September 19, 2006

Where I left off: Agra

IN the midst of my rants about poverty and India, I promised to tell the happy side of our visit to Agra -- seeing the Taj Mahal -- so here goes.

We left Delhi on the Bhopal Shatabdi, said to be the fastest of India's express trains -- India Shining, as Vivek put it. We left on time, at 6:15 a.m., and traveled at speeds of up 151 kilometers per hour, or about 93 miles per hour, reaching Agra a few minutes ahead of our scheduled 8:15 a.m. arrival. We saw the poverty I wrote about earlier along the way, but the Shatabdi was a reminder that at least part of India is moving toward modernity.

On the platform at the station, I let Vivek do the talking to hire a car and guide for us for the day. (Very few people spoke English in the north, though our guides, of course, always did.) The tiny AC'd vehicle we found gave us a place to stash our bag during the day and our guide accompanied us to both the Taj and Agra Fort. Total cost: $40.

Getting into the Taj was more of a process than I had anticipated. Photos of the building tend to make it appear smack in the middle of the dessert, with nothing around it. But a red brick wall actually surrounds not only the Taj but also its gardens and surrounding buildings, with metal detectors and security guards at every gate. And despite the fact that we already had checked all offending electronics (cell phones, iPod, etc.) outside the complex, getting in took two tries each for Vivek and me. First, my admittedly large purse was flagged as too big. Then, the guard vetting Vivek discovered his Illinois ID card, which is more recent than his Indian driver's license, and forced him to exit the line and buy a "foreigner" ticket (750 rupees, or $15--the price I had to pay) instead of his Indian ticket (which cost only 20 rupees, or about 50 cents).

Inside, our guide rambled off facts immediately about how, why and when the Taj Mahal was built. I'll spare you the details, except to say that Emperor Shah Jahan commissioned the structure as a monument to his wife, who died after giving birth to her 14th child. This rather colossal display of affection has given rise, I'm sure, to many jokes over the years, including this T-shirt I saw at a Shoppers' Stop in Bombay.

I'm really not sure if I retained much of our guide's lessons. As soon as I saw one of the minarets peaking up above the main gate, I just wanted to soak it all in. Despite the soaring temperatures, I nearly got goosebumbs.

The building actually was smaller than I had expected, but much more beautiful. It's flanked on either side by two red buildings -- one a mosque, one a guesthouse built to match the mosque and preserve the Taj Mahal's symmetry -- that give the building a nice contrast. The architecture of those two buildings was almost as pretty as the Taj, so that every time I came around a corner and saw one of those buildings, I got overwhelmed all over again.

One thing that I'd never noticed from photos of the Taj is how intricate its details are. Set into the white marble are flowers made of jade, jasper, malachite and onyx, according to our guide. The stones are shaped to fill the flower patterns and then set with a special paste. I know all of this because we went to a marble shop after our tour (one of those infamous "Part Twos") of a company that purports to work on maintenance and restoration at the Taj eight months of the year. There we met the smoothest salesman ever, who kept stressing that he didn't want us to buy anything -- just see how beautiful the work was. He did have beautiful, beautiful pieces for sale, though most were out of my reach. In the end, for the sake of souvenir, I bought a small marble tile for my mother and a tiny marble elephant for me, inlaid with four of the stones used at the Taj.

After three grueling hours in the sun at the Taj, probably another at the marble shop and about an hour at Agra Fort, Vivek and I were ready to call it quits for the day. We scarfed down dosas at Udupi Inn, then headed back to the station where we cleaned up for our train ride that night to Jaipur.

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