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We went to Pangim in the morning, we had settled to meet A. and his family again. They took us to Colva. On the way we passed by the new house of A. and S.. It's on a little village south of Pangim, near Goa Velha (don't confuse with "Velha Goa", the real old town of Goa, that of the monuments). It's an old truly goan country house, with some colonial reminiscences, with a veranda and a garden. They have a great mango tree just in front of the door (Goa is well known for its delicious mangoes). They are restoring it, which isn't an easy task, the schedules are never accomplished, things rarely are done as they were ordered, a complete headache. It was supposed to be finished some months ago, but it was still much delayed. The children seemed very enthusiastic about their new home, as well as their parents. The idea of living in such a place, surrounded by green fields all over it's a kind of a dream for our urban western eyes.
A. and S. weren't very happy when they discovered that one of the workers had moved to live in the house with his family. Probably that house being restored was better than the place where they used to live.
The family name of owners of the big house which stands beside A.'s house is Pires, like mine, so A. joked with a village man telling him that I was coming back to live in it. The man looked very happy and complimented me warmly. The house was abandoned many years ago, probably after the indian occupation. Like I stated before, it is a quite common all around Goa to find beautiful abandoned old houses. I remembered a lot of times a friend mine whose wife is probably heritor of one or more farms in Goa, her grandfather was a rich english man who lived there for many years. When I came back I insisted with him to inform himself about the legal situation of her wife's heritage.
We saw a man climbing to a coconut tree to pick up toddy (sap). They use it for fabricating a number of things, like vinegar, ferment for bread and feni, one of the local liqueurs.
A. and S.'s children were particularly happy. They seem a really happy family. The eldest boy is like the father, much lively, restless even. Very bright also, he knows a lot about world geography and celebrities, namely the names of the presidents of a lot of countries. The younger one is more like S., her mother, very quiet and a little shy. They couldn't be more different, even physically, the eldest is tall and a little bit fat, he eats a lot with real pleasure, the other is small and thin, he eats too little.
When we arrived Colva, S. and the boys stayed in William's resort, where we would lunch. A. went to show the beach to Rosario and me to. The beach is nicer than Calangute, the sand is softer and more white and there are coconuts trees closer to the sea border. There were lots of people on the beach, almost exclusively indians. We observed that they rarely go bathing. In all our staying we saw only some indian men bathing and even less women in swimming suite. Women go to sea completely dressed, with water not passing their knees.
During our walk on the beach we were approached by a number of sellers of little handicrafts and fruits. A. called gypsies to some of them, we don't know if they are really gypsies like ours if "gypsy" is simply the portuguese goan slang to nomad tribe's people. The major part of them come from Rajasthan and they were quite colourful and the women carry a lot of jewels all over (ears, hands, neck, feet, even in their noses). There was a vendor of drums who was quite persistent. A. talked with him in hindi for a while, he tried all the drums and managed to lower the prices by 75%, but we were not interested, neither he was, he was simply "training his bargaining talk". He explained to us that the man was trying to make him convince us to buy.
On the way back to William's A. insisted we had a fresh coconut, it's a "must" in Goa. We liked the water, but not so the pulp. A. said that coconut seller is the only place in Colva that is ran by goans, so it was there we saw A. speaking konkani for the first time. Goa has a serious problem with immigration from other indian states. Goa is the more developed indian state, so naturals from other states see it as a kind of "local middle east" (these are A.'s words), so they go there by thousands every year, making the state one of the more fast growing in terms of population. Goan people count no more than half the population, so persons are worried with potential loss of identity. There's not an easy solution, because they can't forbid indians from living in any part of their country, although the local government is starting to make laws favouring businesses ran by goans.
A thing that worries goans particularly is the new Konkan railway. It's a big project that will connect fastly by train Goa and Karnataka, the state to the east and south of Goa, to Bombay. People feel that until now Goa has been partially protected by having poor train services. There is only an old narrow gauge line to Karnataka and it is surrounded by mountains, the Ghats, so it's a bit complicated to go there. Having good train services, immigration and indian tourism is expected to grow even more, and that can be a serious problem to the far more money giving foreign tourism. Social and ethnic tensions are also feared in a community well know for his peacefulness.
Apparently that Konkan Railway project is not much loved by the goans, but it goes on very slowly, we can see the construction works of the its bridges on all goan rivers. It was scheduled to be working more than 2 years ago. It's odd to us to understand how is it possible to them to construct such things as railways, roads and bridges with so few machines. Another odd thing considering its importance is that apparently they are constructing a single line. I guess that denotes very well how difficult it is to create minimal under-structures in poor countries like India.
