Like in a movie!

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It started like in a movie (or nightmare). I had a train at 6:00AM and I woke up at 5:51AM with my bag half-undone and my hotel was a good 15 minutes walk from the train station. I packed my bag as fast as I could, ran downstairs to pay for my room. The guy at check-in was busy with 2 customers so I just put 150Rs on the table and said: "I owe you 150Rs, here it is" and ran away. He tried to tell me to wait but I just shouted "Just trust me". There were no rickshaws in the street at first so I ran. Eventually a cycle-rickshaw passed by and I said 20Rs to train station (that's like 4x the price, I just really wanted to get there NOW). He asked for 40Rs and I was just too stressed out to argue so I tell him to fuck off and continued running. A few seconds later, another one picked me up without arguing and I was on my way to the train station. By the time I entered the station it is 6:00. I looked on the electronic screen and I saw that my train is on platform 1 but when I went on the overpass, platform 1's electronic panel had a different train that was supposed to leave at 6:20. I hesitated for a few precious seconds until I hear the "tchou-tchou" of a train that was departing. I ran down to platform one to see that my train was already running at a quite fast pace but I somehow managed to run and jump in the last wagon one second before the attendant closed the door. Ouf! I had managed to hop on the train that would take me to see the Taj Mahal, and then to continue my journey to the famous ruins of Orchha.

I collapsed on my seat. It took me a few minutes to recover from the rush. When you buy tickets at the tourist office they give you tickets from the "Tourist quota" (meaning they're reserved for foreigners) and all those seats are right next to each other so in front of me was Melissa, a californian girl and on the other side was Joe from St-Louis his japanese girlfriend which I unfortunately forgot the name and Jim, an older bostoner Bruins fan with a massive mustache who was in India to get eye surgery but was currently living in South Korea. Melissa had been travelling in India for 4 months and was on her last day while Joe and his girlfriend were on a round the world trip and had already visited Turkey/Egypt which I was planning to see so he gave me a few suggestions. They were all pretty nice so the 2 hours ride to Agra felt like 10 minutes as we spent most of the time talking. Jim told us how after his operation he'd go back to South Korea via Bangkok where he'd stop to spend a few days as "There's quite a few sights around that I'd like to have a look". Isn't it amazing how many of those 40+ americans have an interest in the sights of Bangkok. Must be the temple. The train was quite a fancy one. It took only 2 hours to get to Agra whereas most take like 5 hours so it was a bit expansive (expansive for India, everywhere else it'd be dead cheap). We even had some sort of breakfast served.

We agreed to go see the Taj together but first I needed to buy my ticket for my onward journey as I was not planing to stay in Agra that night but was planning to take a 3 hours train ride to Jhansi and then a rickshaw to Orchha, a lovely little village with ruins. Melissa showed me where to get the ticket and said they'd wait for me in the main entrance. I went in there but it turned out it wasn't the good counter for me, but of course I was told that only after 15 minutes of waiting. So I went to the other place and got a ticket in a very short time. However when I started looking for the crew I couldn't see them. I looked around for a few minutes but then realized they probably decided to leave so I took a rickshaw to the famous palace.

The rickshaw driver had agreed to the normal price fairly fast but he spent the whole ride trying to sell me his "city tour". He'd turn around, while driving on a crowded 3 lanes road to show me a book with comments from people who used his service before. I felt like in "Dumb and dumber" when Jim Carrey drives a woman (Mary) to the airport who tell him she's scared of flying and he turns around while talking to her telling her that she shouldn't be scared of flying as more people die on the road going to the airport than in the plane itself. While he's saying that you can hear cars honking and suddenly changing direction because Carrey isn't looking at where he's driving and then you see an explosion in the background. It was like this except there was no explosion or accident and I didn't have a sexy women sitting next to me.

In the end I arrived there safe and unscammed (although it's not for lack of trying by the driver) but it turns out the palace was closed until 11:30 as there was some high official who was visiting. There was really nothing else that interested me in Agra (there is a fort, but I've seen one in Delhi and architecturally they're very similar) so I opted to spend the next 2 hours eating breakfast (which took 45 minutes to be served) and in an internet cafe. I checked my luggage in a cafe as I wouldn't be able to get in the Taj with my big backpack after what I had seen of the security at the Red Fort.

At around 11:00 someone passing by told me it was open so I went, bought my ticket at 20 times the Indian price (notice a patern here?) and waited 15 minutes in line before I was allowed. Now, I must admit, I wasn't looking forward to the Taj that much. I felt I sort of had to do it because I was going to North India and it's somewhat of a must-see thing (along with things like the Great Wall, Angkor Wat, Pyramids etc) and i didn't want to have to explain myself a hundred times when people would ask: "Ohh you've been to India, how was the Taj Mahal?". The palace was quite amazing, as the photos (which you've probably seen before a hundred times) shows, although if you've seen the photos you know exactly what to expect. The difference between Agra and the Taj in term of cleanliness is really amazing. You go from cow shit and garbage everywhere to immaculate green lawn and a totally spotless pure marble massive palace with almost perfect symmetry.

While walking around the compound I came up with this saying: "Seeing the Taj is like losing your virginity, it's something you have to do but it rarely feels good" (the logical conclusion of this saying should be that seeing the Taj should get better after a few times, but I'm not quite sure that's true and I don't have the money to check it out, unfortunately).

