Agravation

Agra, Uttar Pradesh, India

 

So New Dehli got old very quickly, the scamming and heat and the traffic make it a hard place to really enjoy for very long.  I spent a lot of time locked in my hotel room watching cricket.  While hanging out and watching TV isn't the reason why I came here, when you're in Dehli and it's hot, and you're tired of being harassed, it can be a refreshing alternative.  Also I got to meet up with my friend Hashmet - hiker/author/expedition leader/tour guide - who helped me plan the rest of my India travels.  That helped quite a bit, because northern India/Dehli can kind of sour your mood a bit as it's got the atmosphere of a prison riot in a phone booth.

 

Similar to that, and many times worse, is the spot where I am now, lovely Agra.  Agra represents the  postcard-best of India, boasting the Taj Mahal, the Red Fort, and a boatload of other monuments and places of historic interest just a short ride from Dehli.   It also represents the absolute worst, matching its monuments with extortionate pricing, punishing heat, wall to wall crowds, filthy, polluted, vile streets, and the most persistent and annoying touts, con-artists, scammers, and everything- wallahs on the subcontinent.  The only reason why I'm here is because I couldn't face the inevitable "you went to India for seven weeks and didn't see the Taj Mahal?" scrutiny that would have followed had I skipped it (and am now stuck here for a few more hours until a dreadful bus ride as the train tickets were sold out - although hopefully it will be better than the last bus ride from Amritsar to Dehli, which featured a lot of yelling in Punjabi and a trip to the police station regarding an attempt to place a coffee table in the aisle.)  The Taj is nice enough, it looks like it does in all the pictures, though I found the Red Fort more interesting.  Anyway, I've seen it, and now I can get the hell out.

 

Tomorrow I am heading southwards to Chennai aka Madras and then spending the next 3 weeks in Tamil Nadu and Kerala - supposedly the atmosphere in the south is more relaxed than in the north, which is good, to put it delicately.