Our next destination following Bodhgaya was Agra. We had heard Agra was not a great city and that people basically only traveled there for the Taj Mahal. This did not make us  terribly excited to go there, but I had been really disappointed to miss seeing the Taj Mahal when we were in India four years ago, so we planned to grin and bear it.

We decided to take a 15 hour (!) train ride from Bodhgaya to Agra. Fortunately this meant we would get our first experience in an Indian sleeper train. Indian trains are really interesting–there are so many people traveling here that it is very difficult to book seats last minute, and there are so many options and rules that it is extremely difficult to navigate purchasing tickets yourself online. When we searched for trains ourselves online, it would look like they were all full, but when we’d walk into the tourist booking office at the train station or talked with a “travel agent” (basically guys that sit in small offices with nothing else in there except a laptop) we found there would be tickets available. Sometimes you can easily get a seat as a foreigner under what they call the “foreign tourist quota”. It was a bit jarring at first to realize that we couldn’t just book tickets ourselves the way we were used to and had to rely on others to help us in many situations.

Overall, the train ride wasn’t too bad. I pretty much slept the whole time. Oh yes, and it is true what they say–toilets on Indian trains are basically holes that empty onto the train tracks (i.e. you can actually see the tracks as you are using it). If you ask me personally, I will tell you my graphic Indian train toilet story. But trust me, it is not for the faint of heart (hence why I will not be sharing it publicly on the blog…).

We made a good decision to sleep at a guesthouse in Agra near the Southern gate of the Taj Mahal. I was wary of staying in the main heart of Agra after our experience in Delhi, but Brian convinced me that I would be glad when we woke up at 6am to see the Taj Mahal at sunrise that we only had to walk a few minutes to get there (which I was). What was additionally great about this location was we chose to stay in a guesthouse with a rooftop restaurant with a view of the Taj Mahal. Since the Taj Mahal is closed on Fridays for Muslim services, and we were arriving on a Thursday afternoon, we were glad to have this view while we waited until we could actually visit it ourselves.

Since we had a day to kill on Friday, we decided to visit the Agra Fort. There is a very poetic connection between the Taj Mahal and the Agra Fort. Shah Jahan, Mughal Emperor in the 1600s, spent 22 years building the Taj Mahal for his third wife who died while given birth to their fourteenth child. Near the end of his life, he was imprisoned in the Agra Fort by one of his sons.  There is a view of the Taj Mahal from the Agra Fort, so the guidebooks very dramatically describe how Shah Jahan could do nothing but gaze at his amazing creation from his prison at the end of his life and until he died. We were impressed with the Agra Fort and also with the number of people asking if they could take our picture! I managed to take some pictures of Indians taking pictures of Brian, which I found extremely amusing.

We had heard that the view from the backside of the Taj Mahal is quite different from the traditional view that you see when you actually visit it, so we decided to go to that side during sunset after our visit to the fort. It didn’t look terribly different from the front side in our opinion, but here is a picture of it for you to be the judge:

A funny incident happened while we were watching the Taj at sunset. A blonde woman from I’m assuming somewhere in Eastern Europe started to walk down a path that lead away from where everyone else was watching the view. One of the policemen sitting there told her she couldn’t walk that way and her response was, “WHY FUCKING INDIANS ALWAYS TELLING ME ‘NO’!!!!?” and then proceeded to furiously walk down the path and disappeared into some brush. The policeman just shrugged and turned away  while one of the other tourists joked, “Because there are land mines that way…” I found this incident amusing for two reasons. First, I find India to be an extremely permissive, “anything goes” kind of place where there aren’t a lot of rules, so the fact that this woman reacted so strongly  seemed really out of place. I’m really curious to know what else she has been told she’s not allowed to do in India. Second, this situation really captures my experience with police here–they tell you what the rules are, but they really aren’t going to put a lot of effort into actually enforcing them.

On Saturday morning, we awoke bright and early in the pitch black to see the Taj at sunrise. Not only was it pitch black, but it was also quite foggy and difficult to see. Fortunately there were several trash fires burning along the street as we walked. Yes, you ready that correctly–this is how trash is disposed of here. People throw trash on the ground, someone sweeps it into a pile and then someone (perhaps the same person?) burns it. We are very curious to know who and how one decides to make a trash fire.

Despite being so close to the Taj Mahal, we started to panic that we wouldn’t make it there in time for sunrise because it was difficult to navigate down the dark, narrow streets. A very persistent bicycle rickshaw driver kept driving past us pestering us to let him give us a ride. We knew it was really close and we did not need a rickshaw, but we were feeling like we weren’t going to find the entrance to the south gate in time, so we finally capitulated after hearing the price was only 10 rupees, even though we knew this was completely overpriced for the distance we were going. We climbed into the rickshaw and said, “Ok, 10 rupees” and the guy said, “No, 10, 10” (i.e. 10 for each of us, not 10 total). Since we were in the rickshaw and the guy was already pedaling away, we sort of accepted that we were paying double what we had expected to. But then, we were even more astounded when the guy literally pedals 20 feet, stops and points and says, “Southern gate” (for context we took a bicycle rickshaw 2.5 miles for 30 rupees the day before). We realized that we had just been taken for a much bigger financial ride than the literal one we had received.

This anecdote nicely captures something that Brian and I have struggled with in India. Everyone warns you not to get taken advantage of India because it is quite common. This has made me and Brian really cautious about knowing the prices of things, so we can’t get ripped off. When situations like the one I just described have happened to us, we have understandably felt dumb and a little angry or sad that someone would do that to us. But here’s the real kicker of this story: the amount of money we are talking about here, 20 rupees, is equivalent to……..32 cents. Yes, Brian and I were upset about losing 32 cents, and the amounts involved in situations like this are usually around a dollar. It has been an ongoing emotional conflict for us to have those strong negative feelings when the amount of money involved is so insignificant, but the money isn’t the root of the issue; we just don’t like feeling like other people see us as ignorant and gullible and that they can be dishonest or manipulative when they interact with us. It makes it even more difficult to feel like we’re connecting with people in the places we visit. Fortunately, our research on Thailand (the next phase of our trip) has helped us reconcile this conflict a bit. In Thailand, according to the guidebooks, If you can afford less, you pay less, and if you can afford more, you pay more, even though it’s for the same exact thing. They consider it a social obligation to pay more if you can afford to. This is the perspective we’ve decided to take on it. Since we come from a place that allows us to pay significantly more for things than the peole that live here in India, we’ve decided to accept that we will be seen as an opportunity for others to make a little extra. This ‘making a little extra’ is even official government policy, as you will actually see this reflected in India with the government prices at all the sights and museums here where the foreign tourist price is much higher than the Indian price. After being in India for over a month, we have definitely gotten much more comfortable with all of this, though I don’t think our discomfort will ever entirely go away.

And now for the grand finale: Pictures at the Taj Mahal!