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Published: April 17th 2006
Trick Shot
I saw a kid in my 2nd grade class that had a picture like this and I've wanted to do it ever since...Delhi, Jaipur and Agra and commonly known as the Golden Triangle because their relation to each other on a map can be traced to form a triangle. Genius. For that reason, most tourists tend to take one direction and follow the triangle back to their initial starting point, which more often than not is Delhi. The travel agent that worked with the Clinton Foundation whom with Royal worked out our plans absolutely INSISTED that Agra was only worth a day trip, spending the night was not necessary and then we could travel to Jaipur from Delhi the next day. I’m not sure what kind of prescription (or illegal) drugs this woman was taking at the time but the logic or reasoning behind that makes absolutely NO SENSE, but we did it anyway…
So in order to make the round trip, the day started an hour before sunrise. As I’m sure many of my friends and family are well aware, I am not a morning person at all. The first thing I did was hail a cab and head to the bus station with a quick and harmless little stop to the ATM. On the way, my taxi driver made a
quick pit stop to the tyre shop (no one knows how to spell tire). This consisted of pulling over on the side of the road and pulling the blanket off the guy sleeping on the sidewalk behind an oversized trucker tire. The driver threw the tire at him and he pulled out some tools and started working right there on the side of the road in the meek light of a rising sun. (This story by the way is of no consequence to the day as a whole but I just found it absolutely fascinating.)
I meet up with Royal and we board the private short bus for special people and head south. Naturally I slept most of the ride but it was hardly light out anyhow so I don’t feel too bad about missing most of the countryside. We picked up a government tour guide somewhere on the side of the road just outside of Agra and our first stop was a Giant tomb. Now I know that I should have been impressed with the grandeur, the artistry of the inlay, the symmetry, the gardens and all the like associated with what makes this tomb an national landmark,
but the coolest part of the tomb, by far, were all the monkeys that came out of nowhere in masses of twenty and thirty. This was my first encounter with wild monkeys and it was simply awesome. I say simply because it is such a simple pleasure, to see wild monkeys fight each other for no reason, but every guy at some point in his life has thought that having a monkey for a pet, for however brief a time, was the best idea they’d ever had, myself included.
We watched the monkeys play for about half an hour, took all too much video footage, too many pictures and were then pulled away by the rest of the group that was anxious to see El Taj. My introduction to the locals was one I’ll never forget, they greet you as soon as step into the parking lot, they’re not allowed onto the site, and have everything from stone elephants, to tee shirts, to fake gold bracelets and batteries all at the discounted fallen of the back of a truck price. I bought two of the stone elephants that were hollowed out and housed a smaller sculpted elephant inside the
larger trunker’s body. I thought they would be nice book ends but failed to realize that I had essentially picked up two bricks to carry around in my bag until I would be able to send a package home. (Which as it turns out would be one month later and one of the elephants had been crushed.)
Finally we were enroute to the Taj. There are fears that the pollution caused by car engines is tarnishing the white stone of El Taj so you have to park a kilometer away and are taxied to the site via an electric car. As I reached into my wallet to grab the entrance fee cash, I felt as Mike Tyson punched me in the gut. In my hazy, not completely awake state that morning, I had left my ATM card in the machine and it was gone. This is the point when a smart traveler wouldn’t panic because he has a stash of traveller’s cheques somewhere in his luggage or some extra cash lying around in a book or something. Not me! I’m all ATM baby and I’m screwed!
There was little I could do at the current situation so I
had no choice but to forge on and deal with that later. There’s a little piece of immortality available at Penn State on the walls of the Penn State Sub Shop. There are pictures of people in all sorts of exotic locations or doing strange and unusual feats and they are all holding the trademark Penn State Sub Shop bag in hand. My old roommate sent me a few of those bags so I could have my picture taken in front of the Taj. I left the bag in the van and there was no going back now. Strike two…
I’ve been looking for curveballs everywhere I go, swinging like crazy, but the batteries dying after the first picture I took of the Taj was a fastball that I didn’t even get a chance to swing at. Strike three, I’m out, put me back on the bus to Delhi… No, not really, but they did let me leave the site to go buy batteries but at this point in the day I felt like someone had run over my dog, stolen my girlfriend and told me that I’ve been living in the Matrix. Push on, can’t look back.