We went back to William's resort after the coconut. The boys were very pleased in the swimming pool and we made them company in a bath for a while. This resort is very cosy and well maintained by the big, calm and kind Mr William. It's mentioned in LP and its prices seemed quite reasonable, ranging from Rs 300-400 per day for a double, although the air-conditioned and TV equipped might be more expensive. We had an excellent lunch with real goan food near the pool. Mr Williams was himself a cook in one of those famous british liners, the Queen Elisabeth, I think. Now he rarely cooks, but I am sure he cares a lot with the cuisine. We guessed that we would be better installed there than in Goan Heritage, but it didn't worry us much, after all William's has the drawbacks (perhaps the only ones) of lacking that green and the proximity of the beach of Goan Heritage.
We stayed in William's swimming pool for some hours, playing a bit with the children and talking with them, S. and A.. Then we went to see another big hotel north of Colva, which name I don't remember (maybe it is something like Ambassador, I'm not sure). A. wanted to see how it was and talk with the managers. It's not a modern hotel, it is maybe more than 20 or 30 years old, and it's not too luxurious (4 stars, I think). They had problems with some monsoon damages, the pool had been inundated by mud that flew from the garden. The manager told us that they have to repaint the walls every year after the monsoon. The garden is very cosy and the beach it's very close by.
It appeared that October is still very low season, there are much touristic places that are still closed and repairing the damages of the monsoon. The really high season, our July and August, it's Christmas and the following months.
On the way back to Pangim, somewhere not far from Margão (Margao), we stopped in a little village to eat a speciality of a local place, hot chouriços sandwiches. It tasted great, that fresh bread with boiled chouriço. We see goan choriço as a sort of paradigm of portuguese heritage in Goa, he taste a lot like our traditional pork sausages but at the same time it has that spicy flavour that is so truly indian. Let's not forget that our ancestors' first motivation to go to India was the commerce of spices, we also use a lot of them in our cuisine. Just for curiosity, one of the main portuguese brands of spices is Margão, the name of the second goan town.
We spent all the morning walking on the beach. We went walking on the sand until Fort Aguada. On the way we saw a lot of fishermen who were particularly active that morning. We saw also some places where they dry fishes. They seemed like our sardines. This activity is responsible for many bad smells and flies, we remembered Mr Williams' complaints about it in Colva.
The beach area near Fort Aguada was far more populated by tourists than "our" own beach. There is a lot of commercial activity going on, like boat and parasol rental, massages with or without solar creams, etc. The beach is nice looking, but the water seems a little less clean than in the north parts and there are little annoying rocks under water that hurt our feet a little bit. There is a turret just in front of the beach.
Fort Aguada is an old portuguese fort partially transformed into a luxury hotel. We read that another part of it is a prison (?!), we didn't investigate if that was still true. It is very nice, mainly the gardens and the view to the beach, but it's very expensive for the local standards. We asked for the prices and we were informed that the normal price for a double is about US $150 or more. We ended up lunching there, driven mainly by the view of the open-air restaurant. The beer was unusually chilled and the food was also very good. We paid more than Rs 1000, a little fortune when compared to our other meals, but it was still worth.
We had plans to see the rest of the fort, but the rain made us give up. We guessed that it wouldn't be much different from other old portuguese forts, so it wasn't that appealing to us. We tried to hire an auto-rikshaw but the price sounded exaggerated and the driver's bargaining was very inflexible, so we gave up and decided to try a public bus. It cost Rs 1 for each of our tickets to go to Calangute, where we wanted to buy some feni to bring home. We were lucky because the bus starting point was near Fort Aguada, so we could arrange seats, which would be impossible if we had caught it 2 or 3 stops ahead.
Just to commemorate our first week in India and our last day in Goa, it rained hardly during the major part of the morning, as it did during the night. I guess our picture wouldn't be complete without a little sample of a late monsoon. Perhaps it was better that way, it would have been harder to leave in a sunny day inviting to the beach. Before we went to meet A. to the agency we passed by the "Silk House" in Pangim, where Rosario wanted to buy some silk pieces.
A. had reserved our airplane tickets to Delhi and hotels to there, Agra and Jaipur. We paid a little more than US $300 for two nights in Delhi, two nights in Agra (we changed our mind about Jaipur after arriving Agra), and a personalised transfer in Delhi.
We had to wait a long time for the airplane, it was delayed more than one hour and a half. We were a little apprehensive because we didn't remember the name of the hotel in Delhi and I wasn't able to phone A.. To try to do that I had to go back to the airport entrance after being in the embark area, because there were no other public phones. When I was coming back to the embark room a guard tried discreetly to receive something like cigarettes or money, but he didn't insist when I acted like not I was not understanding him.
