Trip to India: Day Eight

Will and I decided to skip a 7:30 lecture that my mom had arranged for the students on tourism in India so that we could sleep in. We woke up and went to breakfast, which was parathas, idlis, a hard-boiled egg, pineapple, and toast. After breakfast, we just hung around a bit because the talk hadn’t quite finished. Right as the talk was about to finish, a man from the place we ate breakfast at called me in. I thought he was saying that I could go and sit until the talk ended, but what he actually wanted was for me to write a five-star review of the hotel. This happened right as the students were walking out from the talk so I had to rush through it. I ended up telling the guy that I would finish and post the review later, which I never really got around to doing…. After the talk, we went out to the bus because we were traveling to the city of Agra (where the Taj Mahal is). The drive would be about four to five hours in total. Before leaving New Delhi we saw one more thing (just from the bus), the governmental part of New Delhi. This is the place where the Prime Minister Lives and where all of the embassies are because New Delhi is the capital of India. You would have no idea you were in the same city as Jahanara’s tomb (the crazy place from yesterday’s journal) because it was so high class looking. There were embassies from all kinds of different countries like Norway, Sudan, and the U.S. The place where the Prime Minister lived was HUGE and stunning. After we left greater New Delhi we were greeted with green fields that were both endless and luscious. I was amazed that a country with far over one billion people had this much free space. I started to see tons and tons of villages where brick is made. There are hundreds of smokestacks from bricks that dot the countryside off of the highway. These bricks are transported to big cities where they are used in all kinds of architecture. About halfway through the drive we stopped for lunch at a roadside restaurant. I wasn’t expecting much because it looked like an off the highway McDonald’s kind of thing, but it was fantastic. I had chole bhature, which is a gigantic poori with a spicy chickpea sauce. I loved it, but what I loved even more was the price. For 18 people the price came to just under 50 dollars, so the price per person was about 2.75 dollars for something that is ten times better than McDonald’s. After the rest area, we were back on the road heading towards Agra. On the way there, we kept passing this one small red car with about ten people in it. There was one boy who kept waving at me and taking pictures of me, which I found really cute. Every time our bus passed his car (which was about ten times) I would wave to him and smile and he would do the same. A couple hours later we arrived on the outskirts and were greeted with tons of traffic. Agra is a city of only three million people but it is the center for a huge surrounding area of villages. I had been to Agra before and was well aware that it is not a very nice city. It’s interesting because there are a few absolutely beautiful buildings (the Taj Mahal) in the city but all of the other buildings just look bad. We arrived at our hotel, the Grand Imperial, which was clearly one of the absolutely beautiful buildings I was talking about before. I actually like Agra, because the good is mixed with the bad. My mom, Will, and I ended up getting a suite that was AMAZING. The ceilings were 15 feet hall, there was a door that lead directly to an outdoor pool, the bed was one of those beds with drapes around it (the drapes were tied up though), and the bathtub was beautiful and 80 years old. We dropped our bags at the hotel and went to see our first sight in Agra, Itamid-Ud-Daula’s tomb (A.K.A) the mini-Taj. It looks almost exactly like the Taj Mahal but it is much smaller. In fact, it was built 10 years before the Taj Mahal and is the first tomb done entirely in marble. The tomb was amazing to see because of the extreme detail all over it. There were all kinds of inlays of stones that made up flower patterns called pietra dura work. In pietra dura work, semi-precious stones are cut and inlayed in the shape of geometric patterns or flowers in marble. I got lots and lots of pictures at the Mini Taj of all kinds of things. Behind the tomb down below by where the river is there were lots of boys wanting their picture taken. I said sure and took their picture, but then they wanted money. They were just boys, and there was no way that they could come up to the tomb and ask for more, so Johnson gave them money. After the Mini Taj we all headed over to the actual Taj Mahal. We would see it the next morning at dawn from the side where most people see it, but we all wanted to see it at sunset from the other side. Not as many people know about the other side, which is stunning. On that side there is a garden that is perfectly symmetrical just as the Taj is. When you walk in that garden, you just don’t feel like you’re in Agra. It is one of the most beautiful things you can imagine, with the sun setting on one side causing the Taj to turn a dim pink color on the other side. It was another place that felt like Heaven on Earth except for the fact that there were about one hundred bugs in my hair, on my shirt, and all over my body. I was wearing a yellow shirt, which I think really attracted all of these stupid knats that just would not leave me alone. It must have been the shirt, because I was literally the ONLY PERSON who had any bugs on them. By the time I got back to the hotel I am pretty sure I committed a knat genocide… Anyways, after the Taj we had a nice, relaxing dinner at the hotel. It was Afghani and Indian chicken and naan. Will and I also went for a swim in the pool connecting to our room. It was a great day, as any day is when you see the Taj Mahal. There is something about that building that is truly magical and indescribable. Maybe tomorrow I’ll be able to give a better description about it.
A smokestack from one of the brick-making towns: