Originally, our last day in India (Tuesday, November 11th, 2015) had been set to begin with a 7 a.m. pickup of us and our luggage at our hotel, but since breakfast didn't begin at the hotel until 6:30, we had asked for an extra fifteen minutes. So Narayan showed up at 7:15 and we were off to Agra. Narayan had gradually been pulling in the time for our return. It had started at 2:30, then 2:00, now 1:30, and not even that appeared firm. He was clearly worried that, given the traffic we had run into the evening before, it would be difficult to get across Delhi to the airport by 6:00, in time to check in for our 8:50 flight. Narayan himself was going to catch an 11 p.m. overnight train to his home village, where his wife and young son (he showed us their photos) lived. He had a room in Delhi, and didn't get to see them as often as he would like, but would be home for Diwali--he was clearly a Hindu, since there was a little statue of Ganesha on the dash.
Once outside the city, we took the Yamuna expressway to Agra. With a speed limit of 100 kph (about 60 mph) we went much faster than on any other road on this trip. Traffic was generally light; fields rolled by, partly hidden by the smog. At one point early on, traffic was stacked up for about twenty minutes. Narayan suspected an accident--he was right. "A very bad accident," he said as we passed a bus that had its top completely sheared off and sitting some way down the road in front of it. How that would have happened, I have no idea. There were no further delays and after three hours we were in Agra.
There we picked up our guide. He was charming, eloquent, with perfect English, dedicated to getting us the best possible experience of the Taj Mahal. I would rather have done it on our own.
The first thing he did, once we were inside, with our bag of free water bottles and shoe covers, was hook us up with a waiting photographer. No, thank you, I said. It would only be 100 rupees a shot, and the photographer was experienced at just how to pose us to the best effect. Well, 100 rupees wasn't much (about $1.50), so, okay, just one picture. He would do maybe ten different poses and we would only have to take those we liked. Uh, said I. Great! said Mary Joy.
The approach to the Taj Mahal is designed to maximize the drama.
You see nothing of the building until you approach the large gatehouse and it appears in the opening, nothing but blue sky behind it.
As you go through the gate, there it is: a sight that you've seen all your life--the bulbous dome, the four little minarets--but now it's real, and bigger than you'd thought. Mary Joy says "This is worth it all."
The Taj Mahal is the perfect building, light, delicate, but imposing, a dream of symmetry and grace.
The guide took some pictures of us with my camera. The first he ruined by using the flash, commenting that the professional photographer could do a much better job. When that person arrived, he did a number of different poses with us, some of them kind of cutesy. I was becoming increasingly grouchy, to Mary Joy's dismay. When he was done, the guide said that there had been sixteen poses, I wanted to cut it down to ten, but it wasn't practical to do that then and there, and the guide added that the photographer would throw in a free album, and that if we didn't like any of the final prints, we didn't have to accept them. I was getting nowhere and annoying Mary Joy, so I gave up.
The guide did some more poses with my own camera, including a picture of me and the Taj reflected in Mary Joy's sunglasses.
Then we put on our shoe covers and went inside. He was informative, covering the history well, and pointed out the intricacy of the craftsmanship involved--showing how the inlay work had been set in place,
he added that Agra was the only place where that sort of work was still being done, and we could later go to a workshop to see it. The interior was not as impressive as the exterior. The guide pointed out that the only non-symmetry in the Taj Mahal was where Shah Jehan's cenotaph, much taller than his wife's, of course, had been set off-center--he had not intended to be buried there, next to the wife for whom this was a loving memorial, but had intended to build himself a separate tomb. However, he was deposed by his son Aurangzeb, and after his death he was stuck in at her side--both are actually buried down in the basement.
We left the building,
went out the gate and were met by the photographer, who had a small album of sixteen prints. They looked fine, so I paid the sixteen hundred rupees (around $25). We got on a local bus to go to where our car was. 
