Yesterday was our sweet Mary Kate’s birthday.
Which meant having butter chicken, kadhai paneer, and garlic butter naan delivered right to our doorstep.
And a snack table stocked only with foods that begin with the letter C.
And charades and shenanigans with some quality company.
Here’s to another year to travels, adventures, and plenty of street food.
Happy birthday, dear friend.
And happy Thursday to you.
Our last few weekends have seen us venturing out of Delhi to experience other parts of India, but amidst the adventures and misadventures, we’ve still managed to keep crossing things off the Delhi to-do list. The weekend before our trip to Agra, we managed to see two major sites in one day: the Lotus Temple and Humayun’s Tomb.
The Lotus Temple, completed in 1986, is a house of worship for the Baha’i faith and serves as the Mother Temple for the Indian subcontinent. The structure of the temple is clearly inspired by the lotus flower and features 27 petals surrounded by nine pools. We were told that the interior is nothing to write home about. It was, indeed, relatively plain, but air conditioned. In my book, that makes anything worth seeing when the monsoon is two weeks late.
Our next stop was Humayun’s Tomb. This is the burial site of the Mughal Emperor Humayun, commissioned by his first wife and designed by a Persian architect. Today it’s a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and tourists are advised to make a stop here before venturing to the Taj Mahal. Presumably to wet your palette for extravagant gravesites.
Tomb and temple. Done check done.
Happy Friday.
A couple of weekends ago, Mary Kate and I took the train to Agra to see the Taj Mahal. I don’t know where I thought the Taj Mahal was. I think even before coming to India, I would have said with confidence that it wasn’t in Delhi, but asking me to point it out on a map would have led to me blindly waving my hand over India. So if you learned that the Taj Mahal is located in Agra two sentences ago, take heart: I’m only a few weeks ahead of you.
Mary Kate and I are highly compatible travel buddies for a number of reasons, not the least of which is our unwavering commitment to spending the least amount of money for the most experience. Which is how we found ourselves on the lower berths of a non-air conditioned sleeper car en route to Agra for $2.75. The train was populated by predominantly men, chaiwallas and samosas vendors pacing the aisles hawking their goods, and no foreigners as far as the eye could see. There was something wildly romantic about the whole experience: reading a great book with the wind from the speed of the train hitting my face through the barred windows while trying to simultaneously absorb and ignore shouts of “panipanipani” and “samosaaaaaaaaaaa” and “coffeechaichaicoffeechai” throughout the car. Then watching the sun set over the Indian countryside and whipping out my head lamp to continue my conversation with Ayn Rand. It was the stuff of great travel novels.
We arrived in Agra around 8:30pm and were whisked into a rickshaw by a man who introduced himself as Ali Baba. He accompanied us to our hostel, sitting on the edge of the driver’s seat and pointing out sites along the way. Thanks to him, I’m now aware that M.G. Road is short for Mahatma Gandhi Road, and you’ll find one in every major Indian city. Kudos, Ali Baba. If that is your real name.
Upon arriving at the hostel, we settled in and made our way up to the rooftop restaurant which the Hostel World posting had said boasted an excellent view of the Taj. This view is less thrilling in the dark of the night, but we hung around long enough to enjoy a lassi each and some bread: cheese naan for Mary Kate and three chapati for me. We turned in early to be well-rested to take in the Taj in the first rays of the sun.
Waking up at 5:00am to see the Taj Mahal at sunrise was an excellent decision. I submit this as evidence.
It was just barely 9:00am when we finished at the Taj, so we went back to the hostel to plan the rest of our day over breakfast. Disappointingly, we discovered that the definition of “poached eggs” varies globally: Mary Kate excitedly plunged her toast into her egg only to be met by one very solid yolk. We managed to gobble them down anyways, checked out of the hostel, and hopped in a rickshaw to do a little more sightseeing before heading back to Delhi.
Our first stop was the Tomb of Etimad-ud-Daulah, affectionately called the “baby Taj”. The architecture is quite similar to the Taj, featuring the same marble inlay over the outside, but clearly on a smaller scale. We both agreed that we actually preferred the patterns on the baby Taj to those of the adult Taj. My deepest apologies if this seems blasphemous. But this is also coming from the girl that prefers plain sweet lassi to mango lassi, so what did you expect?
