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Day 2 – The Taj Mahal
We decided to visit the Taj Mahal on our second day in New Delhi. The Taj Mahal is located in Agra, a city 124 miles away from New Delhi, about four-hour ride by car. We left the hostel around six in the morning so we could be there around ten. Our taxi driver, Tamari (yeah, I still remember his name because it sounds like
tamale) was waiting for us while he was smoking hashish and drinking Indian tea. He offered us a cup of tea and we accepted it gratefully. Before leaving New Delhi, we stopped at a gas station where Tamari checked the tires. After twenty minutes of waiting, we finally hit the road.
India has great temples but awful infrastructures. It seems that people were too busy making the biggest and the most beautiful temples but they forgot to make the roads to get there! Also, trash is everywhere! People usually burn their trash early in the morning, I guess is their way of disposing garbage, but it only creates a weird mix of trashy-flowery smell and trash is still everywhere. The traffic in the early morning isn’t as bad
as during the rush hour, but still you could hear people blowing the horn, non-stop--The perfect recipe for a headache! The good thing was that we were too busy enjoying the beautiful sunrise and listening to Tamari’s short conversations to be bothered by the Indian sound and smell.
Everything was perfect until we had to stop because we had a flat tire. Luckily, Tamari realized that the tire was flat right after we passed a gas station that was next to a restaurant.
Breakfast time! Ana and I drank more tea and ate some kind of tortilla looking bread with spicy salsa. We had little trouble trying to explain the waiter what we wanted, so we just pointed to whatever the next table was eating. We were the only foreigners in that restaurant; everybody looked at us with excitement and curiosity. I was sure everybody was wondering what our nationality was. After an hour of waiting, Tamari finally fixed the tire and we went back on the road.
The conversations with Tamari were something like this:
Tamari: Where are you from?
Us: Mexico!
Tamari: Ohh… Moscow
Ana: No, No, Me-xi-co
Me: Yes, Mexico,
not Russia, not Putin.
Tamari: Mo-shi-co?
Ana: Meeeexiiiiicoooooo, in America
Tamari: Oh, President Obama?
Me: No, in the South of America
Tamari: Oh South America!
Me: Yes
Ana: No
Ana: Mexico is in North America Fabiola!
Me: I know, but we are gonna confused him more, South America Tamari, South America.
Tamari: Ohh South America!
On the way to Agra we had some weird experience. One of them was that Tamari told us to not take pictures with the monkey. We didn’t know what he was talking about until he stopped the car, grabbed some paper work, and left. Then suddenly, the car was surrounded by street vendors knocking on the window trying to sell us pictures with monkeys and snakes. Ana and I kept shaking our heads, but they were very persistent until Tamari came back and literally kicked them away. We were freaking out and he told us that they would have charged us lots and lots of money had we taken a picture with the monkeys because we were tourists.
We finally arrived at the Taj Mahal around noon. Tamari told us that if we
wanted a tour guide, he could get one for us. He also warned us that if we didn’t want a tour guide then we should watch out for fake ones. We declined the offer and told Tamari not to worry; we knew how to take care of ourselves. When we got there, a bunch of men started to yell at us, “wanna a tour guide?! WANNA TOUR GUIDE MISS?!” they were loud and again very persistent. Tamari pushed them away as we ignored them.
When we paid for our tickets, (750 RS a piece for us and 20 RS for locals), one guy came out of nowhere. He introduced himself really fast and told us that because we got the expensive ticket so we got two bottles of water, a plastic bag for our shoes, so we can use them inside the palace, and a tour guide. An Indian man, showed his government ID really fast, and told us to follow him. We try to talk to Tamari but other guys started to push him away, “Oh, he doesn’t know what he’s talking about” the tour guide said, “this is paid by the government, please follow me.” Ana and
I exchanged gazes but we didn’t say anything. All this smelt fishy, why didn’t they let us talk to Tamari? I looked around and saw other foreigners without a tour guide. Quickly, my common sense kicked in,
if we have a complementary tour guide for paying the highest price, why don’t other foreigners have a tour guide too? I talked to Ana in Spanish, she didn’t like all this either. So when the guide started to talk, we stopped him and asked him directly if he was going to charge us for his services. He said that the government would pay him, but it was fine if we wanted to tip him, and at the end of the tour he was going to take us to a souvenir shop. We smiled and with a very friendly tone we told him that we prefered to be on our own. He was annoyed and walked away.
Tamari was very happy when we told him what happened, he told us that they made fake government IDs and bribed the security guards. Also, it wasn’t a good idea according to
Wikitravel. “Tourists are advised to hire official audio guides available at the ASI
ticket counter or to use only pre-arranged approved guides. Pre-arranged approved guides charge Rs. 900 and the audio guide costs Rs. 100 + taxes Warning - touts regularly exhibit fake identity cards. Some will try to convince you that a guide is included in the ticket price (it's not) - ignore them and walk away.”
The Taj Mahal is so beautiful! They don’t let you carry a lot thing with you including chewing gum. If you are a foreigner, security tends to treat you nicer and let you get into the Taj Mahal more quickly. Also, you can use the restroom for free. For locals, there is a charge. They tried to charge me a couple of times because they thought I was Indian, ha, ha.
We left around 2 pm. Tamari took us to a restaurant where he was supposed to take us. We were too hungry to think about other options, so there we went. The food was pretty good. I had a grilled chicken (taste like Mexican
pollo) with onions, lemon, and spicy salsa. Ana ordered some veggie curry which was pretty good too. We asked for beer since there wasn’t any on the menu;
our server told us that it would cost us around 240 RS. So we decided to stick to lemon water.
After lunch, we went to buy a traditional Indian dress, a
sari. I didn’t want to buy anything, but at the end, Ana convinced me to buy an aqua and gold color sari, it’s beautiful! I will take pictures with it later.
We left for New Delhi around four. The traffic was terrible so we got stuck for more than an hour. We saw monkeys, motorcycles, tricycles, cows, dogs, people, and lots of trash. Later on in the night, we saw a lot of weddings. We wanted to crash a wedding, but unfortunately, we didn’t have much time.
According to Tamari’s statistics, 90%!o(MISSING)f the Indian Marriages are arranged and the other 10%!i(MISSING)s “love marriage.” He also said that “love marriage” usually ended up in divorce and divorce wasn’t good because you would lose half of what you have to the wife. He said that he is happily married. He told us that his wife was a good wife, and her daughters also had arranged marriages. He seemed very happy and proud about it. Now he
is a grandpa.
We said goodbye to Tamari at 9 pm and we went to get a henna tattoo where we met two Spanish guys who told us about the recession in Spain. The owner of the henna tattoo shop was a really nice guy and very talented. He tattooed my arm in no time and he also gave us free eyeliner. There were some reviews posted on his wall in different languages, so we wrote one in Spanish.
We went back to the hostel, packed our stuff and flew to Goa the next morning.
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