Awful Agra?

Varanasi

Everyone I've spoken to about Agra has said just go and see the Taj, maybe the fort, and then get out of there. So I wasn't really relishing the expected hassle onslaught. But, as often happens, my expectations were so low that I ended up enjoying my day and three-quarters there. It was well after 10am when I got to my hotel after the train journey from Ranthambore. By the time I had a hot choc and went to bed it was after 11 and the 5.15am alarm call was already seeming quite close. I was at the ticket window by 5.45am, about fourth in line. I understood from various sources that it opened at 5.30 so you could see daybreak over the palace. But no. By 6.15 we were still standing there, muttering among ourselves that we could have had a lie in. Finally, about five minutes after that, they opened the hatch and the game was on. But it came unhinged after the first two people were served. The ticket lot had no change, and an American woman in front of me paid 1000 rupees instead of the 750 due, with a promise she could come back later and get her change. But nowt in writing. I was in the same boat, with just two 500 rupee notes. They wouldn't sell me a ticket. How can you not have change available, I asked, more rhetorically than to get any kind of answer. What could I do? By now there was a big queue and if I went off to find an ATM and joined the back I'd never be in my lunchtime, never mind sunrise. I told the next lot in the queue what was going on, and while I was remonstrating I noticed the audioguide window. Maybe they could break 500 for me when I rented the guide. They did, but were 100 short of change and wrote on my chit that I was due it. I'd get it when I picked up the guide inside the palace complex. Happily, the people in the queue let me back in and I finally had my ticket. But they still hadn't started letting people in. It was fully light by now but the sun wasn't up yet. A govt guide hoping I'd hire him helpfully reminded me to pick up my free bottle of water and shoe covers, and I went up the road for a quick masala chai and then joined the women's line waiting to go in. Different queues for men and women. Before too much longer, they started letting us in, to have our bags and persons searched, and I was through. Despite all the faff, the sun had yet to touch the Taj Mahal. I would see this wondrous event after all. Turning into the courtyard and towards the big sandstone entrance gate into the gardens in which the tomb sits, it was a thrill to catch my first glimpse of it. I took some quick snaps and then joined a huddle of people in pole position front and centre, waiting for the big moment. There was some serious jostling going on, and one American man with two cameras mounted on a tripod finally had to point out that he had a permit to shoot and had to persuade one particularly resistant guy to get out of the way. I was standing slightly off centre, wondering why I was bothering at all with my wee compact camera. I said to the poor Indian guy trying to sort it out that all this is a bit ironic given the Taj Mahal is a monument to love. He laughed and then beckoned me into a decent spot. The sound of digital shutters snapping was all around. One guy complained that the man beside me was occupying a prime slot but wasn't shooting. He kneeled down out of the way, but in doing so nudged another fella, who in turn hit the permit guy's tripod. "No!" he protested, in frustration. "No, you cannot touch the tripod, Dude. Now I gotta start all over again." At last the sun rose high enough in the sky for its rays to lightly begin to lick the white marble of the tomb. As the minutes wore on, it took on a white sheen where the sun's touch was felt. Then I began to wonder when it'd have that lovely pink glow you often see in pics. I stead, it was just gradually getting whiter. Hmmm. his wasn't what I had in mind at all. I extricated myself from the snapping pack and went off to get my audioguide. The gal issuing them said I'd get my 100 rupees back where I'd paid initially. I was beginning to feel I'd been had, especially after the gal tried to hide my chit under her register book. Anyway, I set off back into the grounds at a more relaxed pace this time. In the end, I found the Taj Mahal so familiar from all the footage and photos I've seen that it was almost as if I'd been there before. As sublime as it is, it wasnt ultimately as fascinating to me as the forts and palaces I've rambled through and explored. The building itself consists of a small central chamber where the fake tombs of Mumtaz and her supposedly adoring husband are. Their actual bodies are in a chamber below, which you can't visit. There's an outer walkway around the tomb chamber, which you go round and find yourself at the back door, and that's it. I was also disgruntled at the sentiment behind the building. The emperor built it in memory of one of his wives, who died after giving birth to their 12th or somesuch child. If he hadn't turned the woman inside out he'd have saved himself the lavish grief-ridden building project. With my Western modern-day women's empowerment head on, I had no sympathy. It's always the men who beat their wives up and run about with other women who buy the biggest bunches of flowers, isn't it. No, I wasn't having any of it. I spent a few hours in the grounds, taking my time and enjoying the audio commentary, while wondering if I'd get my 100 rupees. Was this another scam? The old no-change-Madam-come-back-later trick? Heads would roll, I decided. Even the glory of the Taj Mahal couldn't silence my conspiracy theory paranoia. When I came back out, I got my 100 rupees - ironically from Miss Slip the Chit Under the Book, who was now back at the outer audioguide window. In the afternoon, I walked to the fort, about a km from the Taj Mahal, through the bazaar and then a park, albeit along a busy road. Camel carts, tuk-tuks, horse traps and cycle rickshaws were ferrying people between the two sights, or the various bus and train stations. I really enjoyed wandering around the fort, again with my audioguide to my ear - apart from a shockingly persistent bunch of cretins dressed like pimps who wouldn't take no for an answer when I refused to get involved in having my picture taken with the pack of them. In the evening there was the prospect of a Taj view from a rooftop restaurant but when I sat down you could see nothing. Turns out they don't illuminate it at night. I spent the next day at my hotel, just chilling out and writing a few letters, with an impromptu cookery lesson from the cook. So, all in all, an enjoyable couple of days where I'd expected the opposite.