All that Glitters is not Gold
Thursday, November 19, 2009 at 4:59AM
Giller

Having arrived in Delhi sooner than I expected I had some time to kill ... or rather cherish as Homer would say. To be honest Delhi was a lot calmer than I expected, perhaps Mumbai is where one gets that sense of being totally crowded out. Thus, the first day I just tried to recuperate by finding the eateries on Connaught Place. This is the shopping and business district and is organised much like a ripple with a garden in the middle and circular streets with inter-connecting avenues expanding from the centre. I was getting aggro from every side and as my legs were tired I eventually capitulated and retreated to my hotel room to watch the cricket and a very dodgy flick on HBO. I have a lot of time for HBO due to some of the great shows they have broadcast through the years but the quality of their exports is dismal; Hollywood at its absolute worst. Larry David would have had a field day commentating on the stuff I was watching.

I didn’t have the strength to face another day of getting hounded so I decided to sample the Indian train service by doing what is referred to as the Golden Triangle; Jaipur, Agra and Delhi. I would make a day-trip to Jaipur, overnight there (I kept my hotel in Delhi to safe-keep my bike and bags) before taking the early train to Agra to visit the Taj Mahal. I would then take the direct train from Agra to return to Delhi at 11pm that same day.

King Humayun's tomb - DelhiI will start with Delhi where I finished up. I had planned to join a bike-tour in the hope that they would show me the niche spots but I failed to locate the tour. So, I headed off on my own to cover probably 70% of the main sites in Delhi in one day. Honestly, bikes are the best way to see any city as you can cover so much ground. While my first impressions of Delhi were not positive it really is an international city. It is currently busying itself with preparations for the Commonwealth Games in 2010. The highlight for me was possibly the quiet Mahatma Gandhi museum where I was inspired to exercise patience in terms of my dealings with Indians. Isn’t Gandhi an absolute legend? A universal man of the people. Delhi itself was easy to navigate on the bike and it has lots of open spaces for people to lie on the grass, have picnics or play cricket. It was an enjoyable day for sure.

Jaipur is home to what is known as the ‘Pink City’ due to the almost terracotta like colour of its buildings. While it didn’t rain it was cloudy and the ground was wet from an early morning shower. This helped to dilute the numerous cow-pats on the streets so it was not a day for the flip-flops for sure. I was traipsing around the city with Josh, an American who lives in Hollywood. Not having a guide-book I didn’t have a rashers about accommodation and as he had booked somewhere I shared his cab and ultimately his twin-room. We saw what there was to see in the Pink City but omitted visiting the fortresses on the out-skirts for which we would have needed a car. I couldn’t see what all the fuss was about to be honest. The boring cloudscape spoiled any photography and the architecture wasn’t that great in any case. So, feeling a little disappointed we grabbed some din dins and called it an early night. I was sure that the Taj Mahal would make up for it the following day but it meant rising at 5am to catch the train.

Taj Mahal - AgraAgra is regarded as a one-trick pony. There may be a few sights there but ultimately people don’t want to hang around and so they end up spending a half-day getting in and out so that they can see the Taj and its gardens. Only photographers would hang around from sun-rise to sun-set to capture the Taj Mahal’s many different moods. I was banking on getting a sun-set but the sky was not open for business. In addition my three and a half hour train journey turned into a marathon 10 hours as the train was originally an hour delayed and so had missed its rightful passage on the tracks. The result was that we crept along and I barely made it to the Taj Mahal at all. I sneaked in 4 minutes before they were due to close the doors and just in advance of the last moments of day-light. The place was mobbed, kids are allowed in free so school tours were plentiful and Indians get in for next to nothing. Getting inside the mausoleum itself was worse than trying to squeeze onto the Tube in rush-hour. I have never seen anything like it. The Taj is truly iconic. It is set in nice grounds so it has space to breathe and to dominate the awe-struck tourist. By the time I made it inside it was dark outside and so I was literally walking around in the dark following a bunch of random people. I couldn’t see a thing; it felt like I was treading along blindly in the one of those chambers of horrors that one finds in fun-parks. But there is not much to see in any case; the Taj is all about its exterior. Having not eaten all day (the train was too early for breakfast and I had not banked on a delayed train forcing me to skip lunch) I bailed to grab some food and make it back to the train-station. For sure the day did not turn-out as well as it might have but I have in fact visited the Taj Mahal numerous times before ... in the board-game ‘Hotel’ of course. Indeed, if one was to use this game as the basis for a round-the-world trip one would visit the following hotels (if my memory serves me correctly): Royal, President, Waikiki, L’Etoile, Taj Mahal, Safari, Fuji and Boomerang. I’ll leave you to work out the countries.

Marco

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