end. This is inconceivable from at very least a marketing stand point. There is a tourist board in this country that actually advertises internationally, the very least the government could do is provide proper facilities and circumstances for visiting its greatest attraction. But, according to those we've spoken to, the Indian government is completely corrupt. The idea is one gets elected, inherits influence, ***** the country for five years, doesn't get reelected and doesn't care. John at the hotel in Jaipur had a cute joke on the subject:
A Senator from Texas (John spent time in San Antonio) meets a cabinet member from India. They hit is off and invite each other to one another's homes if they should ever get the chance. The Indian man actually finds himself in Texas and calls in the invite. The Senator's home is opulent and when the Indian asks him where he got the money, the Senator opens the curtain over the window and reveals a large bridge. "20%" he boasts.
A year later the scene is reversed. Visiting the Indian's home the Senator asks how he can afford his luxury. The Indian opens the curtain over his window revealing nothing. "100%" he says.
It could be argued that the neglect of the Taj Mahal's property illustrates more of India's ills than any other single thing. Agra, or at very least the parts of the city closest to the Taj, should be addressed and aggressively renovated. But the hoteliers in the area don't give a **** either. They don't see dirt. It's as if dirt were red and they were wearing red lenses on their eyes. Even if the ground and structures were suddenly cleaned, the air is demon flatulent. It smells like a lawnmower and a leaf blower *******. India's reputation rests with a city that has air so filthy you can actually reach into it and scoop some up. You can press it into balls like snow. You can go to Agra and get into an air ball fight.
Okay, okay, so we get on the grounds, make our way through some preliminary structures and there it stands. The sun must have been caught on the same line as us so it has yet to reach its spot in our little fantasy tableau. The building is pretty impressive. It's very large and, um, sizable and white. Yeah, it's really very white. As the sun reaches it, it becomes clear that arriving early benefits more in the area of crowd control than it does in breath-taking awe provision. We have the head set tour so we're learning while we're staring.
The Taj Mahal is a white marble mausoleum located in Agra, Uttar Pradesh, India. It was built by Mughal emperor Shah Jahan in memory of his third wife, Mumtaz Mahal. She is entombed therein. The building itself is made of hand stone and the details, found largely in illustrations of flowers on vines all around, are colored by countless, small semi-precious stones. The craftsmanship is wild; as many as four different shades of ruby might be used for a single flower petal.
There's a lot more to it than that and the tour is pretty interesting, but, and we may be the first to call out this naked emperor, ultimately, it ain't worth it. Seriously, you have to get your ass to Agra, which is at least a ten hour round trip driving, You have to endure the ugliness of the city and the extroverted nature of the local touts, you have to pray for a decent hotel room and then suffer the indignities of the entrance process all for an audience with a building that looks just as good in pictures. Even the fine work described above can be found over at the Red Fort in Delhi, which was also commissioned by Shah Jahan and utilized the services of many of the same craftsmen. But we suck up the site and walk every traversable inch of the grounds and feel that we have properly made the visit before we head off.
After a quick stop at the hotel to eat breakfast, get our **** and check out, we're on the road and heading right back where we came from, Jaipur.
The ride out of town is just as obnoxious as the ride in. Overall the drivers in India are surprisingly ungenerous. As individuals the Indians tend to be pretty warm and, in situations where we are engaging them in some business capacity, uniformly attentive if not entirely competent. On the road, however, they take on an every man for himself (given the disparity in gender in the population the male slant of that statement is not just for easy English) that is rude and self-defeating. Picture a merge in the USA; one car from one lane, then a car from the other lane over and over. Now imagine if not one single car would offer any quarter to another. It would be deadlocked, yes? That is like every foot of every road in India. By not letting each other get anywhere as a matter of common practice, they guarantee that they themselves will get nowhere. One would think the land that gave us karma would have some perspective on their folly in this area, but apparently not in this lifetime.
Once again we are popped out of the traffic congestion within the city like a Champagne cork and released to the open highway. We have another activity to enjoy before returning to Jaipur, so our next stop is only a couple of hours away. Steve is extremely horse and obviously in the beginning stages of some evil something. Germs are so prolific in this environment that they are outnumbered only by the people. It is impossible to keep clean enough to avoid them so some manner of viral visitation is a gimmie.
The Keoladeo National Park is a lovely nature conservation and waterfowl reserve. We pull in and a couple of dozen pedicab drivers vie for our business. But that's not what we want. In a rare, obviously accidental, moment of public service the govt. has supplied the park with rental bikes and trained guides. We hook ourselves up with all of the above and take to the trail. We're not riding for a minute before we see a blue bull antelope! Not long after, a pair of wild boar shuffle around. As we ride a couple of miles into the park our very knowledgeable guide stops us several times to point out birds. And here, as if anyone gives a ****, is a list of the birds we saw:
White Breasted Water Hen
Oriental Magpie Robin
Rufus Freepie (or Tiger Bird)
Common Coot
indian Moorhen
Agnes Moorhen (just seeing if your conscious)
Spotbill Duck
Jungle Babbler
White Throated Kingfisher
Cormoran
Purple Helon (rare)
Indian Darter
Parrots
Partridges
Peacocks (the males of which shed their beautiful tails after mating season!)
Eurasian Mars Herir
Purple Swamp Hen
Comb Duck
Lesser Whistling Duck
Spoonbill
Bherming Starling
and
Painted Storks
Painted storks live in the treetops and are huge and colorful. There are hundreds living together in the trees in the middle of the wetlands and their offspring are all around teenage, which means they're huge, too! Many of the young have not yet learned to fly, so they're stuck in the trees. Their parents still feed them bird-style (regurgitation) but would like to stop. So, to help prompt them to learn to fly, the parents vomit water on the teen's wings to make them flap. Eventually the flapping will give them that little sense of lift and the rest will be easy.
We finish the ride, return the bikes and we're back on the road. Hey, here's something fun to do while we're riding; list all of the animals we have seen so far in India. Remember, we have not visited any manner of zoo.
Water Buffalo (including babies. Yes, they're VERY cute! These are very important animals to a poor agrarian society. The females give milk and the males work hard)
Goats of all shapes and sizes
Pigs
Sheep
Monkeys of various breeds
Horses
Camels
Elephant
Cats
Dogs
Weasels
Chipmunks
Ox
Chickens
And some of those were even alive!
The time passes quickly and before we know it we're pulling back into Jaipur. This is the end of the Julie and Steve and Pal show as he will be heading back to Delhi tonight. We say our good byes and drop back into John's hotel where a room and dinner await. We have an early flight in the morning because sleep would only spoil us. Tomorrow we will be flying into the city that actually inspired us to come to India in the first place. We are told there is nowhere else on Earth like it. By this time tomorrow we will be able to confirm or deny that assertion ourselves. (cue Huey Lewis, "Back in Time".)