Taj Gunge

Agra, 6-8th March 2011

WM: So we came, we saw, we had ‘awesome’ banana-chocolate lassis (of which, more later), we left... M tells me Julius Caesar said something similar. Everybody had psyched themselves up to deal with the anticipated nonsense that comes for free with Agra. And it lived up to the hype by-and-large, but there were quiet, unexpected moments, among the throngs, too.

We arrived by taxi, having stopped at Fatehpur Sikri (Akbar’s imperial city) on the way.  Fatehpur Sikri is another mainstream place full of tourist parties, but arriving with the turrets and pavilions revealing themselves from the mist and driving through the ruins to the main gate was nonetheless thrilling.  There’s inevitably much more than we could possibly see in a day’s visit, particularly since the younger children’s enthusiasm for monuments or sites is inversely proportional to the time they spend seeing them. So I spend large chunks of time sitting in shady spots, finding alternative amusements for them, while WD takes his photos and actually looks at the buildings.

Fatehpur Sikri is full of people shouting and pestering you persistently and demanding your attention and money – guides (official and unofficial), touts for shops and cafés, pedlars, beggars, boys wanting to ‘buy’ your ASI ticket off you in exchange for postcards (I suspect to sell on to other tourists, undercutting the official entrance – although they denied this).  Akbar built his own Jami Masjid with an important saint’s shrine at its centre – M and WD took a look.  The rest of us inspected the huge bee colonies high up on the concavities of iwan (gateway) and sat in a shady corner, watching the comings and goings of the mosque and talking to the boys working the foreign crowd.  I had an interesting chat to Ali, a 12 year old working for his uncle in the ‘tourist’ trade both in Fatehpur Sikri and Agra. Once we’d established that I wasn’t going to buy anything, go to his uncle’s shop or sell him my ticket, we settled down to talk about family and school and foreigners, and he tried to teach me Hindi names for body parts (he thought I should know them as a doctor).

 We then wandered out of the main complex, trying to find an older mosque that WD wanted to see, finding instead the hammam and narrow village streets.  You sense that tourism here is confined strictly within the renovated walls of the palace complex, and that our presence outside those walls was both intrusion and curious. Mostly we just concentrated on keeping out of the overflowing open drains and not stepping in the multi-various animal and human detritus.  I’m regularly struck by the squalor of public spaces and yet private spaces, even within poorer areas, are generally swept and clean – and don’t really understand the dichotomy.  Wandering around the ruined city outside the main palace complex, similarly you are alone, the crowds having stepped back onto their AC buses and the quiet seems a miracle.  Buffaloes are taken out to the fields through the old, cobbled streets and ruined walls.

Back on the highway, and in need of lunch, WD was close to losing it with both our driver and the complacent owners of the tourist restaurants that line the route.  Our driver was happy to stop – ‘a good restaurant’ (he almost certainly receives commission for delivering us there) – only for us to refuse to pay the outrageously inflated prices.  Motorway cafés in the UK can charge a premium, but 400%? After repeated requests for a truckers’ dhaba, our driver eventually disbelievingly pulled over, to let us eat roti and dal at a reasonable price.

Agra is a large, noisy industrial city in its post-Mughal incarnation.  Like in every other big Indian city, traffic congeals along every artery.  We opted to stay in Taj Ganj, the old quarter just south of the Taj, mostly so that we could walk to it and have, if not a room with a view, at least a view from a roof top (if you peered round an inconvenient tree).  Taj Ganj is traditional back-packer territory, grafted into Shah Jehan’s planned cavansarai.  It remains a ‘budget’ option, pretty grubby and full of restaurants whose lack of food hygiene is a certainty, rather than a likely possibility. Taj Ganj reawakens microbial paranoia, which has been surprisingly dormant in me for several months (since our last sorté out, travelling in North India indeed...) – if we make it out of here without gastroenteric complications, I’ll be surprised... 

WD had memories of his best-ever lassi 20 years ago (banana and chocolate...) and sought out the very same café (Joney’s – about the size of the children’s play house at home) and indeed café –proprieter (Joney, who says so many people tell him they have come back 20, 30 years on to see him and have another lassi).  There were about 4 crammed tables full of home-sick Koreans eating noodles and a beardy Canadian who told us about his adventures, a manky cousin of Keith-the-marmalade-cat’s pursuing hand-outs, a cooker with geological scale grease-deposition, walls signed by passing travellers (L&M added their own scrawl).  However, the banana-chocolate lassis were indeed very fine (as good as WD’s recollections), and M rated the mango ones too! 

