one night in agra

It's been over a week since my last post, so this one is super long. BUT! As incentive for reading the whole thing, there is a contest at the end... stay tuned...

All of last week there was this building pressure to travel somewhere on the weekend: we had looked at our syllabi and there were only three "free" weekends when we didn't have some kind of trip/excursion/meeting/project. Initially I wasn't sure if/where I wanted to go. My host family has been so welcoming that it felt cheap to skip out on my first opportunity to spend a lot of time with them since Qutb Minar last Tuesday. But, in the end, when they were taking a final head count for the trip, I raised my hand, eager to be Taj-bound. It sounds weird to say it like this, but I was looking forward to getting seeing the Taj "over with," so to speak. I can get rid of that "how did you go all the way to India and NOT see the Taj Mahal?!??" mentality.

The Thursday before we left, a few girls and I went to Khan Market after class. We took the Delhi metro (arguably the most consistent and organized thing in Delhi, and it's brand new, and reminds me of the monorail in Disney World) uptown. After checking out a few bookstores and picking up a Hindi/Urdu/Begali phrasebook, we all sat in a coffee shop and relaxed. It was a "fancy" coffee shop in one of the most expensive shopping areas in Delhi, but still the cappucinos are only Rs 100 (about $2.25). Put that in your frappe and drink it, Starbucks.

We came back for yet another great meal with our host family. Molly, my roommate, has gotten really good at eating with her hands, the way our family does, but it's still really hard for me! I can do it, but there's a method to not looking like a moron while doing it that I just haven't quite mastered. I tried out a few of the Hindi and Begali phrases out on my four year old host bro, Aurco, but phrases like "how much is the rickshaw?" and "which way to the ATM?" are just not that helpful and only score an odd look from him..

Friday consisted of a Hindi lecture and another Health and Human Rights lecture in the afternoon. I'll post more of what we're learning soon - I want to get the guest lecturers' names and organizations right. I will tell you that I have been so impressed with the Hindi instructors who have brought us so far in only a few classes. We only have 21 classes with them in total, so we're trying to suck up as much intensive Hindi as possible. This week we've had quizzes everyday, and can now form sentences with prepositional phrases (well, in Hindi you put the preposition AFTER the object, so really it's a post-positional phrase).

Friday afternoon we attempted to book train tickets for the following morning to Agra (only about 2.5 hours away by train, 5 by car). Our Hindi teacher, Gotham-ji, came with us to try and speed up the process. We went to one train station on the opposite side of Delhi, and I caught my a glimpse of what pollution must have looked like a year ago BEFORE the clean up that came along with Delhi hosting the Commonwealth Games: piles and piles of trash, 10 ft high in parts! They line the streets and make it impossible to pass through. I've seen SO MUCH TRASH everywhere, so that wasn't a shock that it was there in the first place, but the sheer amount was just absolutely dumbfounding. After our attempt at finding tickets there did not work, we were told that there were still 10 tickets left under the "foreign tourist quota" at the OTHER train station. We hopped back into a cab and went the 40 minutes there, to the craziest thing I have seen in my life to date: the New Delhi train station. It's really impossible to put into words how insane this place is, so I'll just put it this way: it was crazy enough that I did not have the time or space to pull out my camera to take a picture. There is just SO MUCH GOING ON all over the place and so many people with bags and bags and bags and so many sights and smells and trains and honking and noise that it was definitely the most overwhelming thing I have seen to date. Somehow I think India will challenge me on this statement, because it seems that she likes to do that. There are just no absolutes here, and when you find one, you can never be sure.

After a crazy fifteen minutes trying to secure tickets, we found out that the foreign quota is for tourists only, and you have to show them your tourist visa to prove it (we have student visas). Katrina considered bribing them, and after a funny look from Gotham-ji, decided against it. Gotham-ji called our program director, Azim-ji (btw, "-ji" is a way of showing respect to anyone... we're always supposed to call our teachers -ji, kind of like Mr. or Ms., but it can also be used for an equal or someone younger - i.e. I get called Laura-ji by my teachers too) and Azim-ji called a guy who knew a guy who owns a taxi service, and got us a private car for the weekend for about 30 USD each! It was definitely more expensive than the train (about 2 USD) but saved us so much time and taxi/autorickshaw money.

