Agra- Happy Diwali!!!!!

Vendors selling flowers for Diwali

Today we are in Agra, home of the famous Taj Mahal!

Unfortunately, it's Friday, so the Taj is closed.

We decided, after nearly two weeks of yoga, eating and lying around that it was time for us to leave Rishikesh. We knew it wasn't going to be easy- we'd heard all the rumors about trains and buses being fully booked with people traveling for Diwali- but we figured we're lucky people, things will work out for us...

Nearly 16 hours after leaving Haridwar (the closest city to Rishikesh) and 27 hours after leaving our hotel in Lakshman Jhula, we staggered, near death, off the "luxury sleeper" bus we had to take after learning all the trains were full. Dave is better at describing things, so I'll let him write about those 16 awful hours.

Boom, Diwali!!

Well, I'm actually going to take a little trip back in time and tell you about the preamble to the bus ride which included a whole day unexpectedly spent wandering around in Haridwar... We left Lakshman Jhula after an early breakfast because we wanted to get to Agra as soon as possible - but got stuck in Haridwar for 8 hours because there was no train available. I wasn't stoked because we could have been laying around in the cafes of Rishikesh instead of marching under the hot sun of Haridwar, but Alice persuaded me to see some sights and it actually turned out to be a great day. We tried to find this secret temple that you can only access by a secret tram...but it was all such a secret that we couldn't find the place, so being quitters, we gave up. We did however find a chain restaurant that offered the world's largest selection of Dosas (the whole WORLD). I didn't have one, but the one Alice had looked like a triangular piece of heaven. Anyway...in the evening we sat along the Ganges and watched people, young and very old, bathe away their sins in the sacred river - the whole while shoeing away children selling blessings and old men trying to collect donations for the maintenance of the river (both scams). As the sun set we took in the nightly Puja ceremony where Indians turn out in the thousands to launch flaming offerings into the river, sing, bathe, and cleanse themselves in holy flames. It was unbelievable to think that it happens every night because it is a real commotion, and the build up to the actually ceremony took several hours as the crowd grew bigger and bigger.




So the bus ride... We bought the tickets at a travel agency near the train station. We were assured that it was going to be a good bus, heading directly to Agra over night, and that we would have sleeper seats # 7 and 8. When we got to the bus we were a little confused because there weren't seat numbers at all, but letters! To add to this confusion people were screaming at each other inside the bus in a murderous tone, and one woman was even trying to choke a man to death over what we believe was a seating dispute. Not wanting to get choked out, or to have to choke someone ourselves, we asked where we were to sit and told that we could take sleepers C and D. Hearing this, I took sleeper C and Alice took sleeper A! Shortly afterwards a man approached Alice and said, "Is this your seat?". Alice, not wanting to give away any information that she did not have to responded with, "Is this your seat?". The two of them went back and forth until the man said "It is okay, I'll just sit with him" - meaning me, in Alice's spot which would have meant me having to spoon, or be spooned, by a total stranger for the entire bus ride. Thankfully Alice took pity on me and moved over to join me in our designated place.

All seemed well. We were in seats. Nobody was choking us. The bus started rolling. It did not take long however for things to go India. The bus broke down approximately 20 times, the first brake down occurring not 5 blocks from where we left. We just accepted the situation, trusting we'd get where we were going, and nodded off to sleep. The sleep was actually fairly restful, except for the fact that the window that I was smushed up against kept rattling open giving me a face full of dirt and dust. When dawn came we woke up expecting to be in Agra, instead the bus had got stuck in sand nearly two feet deep on the right hand side. This occured at a bottleneck on the highway and blocked traffic in both directions for more than an hour as we tried to push and pull the thing out. The bus was in danger of tipping over, so everyone got out, except for Alice. I assumed she stayed in because she hates doing anything that anyone tells her to do, but it turns out she was trapped inside and couldn't get passed the engine cover that was blocking her only escape. Eventually we got free, and we on the road again, more than 4 hours over due and with many hours of travel still ahead of us.

Breakdown!!!

