Delhi to Agra and the Taj Mahal

April 16, Tuesday. 4am and John is awake and exercising. Noisy as ever, so I'm awake as well. Bah!  Alarm is set for 5, so I guess I'll just shower and get on with it. Luckily, we have actually had pretty good sleep, but I know I'll crash sometime today. Resetting our internal clock is always the hard part, and to my dismay, I had no melatonin to pack. I know it doesn’t work for everyone, but it does for me.

This doesn't begin to convey what a drive through Delhi is really like!

A tuk-tuk and a couple of overloaded mopeds

After a very nice buffet breakfast with plenty of options for omnivores and plant eaters alike, we set off by bus for Agra, the site of the Taj Mahal.  Traffic here is pretty amazing, with trucks, buses, cars, tuk-tuks, motorbikes, pedestrians, and animal-drawn vehicles all vying for road space. Lane markings and even yellow center lines are apparently considered mere suggestions. So it isn't unusual at all to see some amazing maneuvers and vehicles well over on the wrong side of the center line. In addition, the horn seems to be a crucial component of driving here. In fact, our guide specified the three most important needs for drivers are a good horn, good brakes, and good luck.  That last one seems the most crucial to me. Meanwhile, traffic here is best described as chaotic and cacophonous, but apparently with surprisingly few accidents. That can only be the result of copious amounts of luck!

We drove past the famous India Gate

Once free of Delhi traffic, we drove on a new 6 lane highway with almost no traffic at all due to its high tolls. Nice!  It is wheat harvest time here now and we saw many people working the fields, harvesting the grain almost entirely by hand. Little heaps of wheat dotted the fields, then larger piles, and eventually single use "silos" made of wild grasses built to shelter the hay. Brick making was also underway, almost in the same fields, with tall kiln chimneys spewing smoke that made the countryside almost as smoggy as the cities.  Apparently farmers sell their soil to brick makers, who excavate whole fields a few inches down to make bricks. Then the farmers replant the fields with new crops. The result is an odd looking landscape with angular low fields surrounded by high fence lines or even occasionally shrine-topped hills that have not been excavated. How long can this possibly continue before the land can no longer support any kind of crops?  Cow dung is used for fertilizer here, and it seems the people must assume it will maintain fertility, but we couldn't help but wonder about the future of this densely populated, more than slightly impoverished country. We saw people making patties of cow dung and drying them in the sun.  They are then used as both fertilizer and fuel.  Wonderful recycling, really.  The dried patties are piled up and eventually encased in small silo-like structures made of more patties smoothed over with water.  Picturesque until you realize what they are.

Along the way we saw cattle and water buffalo grazing

A young girl making patties and setting them out to dry

About four hours after leaving our hotel in Delhi we arrived in Agra, a "small" city of only 2.5 million, compared with Delhi's 6 million residents.  Traffic in Agra is even worse!  Our guide referred to Agra as typical of the "real" India with truly crazy traffic, overloaded buses and tuk-tuks (made to hold 3, usually with 8 passengers instead), and tippy trucks often drawn by cows or camels. I hope to photograph some of this, but so far I've been on the wrong side of the bus or moving too fast. 

The courtyard of our hotel

Our hotel here is the ITC Mughal.  It is an older hotel, with lovely grounds, large well appointed rooms, and a beautiful lobby. Not as grand or as new as its sister hotel in Delhi, but quite nice. Both hotels have a funny way of numbering rooms. This hotel is only two stories tall but we are in room 641. The other hotel was about nine stories, and our room number was 2589.

Again

Approaching the grounds of the Taj Mahal

We enjoyed a terrific Indian buffet lunch with free flowing wine and lovely food.  After lunch we found our rooms and managed a couple of hours rest before heading to the Taj Mahal for a sunset visit. The sky was a little overcast, and we were sure we were going to be rained on, but in the end, there was only about a minute of light sprinkles, and the lack of strong sun made the heat more bearable.  

The main gate to the Taj Mahal

A smaller side gate

The Taj Mahal is even more beautiful in person than it is in photographs.  Its perfect symmetry and pale color, along with the landscaping, reflecting pool, and size somehow make you almost forget the crowds who are sharing the experience with you.  This monument was built by a great Mughal emperor in memory of his beloved second wife and is possibly the most famous building in the world. We are so glad we took this once in a lifetime pre-tour!

The Taj Mahal

This has turned out to be a day of hard-won lessons for me. We arrived at the Taj  Mahal at around 4:30, took a few pictures, including one of us with our Naples Cruise Club burgee.  Suddenly my camera started acting up and demanding that I reinsert the SD card. Alas, doing that didn't help. I was very unhappy, to say the least, and kicking myself for not bringing the 8GB card from my old camera. In fact, I wished I had brought the whole camera!  But I didn't. I hoped it was a humidity issue that would go away back in the air conditioned hotel, but that was not to be either. And when I tried to transfer the card contents to my iPad, all I got was a message indicating the card was bad. Rats! So lesson one is to always carry more than one SD card. My ruined card is big--16GB, and therefore expensive. I suspect the shots on it are gone forever. It would be much better to have a few four gig cards, especially since I can transfer pictures to the iPad each night. Which, of course, is the next lesson.  I hadn't done that with any of my Delhi pictures yet, so I suspect my photo journey will start after Agra. The only good news I have is that John had an extra card for his video camera that by some miracle is exactly right for me. Whew!  But I would still like to buy another card as soon as I can because he is afraid he will need the extra card he thought to bring. [NOTE: The photos you see in the previous post and this one were captured from John's video or my iPad. I was unable to retrieve anything from my card, even after visiting an expert in Naples. The expert explained one should NEVER delete photos or edit inside the camera, but always on the computer instead.  If you want to delete all photos from the card, you can reformat it within the camera, which he did, restoring my 16 GB card for future use, a small comfort in this debacle.]

My second lesson is to be careful to drink more water.  About the time my camera died, I started feeling light headed, woozy, and a little nauseated. In fact, I didn't even go inside the Taj because I was afraid I would faint. Instead I sat on an outside wall and sipped from my water bottle.  A woman sat down next to me and actually did pass out!  After about an hour of sipping, I began to feel better and soon was myself again. I wonder if giving in to the temptation to have a glass of wine with lunch contributed to my problem. I'm not going to repeat that any time soon, no matter what!  I'll be drinking more, but it will be water until dinnertime.

Dancer

In the evening we were treated to a performance by a local woman and man dancing to Indian music while we enjoyed a drink prior to dinner. We are happy to have excellent options at the buffet dinners here. We love Indian food and are finding this a very easy place for a couple of vegans to eat. 

Everyone is exhausted. Small wonder.  It is 9:30 am in New York now, about twelve hours off from the time here. We fall asleep easily, but wake in the night and struggle to go back to sleep. I sure wish I had some melatonin. 

The Taj Mahal again.  So beautiful!