Today we saw the Taj Mahal and it was breathtaking. It gets all this hype, but it was worth it. It was built by the king (at the time) in the 1630s to commemorate his 3rd wife who died during the childbirth of her 14th baby. At first, before coming to India, I thought how impressive it is that back then, people could make such a beautiful, intricate, massive building without all the machinery of today. But now, seeing all the handiwork and crafts and miniature paintings that people do here in India today, I'm more unimpressed with our machine made buildings and lack of intricacy.
But back to yesterday. We got in to Agra around 630 pm, bought our tickets for our train ride back to Delhi the next day and then found ourselves a rickshaw to our hotel. This is when we met Super Khan, our rickshaw driver. He was hilarious, welcoming us to his Indian helicopter and singing Shakira and Ace of Base "ooh ooh eee eee sexy eyes." He also happens to be a great business man because during the course of our ride, he convinced us to take a rickshaw tour of Agra with him the next day. He did this slyly, by showing us his comment/guest book en route to our hotel (that included pictures of him in a superman shirt), then when he was dropping us outside the west gate (rickshaws can't go in and our hotel was inside the barricaded area) he pulled out a map and showed us exactly how to walk the one minute to our hotel and also where everything is in Agra and what time and how to get to the taj the next day.
So basically, he has a great business strategy. Pick up tourists at train station, show a comment book of all the people who loved his rickshaw tour and pic of him dressed as superman, be super helpful and funny, and then book those tourists for a day tour the next day. We couldn't help saying no!
We easily got to our hotel, Hotel Siddhartha. We expected it to be pretty bad because reviews basically said not to expect much other than an excellent location. But, it really wasn't that bad. It was relatively clean, had a high pressured (cold) shower, and almost clean sheets. It's always good to be pleasantly surprised. We grabbed dinner at Hotel Saiyana Palace's rooftop restaurant nearby and got some neat pictures of the taj at night- it's not lit up but Ale has taught me some photography techniques.
We went to bed and set our alarms for 5 am. Eww. This might be the earliest we have woken up in 2 months, but we HAD to get to the taj for sunrise! We got a quick breakfast and made it to the ticket line and that's when we found out we couldn't even go in until after the sun had rised. Boo.
The good news, though, is that there were already 200 plus people there as early as us looney tunes, so we were (kind of) glad to have gotten there before even more people showed up. After the sun rose, we (and the now 400 other tourists) were allowed in. This is when things got tricky. Apparently tripods are not allowed in, so that was a doozey since Ale had one. They also looked suspiciously at her mace.
Security guard: "what is this?"
Ale: "my asthma medication"
Security guard: undoes the safety and is about to spray
Ale: "Nooooooo! Mace. To keep me safe! No spray!!!!"
Luckily, the security guard did not spray himself, Ale, and the ten surrounding tourists and instead handed it back to Ale and told her to put it in the locker with the tripod. We went to the locker (10 minutes outside the gate) and then returned to the taj.
The Taj was, as I said before, breathtaking. We spent 4 hours in there and took a bajillion photos of ourselves with the Taj. The taj tickets come with shoe covers for when going inside, but of course you have to seek them out before going inside security, so we had to go barefoot. My feet got really dirty (ewwwww), but at least I saved a little bit of the environment.
If you plan to go to the taj, here are our tips.
1. Don't bring in a tripod or mace
2. Don't wake up early if you don't like waking up early
3. Get sunrise pictures at either the fort or Hotel Saiyana Palace's rooftop restaurant
4. The taj is closed on Fridays
5. Get shoe covers before going into the taj security (or bring socks)
After the taj, Ale and I had lunch and then called Super Khan to bring us around Agra. He brought us to the Baby taj (made for the king's grandmother years before), Agra Fort, and our favorite Mehtab Bahg, the gardens which are across the river from the taj (aka more pictures.) We stopped at a restaurant for the last 2 hours before our train. The restaurant was at a hotel and Ale ended up renting a room for two hours to take a nap. I had chai and then went shopping across the street for 30 minutes, because what I really needed was more souvenirs.
Super Khan picked us up at 6pm to drop us off at the train station. At 647 (655 train), Ale realized she had left her iPad at the hotel. She quickly called super Khan and told him she needed him back at the train station STAT and then I proceeded to freak out. Ale and I spent the next 3 minutes deciding if I should go with her and then decided it made the most sense to stick together and hope we could catch the next train out. As we were leaving the train station, I saw a blur of yellow go by .... I screamed (I can't make this up) "Super Khan!!!!!" as he is running towards our train to find us. Super Khan yells "Come! Hurry Up!" and we run with him through the train station to his rickshaw.
45 minutes later, Ale and I were back at the train station with her iPad in hand. The hotel had very kindly seen the iPad and saved it, wrapped in the copy of her passport (Thank you, Hotel Sheela!) Ale was one lucky girl. Super Khan waited for us, as we tried to get new tickets for the next train. The ticket counter for the train we needed had closed (you can't buy the tickets less than an hour before), so we got to wait in line at a different "I don't have a ticket" counter. This counter opened up at 8 pm, so we sent Super Khan home (he was on standby in case we needed him again) and waited the 15 minutes for this ticket counter to open. Amazingly, we got 2 tickets on the Taj Express for the 830 pm train and before we knew it, we were boarded and ready to go!
Now, we thought we had seen all the different trains, but The Taj Express is a whole new beast. It has real seats (no beds), is nonstop (2 hours!) to Delhi, and serves a dinner (and even dessert) which is included in the price. Let's just say we weren't the only tourists on The Taj Express. This was the train our hotel had insisted we travel on- it seems much more on par with their normal hotel guests.
So there you have it. Never a dull moment when traveling with Ms. Ale "Oops, my bad, Where's my iPad?!"
Pictures: 1-7: an obscene amount of taj pictures; 8-9: our fancy train food
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