The view from the air trip to Delhi is a little monotonous, mainly planes with some hill areas, most of them looking a bit arid. There are intriguing areas around Delhi that look like big holes, some of them with water inside. Maybe they are simply abandoned open-air mines.
We arrived early evening in Delhi. The domestic terminal has a more developed look than the international one of Bombay. There was a guide waiting for us with our hotel vouchers and a cab. He was very kind, he had been in Goa for sometimes, so he was very fond of A.. Delhi looked much like the image we had on big indian cities: crowded, chaotic, polluted, noisy, streets full of vehicles and other beings not so common in our towns, like rikshaws, bicycles, cows, and so on. It was rush hour, so it took us more than an hour to reach the guesthouse to where we were going.
The major part of the cars looked odd, too, apart from some two or three modern Suzuki (actually called Marutti there) models, the rest seems to have survived from the 50's. Then there are some 60's models apparently derived from soviet Ladas (which in term derived from italian Fiats). On the "british fifties club" they have 2 flavours, the Premier(?), the smaller, and the Ambassador, the big one. On the "soviet late sixties" they have the Tata, which some versions may even look like an exotic indian flavoured Mercedes, in others they may loop like a four wheeler. On the "Japanese late eighties club" they have the Marutti, which seems to have only two models, one very small and the other a little bigger, like the average european three volume.
We were well impressed with the fact of not seeing much luxury cars, it looks like the indian aren't very fond of ostentation. The view of a Mercedes or BMW rolling a street of a very poor country is a bit shocking in its crude display of abyssal social differences.
The general aspect of the urbanisation of Delhi isn't too bad, well at contrary, it's quite well designed for a big modern town of a country like India. There are many wide streets with trees, they didn't look *too* dirty at that evening dark times. However is quite different from Bombay, although they have much common things for our untrained eyes.
The guide that picked us in the airport and took us to the guesthouse we had reserved was a very nice and polite man. We understood he respect and admired A. a lot, he had worked in Goa for some time and he asked about his family, which he appeared to know perfectly well. It looks like the agency works mainly with rich tourists, because he was convinced that we were interested in having a car with driver for 3 days, to take us to Agra, then to Jaipur and then back to Delhi again. We had already refused that to A. when he proposed it, we are allergic to be followed around permanently, but when we understood that the price was only US $48 and he insisted that it was too hard to go around other way in a so short time, we accepted. It turned out that the real price was US $480 (!), so we ended up refusing. After all, $480 was so absurdly expensive as $48 was ridiculous. In spite of the disappointment we caused to the guide, he was very attentive in advising us to take the Shatadbi Express to Agra the next dawn and to provide us a taxi to reach the station. He pointed out carefully not to pay more than Rs 120 or Rs 150 to the driver and to ignore any proposal to buy tickets in other place than the station booth. He also took note of the numbers of our plane tickets to confirm them himself.
The guesthouse we had reserved was far from the centre and it was uncharacteristic. Rosario hated it. The room was dark, not much because of the lamps, but because of the decoration. They were having construction works and there was a bad smell of paintings all around. The room wasn't really too bad, it had TV and air conditioned, although this made an insupportable noise. Just to complete our disgrace, we had to have our dinner in the room because they had the restaurant closed for repairings. That was a night to forget. We slept for 3 or 4 hours and then we had to wake up to catch the train to Agra.
We woke up before 4 am. The "famous" Shatadbi Express leaves the New Delhi station at 6:15 and we were advised by the guide of the day before that we should be at the station at 5 o'clock to be sure to get seats. The station is quite an experience. It was still night, there were no trains, but it was life and movement everywhere. We were told by a man that we should look for the booth for tourists on the first floor. We climb the steps but it appeared that all was closed in that floor. When we were coming back to the ground floor we met the man again. He said that there were no seats available to Agra, but his agency could sell us the tickets because they have always spare reservations. We didn't pay attention to him and we headed for the queue. We had no problems at all with the tickets.
The inside of the station is even more impressive than the outside. There were people everywhere, little less than an average day in Lisbon subway. Some were sleeping, other reading, other just wandering. I guess they were all guarding their places so it could be easier to find a seat in a train leaving in some hours. We tried to reach the informations booth for asking about trains from Agra to Jaipur and from there back to Delhi, but we gave up. It's funny they have the place a little bit computerised, persons ask their questions and they're answered in a LED display of devanagari (hindi!) characters. After a while waiting for my turn in a sea of unrested and noisy people, I tried to pose my questions, but the employee ignored me completely. Perhaps he didn't understand my english...:-) The only thing I was able to know, from a woman who had heard part of my questions that answered me. She didn't speak much english, so I only discovered that there were no trains from Agra to Jaipur.