A complete exploration of the grounds and interior of the baby Taj took about 35 minutes. Then we were back in the rickshaw and off to Agra Fort. The Wikipedia article for this UNESCO World Heritage Site suggests that the fort may be more accurately described as a walled city. I’ll attest to that—this thing is huge. And excellent at absorbing and retaining heat.
Even though it was just barely noon-thirty when we finished at the fort and our train didn’t leave until 2:25pm, we opted to go straight to the train station to give ourselves plenty of time to get there and find our platform. This immediately seemed like a wise decision when we found ourselves in an electric rickshaw driven by a very friendly, extremely old man. There’s been much debate over the actual speed of this vehicle. Did we surpass 10 miles per hour? 15? Bicycles passed us. People strolling leisurely on the side of the road passed us. Every once in a while I’d check to make sure our driver hadn’t fallen asleep. Eventually he just stopped.
“The motor does not work very well. It is two minute walk.”
We thanked him for his sincere effort, shared a laugh as we completed our journey to the train station on foot, and ran into Ali Baba in the parking lot. He asked us how our trip had been and kindly pointed us in the direction of the train platforms. Spirits were high.
It is here that it seems relevant to provide a bit of minor background on the Indian rail system, some of which I knew prior to this trip, some I acquired during, and some I’ve gathered in the aftermath. There are a number of class options one has as a train passenger in India. All I know is that what we traveled in was sleeper class, something avoided by most foreigners, and anything that ends in “AC” has, as one might suspect, air conditioning. When one is booking tickets, you can acquire either a confirmed ticket, which comes with a seat and guarantees you placement on the train you’ve selected, or be placed on the waitlist. If you don’t make it off the waitlist by the time the seating chart is made for the train, your money will be refunded to you. There is a third option of purchasing a general ticket which permits you to ride the train, but offers you no seat—you’re welcome to sit wherever you like, but if the rightful owner of the seat you’ve arbitrarily selected shows up, you can claim no right to that particular piece of real estate.
This bit of knowledge regarding the confirmed and waitlisted tickets was one I acquired after I booked our tickets and realized that WL 98/99 indicated that I had successfully secured us the 98th and 99th positions on the waitlist. A brief survey of Indian travel forums suggested that positions 20 and below were likely to get a seat and anything beyond that shouldn’t be counted on. This led me to purchase a second ticket for each of us with the intention of cancelling the first, which I was ultimately unable to do after a long struggle with a malfunctioning Indian travel website and one very unsuccessful phone call. We ended up making it off of the waitlist and on to the train from positions 98 and 99, which meant that we had two tickets each to get us back from Agra, one set to leave at 2:25pm, the other at 4:00pm.
Upon arriving at the train station, we discovered that the train we had intended to board at 2:25pm had been delayed and wouldn’t be leaving until after 5:00pm. At this point it was very nearly 1:00pm. The next few hours passed as follows:
1:00pm: Arrive at train station, acquire bad news of train delay, decide to shoot for the 4:00pm train instead, and lay claim to a small swath of train platform. Attempt to read books.
1:30pm: Give up reading. Attempt to nap instead. Struggle to find position in which hot, red stone platform does not burn legs. Try to ignore groups of men who seem to be positioning themselves in order to get the best view of the two white girls camping in the train station.
2:00pm: Eat samosas and drink mango juice.
2:45pm: Find out train that was originally supposed to leave at 2:25pm will now be leaving some time after 7:00pm. Keep hopes high for successful passage on 4:00pm train.
3:00pm til 5:00pm: Enjoy sparkling conversation with periodic checks to see what time the train can be expected to arrive. Somewhere in this block of time, the train is delayed from 4:00pm to 5:15pm. Morale and hydration level are average at best.
5:15pm: Discover that train has been delayed until 5:30pm.
5:30pm: Position all too hopefully in the correct spot for boarding the train.
6:00pm: Train arrives.
The next few hours dragged on and included learning bits of Hindi from the nice guy sitting across from us, an emotionally unstable young child intent on throwing her bag of the Indian equivalent of Cheetos at me instead of eating them, and uttering things like “I don’t think I’ve ever been more miserable” and “I don’t think I can take another hour” (with an hour and a half left to go). But I did manage to make it another 90 minutes and we were graciously offered dinner when we got home at 11:00pm. After eating to our hearts’ content, we collapsed onto our bed, deliriously laughing about the crawling rickshaw, the five-hour stint on the train platform, and the cycles of despondence on the train ride home.
And then I remembered that 18 hours ago I had been at the Taj Mahal.
Happy Thursday.