After I was done walking around (and trying, unsuccesfully, to get a self-portrait with the whole of the Taj) I went back to the cafe where I had left my luggage to get it and leave town ASAP to Orchha on the first train. When I got to the cafe however, I realized that the guys from the morning train were there except Jim, eating lunch. Apparently they went to the place Melissa had told me to buy the ticket and didn't find me there, so we probably missed each other when I went to the other ticket office. I ditched the plan of going now to Orchha now and talked with them for more than 2 hours before leaving. It's a shame I couldn't spend more time with them as I quite enjoyed talking with them. But I had to leave eventually if I wanted to make it to Orchha not too late. The rickshaw driver didn't try to rip me off after we agreed to a price and once I got to the train station I hopped on the Kerala Express within a few minutes. I was travelling on 2nd class, which is the lowest you can go (but cheap cheap cheap). There were no seat available for the first 90 minutes so I just stood or sat on my backpack. I was sort of in the way so everytime people who were selling stuff wanted to pass by (and tehre was a lot of them), I had to move out of the way. It felt like that standing train in China, except it wasn't for 14 hours.

After an hour and a half we arrived in Gwalior and the train emptied up a bit so I managed to grab a seat. The train quickly filled up with new passengers and it took another 90 minutes to reach the final destination where I took a 20 minutes rickshaw ride to Orchha. I easily found a rickshaw driver that would take me there for the right price. He had a little face to face with another rickshaw at some point because he was in the wrong lane. The other rickshaw driver who looked like an indian version of Snoop Dogg stopped just in time but stood there, staring at my driver with a look of murderous rage on his face. My driver didn't want to back off so I provided him a way out by faking to get out if he didn't back off so that he could tell his friend that he backed off because he didn't want to lose the money he'd get out of that stupid tourist, and my strategy worked to the perfect, at the delight of Snoopie. Travelling in China teaches you that face is important. Midway we were stopped at a police stop and for some reason my driver asked me for 10Rs, probably for a bribe. I paid but told him I'd deduce it from the final payment. When we finally arrived he tried to get the extra 10Rs but I told him we had an agreement. I had told him to drop me at some hostel and he was very happy (that means he get a commission). He was about to show me the hostel when I took my bags and walked in another one, without him. I got a very good room for an okay price. It was dark by the time I got here and Orchha can hardly be said to have massive nightlife. I found a local restaurant but after that pretty much everything appeared closed so I went to bed early.

Next day I woke up early to get a shot from the fort in sunrise but the results weren't too great. I went back to bed and was ready to go explore by around 9AM. Orchha used to be the seat of the princely state of Orchha. It was a fairly strong state, that managed to rebell against the Mughals (but were eventually crushed) and was the only one that managed to fend off the Marathas. The Maharaja was left in power by the British but at Independance he was forced to join the country and the power in the state was transffered elsewhere so that now Orchha is a small unimportant village. It survives mainly on tourism since the area is dotted with amazing forts, temples and cenotaphs.

I explored the main fort at the confluence of the Jehwa river and a seasonal one (at the present time it was mostly dry except for a few pools of green water, where the dogs and cow would risk disease to drink). Before entering the fort I played a bit with some white-haired monkeys but was careful not to get too close as Melissa had told me of her bad experience with monkeys (one of them stole her Charles Dickens book then escaped to a place out of reach before ripping apart the pages, one by one, while looking at her with a (or at least that's how she interpreted it) sneer). I did get close enough to piss the alpha male off and he would bang his fist on the rock to show he meant it. Fortunately he didn't do anything about my intrusion.

The main palace was quite amazing. I really enjoyed it because I could walk around the remparts and the courtyard. I like it when I can just walk around, explore and touch rather then just take a picture and leave. I was thrilled to look at the countryside from the top, it seemed that everywhere you looked there were ruins of old building, most of them unmarked and unguarded. After I left the fort I spent a good 2 hours just wondering around the countryside, trying to get to some buildings. It was totally lovely and I enjoyed it immensely but the sun was quite heavy so I spend the peak of the afternoon eating and reading. I walked around some more before sunset, going to some mausoleums and cenotaphs be Jehwa river. There was an expansive hotel close to these mausoleums and I found it quite interesting that they had 4 huge, well-fed dogs that they used to scare all the stray dogs away so that the tourists wouldn't get bothered by the dogs.

I also sat by the river for a good 30 minutes with an hindu holy man who was quite nice and who for a change didn't ask for money. As soon as the sun went down there was very little left to do so I had a nice meal at the restaurant near the Palace and then went to sleep but not before making arrangment with the hotel managers to arrange for transport to Jhansi at *gasp* 4:30AM so that I could grab the earliest bus to Khajuraho.

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Photos

Taj Mahal
Classic shot.

Sadhu (hindu holy man)
Shot taken while eating breakfast.

Orchha
Palace at sunrise

View of the countryside from the palace
There were ruins/palace/temple everywhere!

View of the countryside from the palace 2
There were ruins/palace/temple everywhere! I couldn't help but smile when I saw this! So much exploration to do.

View from the hotel
That's where I took the sunrise shot, except this time we can see something.