Agra and Karauli

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Another 13 hr train trip compliments of India Rail landed us at Agra in the early hours of the morning.

India can probably be characterised by describing the sights, sounds, smells and crowds that great the traveller at a railway station. Everyone appears to have a destination they need to get to in a hurry and inevitably try to make a few rupees while they are at it. There are families laden down with what appears to be their worldly possessions, would-be businessmen, people going on pilgrimage, touts, coolies, holy men determined to place an orange dot on your forehead (for a price of course) and at the bottom of the food chain are the beggars of all ages.

On arrival at our hotel we were greeted with the inevitable power blackout. Without warning the power here will go out for anything from several minutes to an hour and while many hotels have their own generators they have a problem of people stealing the diesel fuel! Despite a 3 or 4 star façade, many hotels fail to meet the first impressive expectations. The rooms mostly turn out to be disappointingly lacking in maintenance with air conditioning that is either stuck on arctic or not working at all.

The visit to the Taj Mahal was fantastic. Those of you who have already made the pilgrimage will understand when I say that the crowds were horrendous. Despite that it is truly a marvel of architecture of the time, even incorporating ‘floating’ foundations to overcome the effects of earth quakes.

Telecommunications are still a problem. There are so many providers here that a roaming mobile phone becomes confused and often won’t lock onto a service long enough to send a text. Some of the group have resorted to buying specific provider sim cards to overcome the problem of their phones going from 5 bars to zero like a strobe light. Typically however the locals just shrug and say that it’s normal but admit that it’s getting worse.

From Agra we travelled by bus to Rajasthan state and on to Karauli through vast flat farming country of wheat, maize, rice, sugar cane, mustard and a variety of vegetables, mostly irrigated from aquifers topped up by two good monsoon seasons. The corresponding small towns were very busy with markets lining the narrow roads, which were often blocked by cattle or water buffalo indifferent to their noisy surroundings. Here Camels are used extensively instead of bullocks as a beast of burden, often seen pulling carts laden with produce and clopping along with their superior noses stuck in the air. In keeping with the tradition of decorating their vehicles with baubles and fancy trappings, these camels too are humiliated similarly during the many days of holy celebration.

I’ll leave you with the snap of a young 12 year old Muslim girl who is forbidden to leave her family home by her 25 year old husband to be.

Ciao for now.

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