The Taj Mahal is the most beautiful building in the world, or at least that’s the orthodoxy.  [It also has very fine urinals complete with sandstone Mughal arches around each, or so WD tells us].  For me honestly, over-familiarity with the reproduced image, a previous visit, hungry children, as well as the considerable hassle-factor diminished the wonder – and honestly I have responded more positively to other Mughal monuments that I’ve seen for the first time on this trip (Humayun’s tomb and the Jamali-Kamali interior come to mind).  Having said this, M was in rhapsody seeing the Taj for the first time, and I did catch myself going out onto the guest house rooftop just to peer at it reverently several times a day, just to observe its changing aspect.

It is also interesting to see the encroachment of Hinduism right up to the gate of the Taj Mahal, a ‘Muslim’ monument.  Temples have been built around the perimeter, impromptu shrines have sprung up on the river shore immediately below it, devout Hindus gather to pray whilst queues pass them going into the Taj. Peaceful co-existence?

We’d set our alarm clocks in order to see it in early light and before the queues got too monstrous, but having queued separately for tickets and security checks, the point of this was a little lost.  Foreign tourists pay 750Rs (>£10) to go in, two-thirds of which goes to the Agra administration’s pockets, making it by far and away the most expensive outing in India.  Indian tourists pay 20R (and the monkeys come over the wall for free), but for our money, we’re handed a bottle of mineral water (you’re not allowed to take food and drink, books, paints, mobiles, juggling balls, etc  into the monument and tickets are for single entrance only) – oh, and are also permitted to use the toilets for free.  Children are free, which is good, but don’t qualify for water, nor are you allowed to buy them additional bottles, so their non-person status to the authorities is pretty clear.  The WPs’ irritation with this sort of nonsense seems much greater at this point in the trip.  I promise to write a stinky letter to the ASI. Think of the John Burningham  book, ‘Would You Rather...’ : would you rather your dad had a shouty row with the ticket office, or your mum complained to the Government?’  We were definitely embarrassing parents on a mission in Agra, as WM told the security woman off for chatting on her phone whilst she inexpertly frisked her (if we’re going to go through this farce, let’s at least do it properly?) and WD had a run-in with the toilet attendant, who had hidden the sign saying that foreigners did not have to pay toilet charges, in order to extort money off them. 

I am aware that our blogging about monuments often ends up in discussion of toilets. This probably reflects the non-professional part of the team as WD can generally be relied on to have some more interesting thoughts beyond sanitation.  We did have a great hour or so looking at the Taj from the inside (till W could wait not a minute longer for his breakfast) but the beautiful stone and marble work, the stunning symmetry, the glory of the tomb, may all be less memorable than the tourist anthropology – Russian lovelies doing a pouty photo-shoot on every available plinth, nuns shyly having their pictures taken, the tour group team snaps – everyone having their picture taken to say  ‘I was here’ (including us).

  M: Well, I thought the Taj Mahal lived up to my expectations (except for the toilets where the man was greedy – it said ‘Foreigners no charge’ and then the man was charging 20, 50 even 100 rupees to go to the loo when I was there).  I liked the idea of having a ‘foot’ picture – it was for Toby.  Toby and Dad did it when they were here before [WM: there’s an infamous photo of Toby’s big toes in front of the Taj Mahal from a previous fraternal visit in 1993]. I didn’t like getting up early.  The queues were fine though.   I liked where we stayed because I liked the view of the Taj Mahal from it, and I liked the people who were looking after us.  I went to Agra Fort with Dad.  It was amazing, much, much nicer than the Red Fort in Delhi, because we could enter more of it and it was older architecture, not just Shah Jahan, but Akbar and a little of Jahangir.  My favourite bit was probably where Shah Jehan was imprisoned, beautiful marble work, each bit covered in precious stones.  I think we stayed long enough and I’m glad we went to Bharatpur as well.

L: It was boring. No, it wasn’t – don’t write it was boring, mum.  It was very nice. I liked the symmetry and it was quite beautiful.  I see why people make a fuss about it.  I got tired though and wanted my breakfast.

WM:  My favourite moment in Agra actually happened our first evening in Agra, when we wandered down to the bathing ghats (the area of river immediately below the Taj Mahal).  We were so close to the Taj that you could see and hear the throngs up above us, but in every other way, it seemed so far removed as we walked down a little lane, past small homes and animals, boys coming back from mosque, old men chatting with the sun low in the sky.  The Yamuna river wasn’t dry and we sat on the steps, watching as the boat man ferried customers across to the other side, and could see goats and cows being herded on the opposite bank.  Of course, everyone wants to see Great Wonders, like the Taj, and it is inevitable that they act as tourist nectar, but that just catalyzes my urgent need for space and peace, both of which are achievable just metres away from the Taj Mahal itself.