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Reflections
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One of the "must-do's" in India is to visit the Taj Mahal in
Agra. We checked into the pleasant but hot Tourist Rest House for two
nights.
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The next morning we were at the Taj at 7AM. It is spectacular -
more impressive than I was expecting. There
is just no way to describe it adequately. Even the kids were impressed. Chloe
bought one of those little tacky Taj replicas made out of plastic as a
keepsake. We also visited the Agra fort. I
didn't like the story of the Agra Fort, although Mark got a chuckle out of
it - Shah Jahan (the Mughal ruler who built the Taj Mahal) finished the
fort's construction and was subsequently imprisoned in it by his son. They
are maintaining sections of the fort... and I suspect their work
methods have not changed since it was first built.
The rest of Agra is definitely not spectacular. Many of the roads were
little more than dirt tracks. Garbage, stinky ditches, and the most
persistent touts and rickshaw drivers we have ever come across driving the
oldest, dirtiest rickshaws imaginable turned our visit to Agra into penance
we had to serve in order to see the
Taj.
But in the midst of all this, we did find lots of exquisite inlaid marble products
for sale. We
now have a horrendously heavy inlaid marble chess board to carry home. I hope it makes
it in one piece.
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I recently wrote an e-mail to someone to tell them that we had
all been in good health in India - I should have touched wood. Mark was sick at around midnight on the night before we
left Agra. With Gravol, he survived until about 5AM. We gave him another
Gravol and
hoped that he would survive the three and a half hour train trip to Delhi. He did not seem
too bad when we left, and in case he needed a doctor we'd rather be in Delhi
anyway.
We could only get second class
unreserved seats on the 6AM train. I think the number of tickets
issued are limited only by demand, not the actual seats available: the train was
packed with commuters. The benches in our little area were marked into 10 seats, but we
had 17 people sitting with another four standing. If we had
not taken over the luggage rack with our baggage, there could have been
another six to eight people sitting on the racks over our heads as well.
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Through all this, Mark was quite sick. However, he discovered how to
create more space around him. On the few times
he did not make it to the toilet, he found that "people scattered like bowling pins" as
he was being sick into his plastic bag. Poor kid - not only was he
feeling badly, but his father was mean enough to take pictures of
him and post them on the web site.
That was our last train trip in India - memorable to Mark in
particular, but not in a
nice way. Off to Delhi
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