Before making any firm plans I decided to visit the Internet lounge upstairs, which moved slower than the O.A.P. queue on pension day at the post office, and also just happened to be next to the tour booking desk in the hotel.
As any good tour guide would, he did his best to engage me in conversation to figure out how much of my money he could get out of me for offering me his tour, what he didnt do was tell me the truth about how best to get to Agra or the hidden upselling cost of the entrance fee to foreign tourists who visit the Taj Mahal.
Apparently the place was closed tomorrow, not that I would have time to visit it and return in time for my flight anyway, so if I still wanted to go then today was the only chance I would have. He told me about the slow buses or the even slower stopping train so suggested that I take his companies private car but that even that would be at least 4 hours going and longer coming back with the Indian traffic, all for a cost of 4,200 IR.
What he didn't tell me what that it did not include a guide at the other end, as the driver was not a guide and knew not much about the place, that the entrance fee was a staggering 750 IR for tourists, but only 20 for Indians ( I tell you we really should be like this in the UK, it would cut down the amount of foreigners who stay here for sure and it seems like us Brits and the Americans are the only countries that DON'T overcharge toursits by standard government policy !). No, I found that out just a few minutes away from the entrance and although I paid it in the end it meant that I decided not to take their tour tomorrow daytime and my review of this hostel was not going to be so good.
The driver of the bus chatted to me as best he could for the four hours we were in transit, but he had a bit of a fixation on women and kept asking for jokes and tips on how he could seduce the female tourists that he escorted from place to place. Not the he wanted to love or marry one, of course not as he was a good Hindu Indian, but he had seen enough blue movies to be sure that western women were very open and good at sex and he wanted some fun before getting married to a clean Indian woman.
It was a hot drive and we stopped twice to pick up drinks and twice more as the car broke down, but luckily they were only minor engine stalls and semi flooded engines rather than complete mechanical failures and so he was able to coax the car back to life both times with no more than five minutes delay. We also passed at least three traffic accidents along the road which is no surprise after witnessing how overloaded they pile their vehicles, be it trucks pulling caravans, oxen pulling bags or tuk tuks carrying passengers.
Once at Agra he pulled into a parking lot almost one kilometer away from the main entrance at the western gate of the Taj Mahal, not being allowed to go any further by a barier right across the road, but told me it was direct ten minute walk and not to stop or talk to anyone on the way there, not that I had any money left which was the other reason why I was so angry at the tour guide. So it was that I passed pedalos, donkey carts, horse carriages and even Camel wagons on the route to the gate, which in the end did take me about six minutes and saved me the 150 rupees that everyone was asking for the ride at the parking lot.
The Indian government try to suggest that the reason for disallowing cars to drive all the way up is to prevent pollution at the site, but having seen how much garbage and trash is abslutely everywhere I tend to believe my own view which is that it is just a way of milking that little bit more out of tourists, as there is no way the taxi driver was going to give me the money to pay for a ride that last kilometer.
Once I bought myself the entrance ticket I was told to go to the side and pick up my free bottle of water, my free government guide ( who was not much of a informative guide but it was nice to have someone semi-trustworthy to take photos of me once inside the complex ) and also my free tiny shoe webbing, as otherwise I would have to take my shoes off at the main entrance to the white marble temple.
Walking around the Taj Mahal with my guide took about one and a half hours, all the while he patiently waited for me to take my own photos and was fairly competent at taking shots of me standing at the classic locations along the main route to the entrance.
The Taj Mahal is not the largest temple in India, but it considered to be the most impressive and spectacular to view, was built for the wife of one of their rulers a few hundred years ago and took 15 years to complete the main building and another 7 for the twin buildings, courtyard and gate houses at a cost said to be arond 14 million rupees at the time.
The history also goes that the same ruler wanted to build a black Taj Mahal for himself just across the river for his own future burial, complete with expansive bridge across linking the two for all eternity, but his eldest son decided that this was a waste of money and as he would rather spend the money on himself he had his father arrested, ( who subsequently later died while still in prison ), seized power for himself and halted the construction with barely the foundations laid for the second temple.
After the main tour my guide took me out via a second exit so that he could show me how the inlaid artwork was done by craftsmen whose descendents had worked on the Taj Mahal itself, if you chose to believe it, and after a brief demonstration led me over to a side stall where they tried to coax me in to buying an ornate box or souveneir for a family member of friend back home.
I don't often buy souveneirs as a rule and so today thanks to my hostel tour desks ineptitute I was saved the awkward dilemma of trying to whether to bargain for a small trinket of not just to make him happy, as I just didnt have anything left to give, which sort of left me free to shrug and just walk out feeling that I could not have bought anything no matter how low he wanted to drop his 'very good price' for me down to.
Palming my guide my last 50 IR note as I left, I walked back to the parking lot where I was picked up by my driver and we started off going back to Delhi. So far I had not seen anything that showed there was any real money in India at all, and knowing that everywhere has some rich folk, I asked where the rich lived in Delhi and my driver said south, so I am guessing that the north is the poor area, the central is the business district and the south is the affluent area, almost worth a small side trip to visit tomorrow.
Feeling more than slightly peckish I gladly stopped off at the McDonalds about half way back, but of course it is forbidden to eat Cow here in India, so thankfuly Chicken and fish were still on the menu and best of all was a ATM just around the corner. I was sorely templed to go for the Marharajah Burger, which looked like a Big Mac only I wasnt sure of which meat was in it and it had so much salad and weird coloured relish that in the end hunger drove me to stick to the safe option of a chicken burger meal. It was hardly food for the gods, but it was very hot, not luke warm like most places, the chips were properly cooked and not soggy and the coke wasnt too watery, so apart from not having beef as an option you could get a lot worse than trying a Delhi McDonalds.
The remainder of the ride was a bit of a comedic duel between us and another car, whose driver loved to race off ahead whenever he got onto a clear stretch of road but had no overtaking skills whatsoever and so without even trying we would catch and overtake him the moment the road got even slighly congested. Over five hours after leaving the Taj Mahal, and passing only a few big shopping malls which were the only hints of any real wealth or prosperity in India, we made it back to the area where my hostel was, where the driver dropped me off and gave me directions to find my way back along the main road.
I headed on back, changed the last of my Chinese money along the way getting a bad deal despite haggling yet better than no deal at all, and after settling my bill so I knew how much I had left to spend went out into the night to see what mischief I could find. What I found was the pimps offering to help me get 'whatever you are looking for', and rows of homeless all sleeping huddled up next to each other on the side of what passed for roads here in this area.
Of course being normally paranoid at being out after dark, before stepping out I had removed all my valuables and left them all back in my room, so the worst that could happen was that I would be robbed or pickpocketted of a few hundred rupees, but as it happened all that did happen was that I was approached by a couple of beggars til I reached the end of a main street and decided that without a map and paying for directions the best I could do was find a half decent Indian restaurant where I could try some local curry before gonig back to my hotel room and sleeping the last of the heat exhaustion away.
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