There was an open seat, so Mary Joy sat there. Our guide talked a young man, seated next to his mother, into giving up his seat for me, but I refused it. When we got to the car, it was 12:20. The guide asked if we wanted to go to a workshop. I said no. Mary Joy asked about the Red Fort. He said that Narayan was worried about traffic in Delhi on Diwali eve, so that he said we would have to leave Agra around 1:00. It would take us much more time than that to see the Red Fort, so we would only have time for lunch. The guide had Narayan drive us to Pinch of Spice, which is recommended in Lonely Planet. He brought us inside, greeted the staff and showed us the buffet, then he said goodbye to us. I gave him a tip, but it was smaller than I had originally intended. He was informative and very smooth, but I assume that he got at least 500 rupees from the photographer, and probably something from the restaurant. If we had bought something at a marble workshop, he would have gotten a kickback for that, too (though how did we have time for that and lunch as well?). He has to make a living, of course, but I don't like being taken advantage of.
Traffic in Delhi, though bad, wasn't quite as bad as Narayan had feared, so we got to the airport at 5:15. My last two photos, out of a total of 900, were of a big Diwali peacock display in the airport and the entry to the men's and women's restrooms--the big pictures of two young people, hip and modern, definitely Indian, though their hair, skin and eye color could easily have passed for European.
Though the length of our flights and layovers was grueling (3 1/2 hours in the air to Abu Dhabi, followed by a 14 1/2-hour flight to Chicago), there weren't any problems until Chicago, where we sat in the plane for an hour, because our flight crew was stranded elsewhere, due to mechanical problems on another plane. When we finally arrived in the Twin Cities, when had to wait on the ground for half-an-hour, because a thunderstorm was rolling through, so the ground crews were pulled. I finally got to bed around 6:30, almost exactly 48 hours after I got up. Mary Joy didn't get to bed until 8 o'clock. Both of us had picked up colds on the tour.
Photos to be added later. I may also post about my various impressions of India
Once outside the city, we took the Yamuna expressway to Agra. With a speed limit of 100 kph (about 60 mph) we went much faster than on any other road on this trip. Traffic was generally light; fields rolled by, partly hidden by the smog. At one point early on, traffic was stacked up for about twenty minutes. Narayan suspected an accident--he was right. "A very bad accident," he said as we passed a bus that had its top completely sheared off and sitting some way down the road in front of it. How that would have happened, I have no idea. There were no further delays and after three hours we were in Agra.
There we picked up our guide. He was charming, eloquent, with perfect English, dedicated to getting us the best possible experience of the Taj Mahal. I would rather have done it on our own.
The first thing he did, once we were inside, with our bag of free water bottles and shoe covers, was hook us up with a waiting photographer. No, thank you, I said. It would only be 100 rupees a shot, and the photographer was experienced at just how to pose us to the best effect. Well, 100 rupees wasn't much (about $1.50), so, okay, just one picture. He would do maybe ten different poses and we would only have to take those we liked. Uh, said I. Great! said Mary Joy.
The approach to the Taj Mahal is designed to maximize the drama.
The Taj Mahal is the perfect building, light, delicate, but imposing, a dream of symmetry and grace.
The guide did some more poses with my own camera, including a picture of me and the Taj reflected in Mary Joy's sunglasses.
We left the building,
Traffic in Delhi, though bad, wasn't quite as bad as Narayan had feared, so we got to the airport at 5:15. My last two photos, out of a total of 900, were of a big Diwali peacock display in the airport and the entry to the men's and women's restrooms--the big pictures of two young people, hip and modern, definitely Indian, though their hair, skin and eye color could easily have passed for European.
Though the length of our flights and layovers was grueling (3 1/2 hours in the air to Abu Dhabi, followed by a 14 1/2-hour flight to Chicago), there weren't any problems until Chicago, where we sat in the plane for an hour, because our flight crew was stranded elsewhere, due to mechanical problems on another plane. When we finally arrived in the Twin Cities, when had to wait on the ground for half-an-hour, because a thunderstorm was rolling through, so the ground crews were pulled. I finally got to bed around 6:30, almost exactly 48 hours after I got up. Mary Joy didn't get to bed until 8 o'clock. Both of us had picked up colds on the tour.
Photos to be added later. I may also post about my various impressions of India
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