Riding with the People and Too Much Food

Two weeks down and Jimmy and I are officially men of the people. After touring Delhi last weekend, we decided to head out and hit up one of the seven wonders of the world: the Taj Mahal. Although located less than 200km away, the means of getting there was a train ride that we waited to book until the morning of. Horrible idea. No reservation to be had so we got a 60 Rs. ticket that simply guaranteed us the right to be in the general vicinity of the moving train. That meant standing the entire 3.5 hours. Our co-workers had warned us of this, but as Jimmy put it,we were just going to be "riding with the people".

We got to Agra and proceeded to book our ticket back for the next day. AC chair car of course. One day in advance? Nope, still waitlisted, number 95 and 96 on the list to be exact. With that we were off to get our hotel room and see the sites. Agra is a town of over 1 million people, close quarters, pollution that seems to rival Delhi (although not quite), but also has 3 UNESCO World Heritage Sites within 40 km of it: the Taj Mahal, Agra Fort, and Fatehpur Sikri. Day One saw us hit up Agra Fort, two sales pitches, the Baby Taj, and the back side of the true Taj Mahal across the Yamuna River. All in all, a successful day, despite succumbing to the pressure of Jamal and Bikas to take those humiliating tourist pictures "holding" the Taj or jumping over it.

At the end of Day One we dined on the roof of our hotel with plenty of other foreigners and a decent view of the Taj. Two notable occurences took place:

1. A British girl who was sitting by herself and smoking up a storm suddenly passed out and fell out of her chair. The best way to deal with that? Apparently by crowding as many people around her as possible. Despite my acute awareness of the Good Samaritan Law from Seinfeld, I was unsure if it existed here and had no access to a hotshot lawyer like Jackie Chiles, so we kept our distance and let the first 20 people on the seen take care of her. Take home story: smoking in an already massively polluted place and not staying hydrated are a horrible combo.
2. Jimmy and I, who hadn't eaten for about 8 hours, were starving. For that reason we ordered a good size meal: two bowls of plain rice, one bowl of jeera rice, four pieces of chapati, three curries, two bottles of water, and two Cokes. Jimmy ordered half and the guy was about to walk away before I stopped him so I could order the rest. He gave me this incredulous look and explained that it was too much food. He then proceeded to bring over his "manager" and they tried to dissuade us from ordering any more. It wasn't like the US where the waitress goes, "That's a big meal, sure you're up for it?" and still brings it out. Nope, they were actively trying to prevent us from ordering more food. The only reasons that we could come up with were that the tiny kitchen couldn't handle it, or the cook was just lazy. Regardless, we order everything we wanted and downed it like champs. Only later did we realize that our meal was just 150 Rs. less than the cost of our hotel room.

Day Two started bright and early at 5:15 to see the Taj Mahal at 5:30 when it opened. We then headed out to Fatehpur Sikri, about 40 km outside of Agra, which is easily one of my favorite sites here in India. I'd even put it up there with the Taj. The trip back to Agra was interesting given that the bus had to have a rolling start before they could get it to fire up.

Back at the train station we learned that we had only moved up to number 14 and 15 on the waitlist and therefore had to refund our tickets and buy the 60 Rs. standing tickets again. Things were much closer this time, but we did meet a variety of people, from Anil the application engineer to Vikas the MBA student. Plus we had to endure being posted up near the bathrooms and constantly being in the way of the food vendors and their shouts of "COLD WATER COKE", "VEG CUTLET, BREAD OMELET", "CHAI, CHAI", and more. We did manage to miss out on the agressive transvestites this time who would clap there hands in your face and expect money. Clapping your hands isn't much of a trick if you ask me.

The day ended with a crazy rickshaw ride back where they guy actually sped up for red lights, almost hit two people, and stopped directly in front of a rickshaw coming from the side just to stare the other driver down. With few other options Jimmy and I got some Indian McDonald's and called it a night.