After we worked out the taxi, Molly and I had to book it to the metro because our host fam had gotten us tickets to an international puppet show that had made a stop in Delhi. After about 20 minutes of trying to find our way out of the train station (THAT's how crazy it is - but the people here are for the most part so much more helpful/hospitable than Americans; we must have just looked like we didn't know where we were going and had at least 6 people over the course of the next 20 minutes point us in the right direction without us even asking). When we finally got to the Center where the show was, it turned out to be a bust because it was already halfway over and we had somehow gotten tickets for the only part of the show that was entirely in Hindi... whoops. It was a one woman show of Le Petit Prince, which was cool because I read it in French class about a bajillion years ago, so I had some idea of what was going on. Jaorti (our host parents refuse to let us call them -ji or "aunty and uncle" or anything like everyone else's parents make them do) drove us home and we collapsed from all the crazy travel plans, but not before hanging out with the kids...

The next morning around 6, I took an auto (first one by myself!) to Nehru Place where I met up with the other girls going to Agra. Molly decided to hang back and relax for the weekend, so it ended up being just five of us in a surprisingly clean, new van with an awesome driver who made sure to drive by all kinds of sites and tell us a little bit about them. The drive was about 5 hours and we were all asleep for most of the trip... in a couple of touristy traffic jam spots, we saw performing monkeys and all kinds of sellers who basically jumped on our car when they saw foreign tourists (the monkey literally was jumping on the car).

This was a huge Hindu temple we passed:

We headed right to the Youth Hostel and made sure we had a place to stay for the night, showed them our passports proving that we're students and under 25, and paid Rs 80 each (less than $2) for our accommodation. It was bare bones, and I definitely wouldn't stay there for a week, but it was fine (other than a small bed bug incident that Katrina woke up to... when I got home I immediately washed EVERYTHING I own, don't worry Mom and Dad, you won't have to fumigate me).

We then asked our driver to take us to a "good place to eat," and it seems he took this quite literally because he took us to a place called "Quality Restaurant." We had a feast and had so much food leftover that we bagged it for dinner.

We then took a 45 minute ride to Fatehpur Sikri, which was extremely relaxing and a nice place to just chill out and take in the incredible architecture that used to be Akbar's palace from the 1500s. We spent a few hours there just taking pictures and walking around.

People asked to take pictures with  us several times, but honestly it just creeps me out... a couple of guys asked for a picture and followed it up quicky with "we're MBA students!!" as if that made it less weird?? But I've already sounded off on why this fake-celebrity status bothers me on a more fundamental level, so I'll leave this be and instead post pictures from beautiful Fatehpur Sikri:

This is a shrine where people tie strings through the lattice and make wishes...

We headed back to Agra and got into an INSANE traffic jam. Cows, people, motorcycles, rickshaws... it was nuts. We finally got back to the hostel and collapsed, made a meal from some potato chips and our leftover lunch, and made plans to wake up to see the Taj at sunrise.

The Taj was... well, everything you expect a world wonder to be. Wondrous. It's built up in your mind to be incredible, and then you visit, and it actually is incredible. We left the hostel at 6 and a guide took us through the crazy security and into the main gate of the Taj.

And then, there it was... My pictures get gradually brighter as the sun rises (obviously).

The photo editing that I have done makes the pictures brighter but look a little different from what I actually saw. Here's an example: the first is the actual picture, the second is with editing:

(They're the same picture, I swear!)

And here are a million more, because how can you not keep taking pictures of it??? People took pictures of this building as if it were about to run away.

The beautiful inlay work on the inner tombs:

Through the lattice on the inside: 

 The Yamuna river  -  the Taj is built on logs, because it was originally meant to float on top of the river!

You have to either cover your feet or take off your shoes. They look pretty ridiculous. 

Immaturity... 

Last glimpses! 

And here's a dumb tourist in ridiculous shorts riding on a camel... 

After the Taj, we immediately headed home. We all were exhausted and had a lot of work to do for lectures on Monday. I was a little bummed that our visit to the Taj Mahal was pretty short... For the Rs 750 we paid to get in (about $16 - and its only Rs 20 for Indian nationals to get in - $.50), I could have hung out in that park all day just taking it in and enjoying the sun on the monuments. Everyone returns to India, right? Right.

I have a LOT more to post about... our slum visit last Tuesday, cows in Connaught Place, our trip to Aligarh this week, and taking some Yoga classes... but I'm actually in a rush because I'm going to a "drum circle" downtown with a woman I met in yoga class and her family. Her name is Jasmeet, and she's super cool and reminds me a lot of my sisters in law. But for now, since I have to run, here is the contest: 

Whoever can correctly identify these things that were on our dinner table the other night wins a prize: a full Indian dinner cooked by yours truly!

Hint: in Hindi it's called मकान.

I just found this transliteration feature for Hindi! too cool.

Love,

लौरा