The Shatadbi express was quite a disillusion. It was described everywhere as a very good luxury train. Our (not so good) older portuguese second class carriages would look something like those if they were left without maintenance for some years and they mounted air conditioned and an extra seat in each row. The air conditioned functions a little bit *too* well, it can be real cold in there, the cleaning is lousy, the darkness and the dirt together in the windows glasses makes difficult to see to outside, and seats are really narrow. However it has something exceptional: it's quick, one gets in Agra in two hours after a breakfast on board. Well, after all it isn't all that bad, I guess if we had never heard about it we would have found it great for an indian train. I had some hope of seeing more of the landscape in that train trip, but the glasses were naturally dark (and darkish also), besides being so dirty, so it was almost impossible to see anything through them.
The great majority of the passengers were foreign tourists. Most of them might be returning to Delhi that same day, since they weren't carrying any luggage. There were much elder, some of them in organised agency groups. There were some indians too, with some wealthy appearance. Well, most of them wouldn't look so wealthy if we weren't in India, considering their old fashioned clothes, but when compared to the average street man they could be considered from very high classes. We had a very drunken one near us, he was constantly drinking from a Chivas bottle and kept offering it to his neighbours, who were very patient and kind to him. He was very excited, he was coming from any airplane trip, so he was very happy with the shoppings he had made in the duty-free shop, which he showed proudly to his neighbours. He fell asleep quickly after the journey began.
We arrived in Agra well before 9 am. It was quite easy to find a taxi. There were many taxi touts in the station entrance. One approached us and offered us a ride for Rs 20. I don't remember if he proposed any hotel, but after all we had already our reservation. We accepted with some suspicions that absolute bargain, but we were assured more than once that Rs 20 was the price. Soon we found the reason - their main objective was not that ride, but others much bigger tour to the various well known Agra monuments.
They had all kind of tours, from those small during one or two hours to others during a whole day. The talk was done, not by the driver, but by an interesting old man who seated beside the driver. He told us some stories of the great Agra past and its monuments. He seemed not to be much worried with our persistence on not accepting to make any tour, and kept insisting that they were good prices. He showed us a little card with the "official prices". That wouldn't be the last time we would see a card like that in Agra, although we suspect that they are simply papers they make to put away the tourists suspicions when they are negotiating the prices. We insisted that we were very tired, we wanted to rest a little bit and then just stroll around the rest of the day, and only then we would make our minds about what to do and see and how, however he said he would come to the hotel at noon to see if we had already decided anything (that after trying 10 am, 11 am and so on).
The Clarks Shiraz, our hotel, is quite agreeable, a big 60's or 70's building in a quiet area that seems to be a large park, with some rich houses spread between grass and trees. One doesn't feel inside a town, although it isn't too far from the centre of Agra. From the higher floors we can see the rooftops of the Taj Mahal, but we weren't lucky with our room on that, because it faced the wrong direction. The prices in the bars and restaurants were very high for indian standards, much similar to average european hotels but after all, it's a 5 star hotel.
We rested the rest of the morning in the room, which was really good and comfortable. We were wakened by the taxi driver who did really came at noon, just to hear again that we were not interested in his tours. We didn't feel too comfortable being refusing to accept anything from the man, for he was such a nice person, but what could we do? We had enough of guided tours in this trip, we feel always lack of freedom of movements, being obliged to follow timings that aren't ours, spending too little time on some interesting things and too much on others. I think I prefer to see less and even risk to miss completely some *musts* but to go on my own than to have someone telling me what to see and how, sometimes impatient because we are taking too much time.
After a light snack in the hotel, for which we paid 2 or 3 times what we were used to for a dinner in Goa, we went to the travel agency to see if it was possible to change our hotel reservations. We had decided that was better to see Agra relaxedly and going back to Delhi on friday than to rush to Jaipur the next day and leave for Delhi only saturday. Our plane was on the saturday night, so it didn't seem a good idea to spend the whole day in Delhi without a safe place to leave our luggage. They seemed a little vague at the agency, however they looked trustful enough and they were minimally attentive.
We left the hotel and begin walking in the direction of the Taj Mahal. Just outside the gate there was a snake charmer who convinced me to photograph him for Rs 10 or 15. Rosario was a little bit impressed and she almost went mad when he tried to put one on her shoulders. We had to refuse firmly the offers for rikshaw, they kept saying that the Taj was too far away to walk to there. One of them, an old man followed for more than 200 mts.
