Another Western Tourist Stunned into Cliche by India

A bizarre day graced with magical moments.

We got up at the crack of dawn – OK, 6.30 – so that we would have time to pack, breakfast, and be on the road to Agra by 8.00. Supposedly it’s a 4 1/2 hour drive… We actually made it out into (once again) dense fog by about 8.30 and commenced a ride through a landscape out of Dante. (Not the Commedia.) According to our driver, Delhi has a population of 16 million ‘officially,’ but probably 20+ million during the work day. The usual almost unimaginable pandemonium on the streets is simply cars, trucks, bikes, motorbikes and 3-wheel Tuk-tuks all using their horns, all the time, and none obeying any discernible traffic rules, any of the time. Add to this a massive city-wide construction project for the new metro system, scheduled to open before the 2010 Commonwealth Games. (Hard to believe it will happen, but meanwhile the congestion and dust levels have all tripled.) Add blizzards of litter, plenty of cows, camels and feral dogs on the roads, and the worst fog Delhi has experienced in 20 years. Then add blizzards of litter, and the smoke from the ten thousand street fires of the homeless, who like burning plastic trash for the excellent reason that there is so much of it and it burns hot…

Even after we left the city limits, which takes a long time, the fog was so thick that we could only barely register that we were moving through smaller communities and then farmland. So we droned along mostly in silence, occasionally making conversation about the traffic, police, or animals to our driver, a kind man with a wonderful singing laugh who alas is very hard to make sense of.

At one point on the road I saw a group of people carrying rocks for a small rural construction project – fixing an embankment. Some of them were young women in long, filthy-as-rag saris with big rock baskets on their heads. Twenty yards further along were their children, aged perhaps one to four, standing vacantly in a pile of brick dust. The children were so filthy, so ragged, that they reminded me of the drawings of the naked Fuegians in Darwin’s Voyage of the Beagle.

Back in our own comfortable world, Kerry and I are chafing a bit at the unfamiliar thing we intentionally arranged for this part of the trip: a guided tour that really turns us into Tourists rather than the Travelers we would like to be. We were deposited for lunch at a bad and overpriced restaurant where we had an indifferent lunch – but, as the driver reasonably explained, there are not many places they can take tourists and be confident they won’t get sick. (Given that I found a large, well-braised cockroach in my Bengan Bharta at just such a place only yesterday, we are not encouraged to roam too far afield.)

Back on the road – and in the end it was almost six hours to reach Agra, a smaller version of Delhi in most respects. Still foggy too, but hints of sun as we met the local guide, dumped our bags in another clammy hotel room smelling of Lysol, and rushed off to the Taj.

I have to say, by way of intro, that when I came here 25 years ago it left me cold. It was drizzling, my expectations were too high, and I felt nothing. This time we were blessed – the haze lifted just as we arrived, and the spectacle was heart-stopping. The main gate – which, as our guide said, could be a major monument in its own right, is just another huge Mughal fort-like-thing in red sandstone. But as you turn to go through it you see part of the main tomb, then more, then suddenly all of it, and it really does look as if 10,000 tons of white marble have been rendered magically weightless, floating just off the ground against a pale sapphire sky.

Of course, we’re Tourists, so we only had about an hour left if we were going to get to the Agra Fort before it closed for the day. What you really want is an hour to wander and two or three more just sitting on a bench with your eyes falling out. But it felt like a privilege to be there. AND, despite being double-parked by a camel (yes really) we made it to the Fort with two minutes to spare.

I will leave these things – and the nicest meal we’ve had in India so far - for someone else to describe.