The absolute worst part of the bus ride was that there was no toilet and after 12 hours of driving we hadn't been given the opportunity to go to the bathroom. I peed on the road when the bus got stuck, but poor Alice who was trapped inside had to endure 14 hours of urine welling up inside of her before she asked the driver, nearly in tears to "schtop da bash" to let her out for a wee. He refused, but eventually was persuaded by Alice's charms. It is a good thing too because Alice was getting desperate. She even tried to pee in a bottle, in full public view, but lost her nerve because she was physical unable to do so. In this period of intense madness Alice was blindly groping around a storage compartment for an empty bottle to pee in on the moving bus. She put her hand inside, got hold of a bottle and pulled it out only to find that it was already full of someone else's desperate urine. - Alice just informed me "That I was so desperate that I was considering sticking my butt out the window."

(To put Alice's pee story in context, and to not overly emBareAss (get it?) her, I will tell a bus pee story of my own from the trip to Minali. You see, it had been many hours since I had been to what passes for a toilet here in India, and I was in pain. It was the middle of the night, very dark, and the bus was rattling down one of the worst roads I have ever been on. Each jolt sent a dagger into my bladder, and I yearned for relief. Alice and I were 2 of only 7 passengers, and all was quiet on the bus. I figured "now or never", whipped my pants down and stuck myself out the ever open window (it wouldn't close). I tried to pee but the road was so bumpy that I hit my head on the storage compartment above me (it hurt) and decided that another blow might render me unconscious and I didn't want for Alice to have to deal with a half naked, unconscious Dave, covered in his own pee. I held it and eventually, thankfully, the bus broke down and I peed.)

To wrap up the bus story, it wasn't direct and we ended up having to take a public bus from outside Delhi to Agra. Alice and I have some disagreement about the distance we were from Delhi (whether or not "outside" may be appropriately used) but I'm sure nobody cares except for Alice. Carrying on, I stood most of the way, but we finally arrived dirty, stinky, hungry, and exhausted in Agra.

We postponed seeing the Taj Mahal upon arrival because of our weakened state. Unfortunately, the Taj is closed on Fridays (today) so we're going to have to spend an extra day in Agra to see the thing tomorrow. The day wasn't wasted however as we saw the Baby Taj, the Agra Fort, and an old Persian-style tomb. I am going to let Alice write about this because she is better at writing about the boring stuff...

The first thing we saw today was Chini-Ka-Rauza, the tomb of Allama Afzal Khan Mullah, poet who worked for Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan and later served as his Prime Minister. The monument was once covered in beautiful glazed tiles, applied in a style unique to Chini-Ka-Rauza. Now however, the tiles have mostly fallen off and only the brown structure remains. From there we went to the Itimad-Ud-Daulah, or Baby Taj, a masoleum built by Nur Jahan, the wife of Jahangir, for her father Mirza Ghiyas Beg. Mirza Ghiyas Beg was the grandfather of Mumtaz Mahal, the wife of emperor Shah Jahan who built the Taj Mahal. Made of carved white marble and decorated with inlaid flowers and patterns, the Itimad-Ud-Daulah was really beautiful (though the French tourists were a little overwhelming). We went from there to Mehtab Bagh, a park across the Yamuna River from the Taj Mahal. The view would have been spectacular, but it is very hazy in Agra, making it difficult to see anything. Our last stop was the Agra Fort, a giant structure that was used as a base for governing India by many generations of Mughal leaders. The Fort was really spectacular, especially the areas made completely of marble.

Chini-Ka-Rauza


At the Itimad-Ud-Daulah

Itimad-Ud-Daulah

Agra Fort

Tomorrow Dave and I are going to see the Taj Mahal, then I will take a train to Delhi. From Dehli I'm flying to Goa to start a yoga teacher training course. It wasn't part of our original plan (not that we had a plan, other than eating mango's-which we're failing miserably at) but Dave convinced me I should take the opportunity while I have it (I think he's just trying to get rid of me). The course is a month long, but I doubt that's enough time for Dave to die, get lost or stolen- he'll probably still be sleeping when I find him again.