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Published: March 7th 2008
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Early? Early?
I didn't know 6am existed until today... Six o' clock!Oh my god! Nadeem is waiting outside, bleary-eyed and sleepy, but in a much better mood than I. I'm firmly of the opinion that the Taj can wait til lunchtime, when I've had my sleep.
Nadeem drops us as close to the Taj as he can, and we walk down an alley. The chai stalls are already firing up their cookers for the earlybird tourists. After being deprived of 700r each (!) at the gate, we are carefully searched and ushered through. It's still dark, but birds are singing and there is an orange glow to the East.
We come into the gateway building and get our first glimpse of the Taj... and immediately I'm not tired any more. I hate to sound cliched and awestruck, but it is absolutely magical. At first it looks two dimensional, like a huge oil painting, but as the sun rises and the first rays of the morning start to bounce off the dome and the peaks of the towers, it comes alive. I rarely use the word 'majestical' but this merits it. As parrots and eagles soar above, it is quite a moment - even cynical old me is overcome
Sun hitting the dome...
... its the most over-used cliche in connection with the Taj but hey - pictures just don't do it justice. with the sheer gravity of the place and sit, quietly, on a step and soak this vision up. Tourists are thronging around now, cameras snapping and whirring and tour guides rattle off well-rehearsed patter, but I just sit right down in the middle of it, camera hanging limp from my fingers, and stare.
I am also aware of a new emotion - I feel slightly bad in some way that the Taj has now become this. It is Islam's monument to love, a place built by Shah Jahan for his wife, the true love of his life, as an eternal resting place and monument - not only to her, but to love itself. And I hate seeing all these tourists, us included, running around and snapping it, for 700 rupees a day. It means so much more than this, and I feel almost angry that people aren't stopping, like me, and thinking about the place itself, the man who built it, the woman he built it for and what it really represents. Maya acutely points out that without tourist money, it would fall into disrepair and become a typical old ruin, knee deep in human sewage, or worse -
at one point the British Government actually put the building up for auction, valued only by the marble contained within. If sold, it would have been knocked down and used for building something else. I'm glad this didn't happen. I really wanted to be underwhelmed by the Taj, and had always thought of it as just a rather pretty tomb, but having been there myself, it is now clear that it is so much more than that. I'm amazed by the place.
After a wander around the beautiful gardens, snapping birds and chipmunks along the way, we head back to where Nadeem should be waiting. He isn't there. Reluctantly, we sit down with some men at a chai stall and order two chais. It is the best we've ever tasted! And only 5 rupees a cup (about 7p!). The men are very cool, friendly and fun, and they ask about my tattoos and piercings (doesn't everyone!), our jobs, our homes, our families. We watch monkeys tease the rickshaw drivers by jumping onto their roofs and banging on them before running away, much to the bemusement of the sleepy drivers. Eventually Nadeem arrives, we bid the men farewell and return
to the hotel in Baluganj to get a few hours' sleep before waking again at 12 to see the rest of Agra with Nadeem. Maya wakes me at what she thinks is 11.30 to pack and shower, but it is only 10.30. Hmm. We watch cartoons (in Hindi) and chill til 12.
Picked up by Nadeem, we go straight to a restaurant for lunch. We tell him to take us 'somewhere good' and we end up, coincidentally, at the Maya Hotel! We sit, cross legged, on the floor of the roof garden with Nadeem and eat curry. We chat about life in India, and about his family in Nepal. He's a very sound guy, and doesn't seem to want to con us, unlike so many in India and especially Agra. Even the waiter at the restaurant pinches a cigarette off me! I leave an insultingly small tip in return.
Later we check out the Baby Taj and Agra Fort. Both cool, and we relax on the grass at the Fort watching monkeys playing in the sun. We are watched by curious Indian men, and Maya's tense until I point out that in the same way as we're curious
about monkeys and stare at them, Indians are often curious about us and stare at us in the same way. We have to behave like the monkeys - and not give a shit.
We tour a few shops, learning about an amazing gemstone called the star of India which, if held at the right angle, always shows a star when light reflects off it - black star shows four points, red star shows six. Pretty amazing. But no, sir, we don't want to buy.
We end up at the Maya Hotel again for a nightcap with Nadeem before heading to the train station. I make friends with a cat on the roof (cats are unusual around here) by miaowing at it, and neck a couple of Kingfishers before we leave for the station.
We wait for the train for ages, meeting a lovely old British couple, the man killing time by telling me war stories! Eventually the train arrived and it was absolute carnage. It turned out we hadn't 'confirmed' our berths and so had to find the porters and confirm them! News to us! We leg it along the platform to the porters who write 'berths
10 and 11' on our ticket. We leg it back to the carriage and fight our way along, only to find four Indian men sitting on the bench that makes our bed! I am almost at breaking point now, and draw breath for a barrage of insults, but then a voice, in an Aussie accent, comes from somewhere near my left elbow - 'Welcome to the jungle, mate!'. Almost simultaneously, two Israelis jump from bunks, one taking Maya's bag and keeping it on his bed for a minute, the other chivvying the Indians off our bunks and away.
Thanks to Steve and Katie (the Aussies) and Dan and Ohad (the Israelis) we were finally laid out, on our bunks, in peace. We spend the late hours chatting, getting to know each other, and sharing sweets and chocolate. Maya makes eye contact with a lovely Hindu woman further down the carriage who is doing her own henna designs, and before I know where she's gone, Maya is up on her bunk like a monkey, and the woman spends hours doing a beautiful design on her hand. Meanwhile, I chat to Steve (who's in a band called The Chemists in Aus)
A lone boatman...
... punting across the mist-shrouded Yamuna river, directly behind the Taj. and Katie, pausing to laugh at Dan, the Israeli, who has a proper sense of humour.
For the first time since we left, we feel we're making friends, and finally we've found some of these elusive travellers who are actually friendly, cool and ready to talk to us. I slept on the middle bunk of three, Maya above, and an Indian man below. We drank chai and water, had a great old time and finally popped sleeping pills (the Aussies necking cheap valium they picked up in Thailand) and before long we were all out like lights, with the exception of Dan who appeared to spend the whole night reading (backwards to us, natch), stopping only to grunt and shout instructions to the chai sellers in Hebrew. I sleep like a log, Maya is afraid that the train will derail, it's going so fast. I wake to the sunrise, hang my legs out of the open door and smoke. Another Indian man hails from the trackside, mid-poo. I don't think I'll ever get used to that.
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Kate
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Wow!
What a train journey! Stay safe guys, keep us updated, i'll keep reading! xxx