Across the river from the Taj
This is the proposed site of the Black Taj that got the King imprisoned by his own son... El Taj is, as most know, a tomb built by the King for his wife after she died giving birth to his thirteenth child, a child whom by the way the King never laid eyes on because he was so angry that the child killed his wife. The Taj took 22 years to build but the actual white structure took only 17 years, it’s the surrounding buildings, the Mosques and elaborate entranceways that took the extra years to complete. Inside there is only one room and you are not allowed to take any pictures or you are supposed to forfeit your entire camera. Royal got yelled at seconds after entering for attempting to snap a shot.
There’s not really much to be said about the El Taj, though I suppose I should call it La Taj being that it houses a Queen thus making it a feminine structure? Regardless, the most interesting part about the entire compound in my eyes was that across the river, behind the White Taj was a site that was chosen by the King to be his final resting place. He was commissioning a Black Taj for himself in the exact same design as his
dead Queen’s tomb but it was to be made out of Black stone rather than her white. You can see the foundation as it was created and some of the garden that was cleared around where the structure was to be built but it was obviously never created.
Apparently, the King’s son desparately wanted to be King and convinced the people of India that his father was wasting valuable monies on his tomb when that money could be shared with the people. (I can’t disagree with this notion but the thought of two Taj Mahals across the river from each other, one white, one black would have been one of the most amazing sights in the world. As it stands, the white Taj alone is still amazing as it stands.) So the prince had his father imprisoned in the Agra Fort, the next stop on the tour, where his room overlooked the Taj and he could look at his wife’s tomb every day until the day he died.
The final stop for the day was the Agra Fort which was very much like the Red Fort in Delhi. It served as the capital of India for some time,
and the King ruled from its palace for many years. Again, I lament that I have not absorbed more of the information the tour guide dispersed about the history of the Fort, its simply that I’ve never been exposed to any of this information before and its relevance to my life has been very minimal to this point in time. I wish I could go back to college and take some more history courses, but alas, I studied Kipling, Conrad, Fitzgerald and Faulkner.
Like the first Tomb, there were monkeys at the Agra Fort that dominated my attention. Two were fighting over a juice box and I honestly thought that they were about to draw blood when I was pulled on by the tour guide. The most interesting part of the Palace which is pictured was the Royal fishing pond. It is filled in and today houses a large grass lawn but if I had my way, I’d have made the entire courtyard a giant chessboard and played chess with my convicts and prisoners.
Kurt Vonnegut wrote a short story entitled “All The King’s Horsemen” in his collection of short stories, Welcome to the Monkey House, one of
my all time favorite books by the way, and in it, he describes such a scene where a King plays chess against an Army commander who’s helicopter has crashed in his country. The commander’s entire family was on board as well as most of his unit. He has to make every move in order to protect not only the pieces, but the lives those pieces represent. Inevitably some of the pieces are sacrificed and someone has to die and when the piece is taken, the corresponding person would be taken out back and, goodbye cruel world. Remember, I’m not a sick person, I’d be King and ruthless and my people would be expected to die for whatever cause I deemed just, though too many games of human chess and I’m sure I too would be overthrown by my son.
Sorry for the digression, back to Agra. The day came to a close at the end of the Agra Fort tour and we were taken back to Delhi where I promptly returned to the ATM that swallowed my card and punched it a few too many times that prompted the security guard to come to its aid. Realizing the situation
and my frustration through some seriously broken English and communication problems he told me that there was very little chance I’d ever see my card again even if I went to the bank and pleaded my case. So my day ended with relatively little sleep, comtemplating how I was going to make the two day journey to Jaipur with the equivalent of $30 US dollars in my wallet….
On to Jaipur…
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Rich Paolino
non-member comment
Great pictures!