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We're up to Wednesday so far and still no sign of the so-called monsoon. I've seen a few fields with puddles scattered around them, but no evidence of any widespread flooding. Must have happened somewhere else. Apart from the first morning, weather's been hot and humid, but dry in terms of rain. Which is nice.
Anyway, we took the opportunity to explore Delhi on day two, having acclimatised and found our Indian feet a bit. Not least working out how much taxi and rickshaw fares should be, and which ones are safe. Delhi is a huge sprawling mess. It's all of humanity thrown up into the air and landed in one place. We took a cycle rickshaw from our Tibetan refuge to the metro station, ten minutes distant, and passed by Hindu temples, mosques, Tibetan shanty shacks, market stalls, roadside food vendors and various other random things; cows, strolling down the road lazily as if they were in some Herefordshire field, stray dogs, homeless people kipping by the side of the road and countless rickshaws of all shapes and sizes, mostly chugging haphazardly from left to right across the lanes. The method of driving is insane. Basically, the Rules of the Road come down to survival of the fittest. There seems to be a pecking order well and truly in place, as in all aspects of Indian society, whereby biggest and meanest wins; smallest and slowest loses. Trucks are on top of the pile, followed by buses, then mini-buses, large, luxury cars, smaller, smarter cars, large, old bangers, small, old bangers, auto-rickshaws and finally rickshaws and poor old cyclists at the bottom of the pile. I would never contemplate doing a cycle trip here. Someone in your way? Would it hurt them more than you in the event of a crash? No problem! Just blare the horn loudly and accelerate until said obstruction makes way. Job done.
We came to the metro station, and feeling a a few pangs of guilt at seeing our driver sweating profusely at the effort of cycling us there (my bulk in 35 degree heat and 90% humidity would be a test for Lance Armstrong), we gave him a modest 20 rupee tip. Well, it would buy him lunch. he seemed pleased at such generosity. The Metro system in Delhi is great. Modern, clean, air-conditioned and cheap. It's also surprisingly uncrowded, probably because everyone has to do a security check before stepping down the escalators and it would take yonks if it was rush hour. The terrorist threat here must be very real though - the dispute over Kashmir still rumbles on. When we surfaced, we were in a Connaught Place. New Delhi - cosmopolitan, smart and trendy. All office blocks, clothes shops, coffee shops and jewellery boutiques. Also a bit dull. It was also choked with traffic, and the prospect of finding our way around the huge city with a barely adequate map in searing heat soon had me cursing. Compared to Old Delhi, this was like stepping into a different world though, and brought home the rich/poor gap sharply. We were soon accosted by someone purporting to help us, the pretext being that he'd find us a map; we found ourselves two minutes later in a travel shop, sat in front of a sharp talking young Delhi-ite with a plan and just the right tourist package for us to see the best of northern India in two weeks. I baulked at this, but he was persistent. As a sweetener, he offered to give us a bargain offer of an afternoon excursion with one of his drivers around Delhi to see the sights for 300 rupees (four quid). The plan in his mind was that this would so impress us that we'd sign up to be taken around Rajastan by this driver for the next two weeks. I readily agreed to the bargain sweetener.
The sights of Delhi are many, including the impressive Red Fortress (which we'd seen the previous night in an exhilerating sound and light show but which I'd carelessly fallen asleep during), the India Gate (an arc de Triomphe lookalike), Qutb Minar (India's biggest mosque), the National Museum and sundry parks, one of which we strolled and lazed around for an hour or so to escape the crowds and was lovely. It was all very pleasant, and a nice, relaxing way to see the city with an informed guide. Unfortunately, he was incredibly hard to understand because of his accent, and most of what he said related to something being "very, very expensive". I encountered a new and cunning way to extort money in one of the parks; an aged, smiling man came up to me and intoduced himself, shaking hands and being very pleasant, before stating that he was a teacher at an orphanage, and could I please donate some money. Ok, I said, pulling out my wallet, here's 100 rupees.."oh, sir, could you just sign this please? It's just for our records - your name, your address and how much you wish to donate. (as I'm scribbling down my name) ah! I see you're English. We've had some very generous English tourists here today (I scan the list and see a minimum of 2000 rupees by every name)..but it's entirely down to you how much you wish to donate". I quickly thought about this and then came to the conclusion: sod this, if you don't want 100 rupees you can have **** all and piss off. If everyone gave you 2000 rupees, you could start your own orphanage you lying git. He of course accepted my donation but declined to thank me for it.
Back to the holiday salesman. Well, he did his best trying to persuade us to accept his offer, including telling us that we would lose our bags if we travelled by bus or train, we might crash or be raped (ok the last one isn't true), but we didn't succumb and managed to escape his shop, wallets intact. His offer wasn't too extortionate, but certainly no bargain, and we thought we'd travel native to Agra the next day.
"The greatest monument to love ever built", according to Rudyard Kipling. "A teardrop on the face of eternity", according to some Indian poet. No, not there yet? Doesn't seem like anything I've ever seen on the Quayside, or even in Greater Newcastle (Tyne and Wear as it's sometimes called). Ok, maybe the Gateshead Angel...
Anyway, if you hadn't guessed, it's the Taj Mahal. Big deal. Get over it. I mean, it is actually quite pretty, even when you get close up. Over 350 years old and it could have been built yesterday. The marble carvings on the outside are pristine, it shimmers bright white in the dawn light and it generally makes your camera glue itself to your eye for the entire hour or so that you're there. But as you get up to it and go inside, you think, right, this is going to be absolutely awesome. There has to be some divine revelation here, something utterly fantastic and mind blowing. But, there isn't. There's nowt. It's hardly big enough to swing a cat. It's basically a mausoleum, a simple Hindu shrine, with little or no decoration, painting or pattern. You just walk in and you're out after about a minute (and half of that is spent shaking off some pernicious tout who wants to describe to you in detail the type of cement used to stick the bricks together for a small fee). Highly disappointing. I wouldn't be so gutted except it costs 750 Rupees to get in for foreigners (20 for Indians - my Indian impression did not go down well with the ticket salesman). Which, to put it in English money for example, is 30p compared to 10 quid. I think that a 3 and a half thousand percent price hike doesn't exactly equal the disparity in wages but call me a quibbler.
There is more to Agra than the Taj Mahal, but I won't bore you with it. We had taken an auto-rickshaw around town the previous day to see the sights, the most impressive of which was called the Red Fort, which was a fort that was red. The pesky rickshaw driver at the end of the day of course tried to drag us round various jewellery and clothes shops which we certainly did not want to be dragged around, thereby forfeiting his 20 rupee tip. The main point about Agra is that it's the biggest tourist trap in the world. The town surrounding one of the modern seven wonders of the world is predictably impoverished, so you just get attacked every time you step out of the front door, by rickshaw drivers, hoteliers, restauranteers and general beggars. It's hassle from beginning to end, and I would advise noone to go. We did our best to have a nice time though, got a room with a Taj View for about a fiver or less each, a roof top cafe from which you could enjoy a candle-lit dinner or early dawn breakfast (tended by the most incompetent waiters in the world who forgot our order when we were thea only customers there), and chilled out whenever possible away from the crowds. But it's basically impossible to feel chilled out in Agra, and it was for the sake of our ever-fraying nerves that we left for Jaipur the next day.
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