Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
Agra India
Delhi: Dusty dry dirty Delhi! 1st world to 3rd in one small step. Chaotic drive by old car into city, weaving, dodging, swerving, hooting, honking and hot!
Tuk tuks playing dodgems, passengers hanging on precariously in the cabs.
Motorcycles threading their way, wives perched on the back sidesaddle style, in beautiful sarees; vibrant reds, pinks and peach.
City streets festooned with a spaghetti of overhead wires and cables.
Tiny narrow streets overwhelmed with people and traffic.
To Hotel Pooja Palace, no palace! Seedy, functional but a nice welcome and some European faces! Fellow GAP tourists?
Twin room marble stone floor 1950's wood effect furniture, a TV!
Oh, my first cockroach in the wardrobe!
Bathroom clean but ancient but it works!
Meet the other guests, 7 of us in all and guide Manoj. Meal out after briefing, facing a deluge of hawkers and beggars. The same on the way back. Heartbreaking scenes of small children and the disabled. Knew this would be hard but.......
Day 2 Delhi
Off at 8 to see the Hindu temple Siva Navgrah, then the Sikh temple Girundwara Sishgan.
Welcomed here warmly and a calm serene feeling about it. After removing footwear and with orange cloths to cover the head we go into the main hall and then invited to join the procession around the "altar" to view the belongings of a Sikh fouinder who took his life in protest at Moslem persecution.
Then to Islam Jama Masjid, a huge mosque complex, where again we are made to feel welcome. Very impressive to see this expression of the islamic faith.
Walk back through tiny narrow alleys teeming with people and every trade imaginable.
Like stepping back in time 300 years but for the mobile phone and electronics kiosks!
Depart for train journey to Agra at 2.30 pm. Disaster on arrival at station! Train delayed first from 4.00 to 6.00 then to 8.10pm!
Left bags with guide and went to Tomb of Humayan, built by his widow and the inspiration for the later Taj Mahal. Peaceful interlude amongst the city chaos.
There and back by tuk tuk. An experience negotiating fare and then enjoying the most extreme white knuckle ride ever.
Train quite civilised, left "on time" 4 hours late!
The guests in the next compartment regaled by a Yogi guru with stories of his travels and his philosophy. Cockroaches share the train and then horrors! Someone sees a rat scurry across the floor undernearth our seats! Or was it a mouse?
Reached Agra at 12.30am. In the dark it seems like civilisation. Right now so long as there's a bed, I don't care what it looks like in the morning!
- comments