At that point we passed a kind young man who saluted us, asked where were we from and confirmed that the Taj was indeed a little far, perhaps it would be wiser to take the old man's rikshaw. He looked sincere, he was one of the rare persons that approached us in Agra without the intention of selling something, so we followed his advice, after all the hot and humid weather was not very pleasant to walk. We agreed on Rs 20 or 30. It was Rosario premiere with rikshaws and she was very excited, although she was a little afraid with the unsafety. Probably she was right and I was completely unconscious, being in that crazy traffic in a so fragile vehicle it's maybe real dangerous, but "in Roma be roman", or "in India be indian", we have to put away some of our western weird preoccupations.
We arrived in the Taj after half an hour, maybe a little more. It was amazing to see how strong was our driver, with his thin look and being old as he was. We tried not to have pity on him, after all we can't solve the poverty problems of those people and it was better to him to carry us than not to do it and earn nothing that afternoon, but that's not easy to get accustomed to that idea.
On the way we had a view of the street life of an indian town. All happens in the street, all shops and workshops seem to be of the same size, squares of no more than 15 sq. mts., all the work is done outside. We noticed that there were a lot of bicycles workshops. One feels like transported in time in Agra, one imagines that life 30 or 50 years ago wouldn't be so different. Almost every detail of those streets was already familiar to us, it isn't much different from the Bombay airport area which had been our first contact with India, but Bombay, Goa and Delhi had much more cars, they were newer, there weren't so much bicycles and carts. Here we could see carts pushed by men, it looked like they were so poor they could afford donkeys or horses. Sometimes in India we feel that some poor people's life isn't that different from their animal neighbours. It's not rare to see people rummaging garbage piles beside pigs, we saw it more than a time in Agra. On the other way, everybody seems peaceful, I couldn't help thinking that I would be frightened to pass places like those where we have been if it was in other country, namely in Europe. Not that poor people have all tendencies to be thieves and murders, but in western towns the degraded areas have always high criminal rates. I know that safety is a very subjective thing, for me, safety or unsafety is more like a "feeling", provoked not only by concrete things like crime numbers and personal experiences but also by the way we "feel" the environment. All this to state that we "felt" quite safe in all our trip.
The driver left us some 100 mts from the entrance of the Taj, I guess he wasn't welcome nearer, he looked a little bit like he didn't want to be seen . He had insisted to wait for us to take us back. That appears to be an habit all over India, very strong in Agra. We were able to pay him, which generally it's not easy, one of their methods to convince the client to come back is to not accept any payment.
There were two queues to buy the tickets, one for men and other for women. That is quite common in India, nearly every place has separate queues for men and women. I didn't quite understand, or I forgot it already, why we had to buy to tickets, one of 10 paise (10 cents) and other of Rs 10 or 20. Queues were very disorganised, as all indian queues seem to be. They look like they're always in a hurry, as if they fear the tickets will be sold out, they will pass in front of you with the greatest normality. Remember me saying that our indian trip had begun in Heathrow? Well, it was where we first experienced an indian queue. That unrest of the customers contrasts a lot with the servants' attitude who act always like they haven't more than one client to attend in the next half hour. It can be rather exasperating.
We enter first in a garden surrounded by tall walls. The decoration of the gates is already quite sumptuous. To enter in the garden of the Taj itself, there are two queues again. There are there some policemen or soldiers inspecting people's bags, instructing some persons to leave some things outside.
The Taj is really something. Sometimes those legendary places aren't that magnificent as we imagined it, but that was not the case of Taj for us. Everything there is simply in the most right of the places, the harmony is perfect, and that transmit us a feeling of interior peace that feels good. One almost forgot that the nearby Yamuna river was so dirty and the place was quite crowded, not much by foreigners, but by indians. There might have been some holidays in that time, there were many indian tourists in Goa also. We walked around seeing every detail and then we seated on the grass and waited for the sunset. The monument *really* changes its aspect and colour as sun slowly goes down. It was an excellent end of day, even with the company of those irritating mosquitoes from the grass.
We noticed again the strange religious attitude of indian people. Various persons used the water of the lakes in front of the tomb to wash there mouth just beside others who washed their feet. Inside the tomb there is a plaque announcing that is forbidden to make offers. Nevertheless the place is full of flowers and money. There was a guard receiving money to allow people to throw their offers to the centre, which is fenced. Maybe we are wrong, but we had the feeling that part of those persons who were making offers were not muslims, but hindus, they seem to have a confusing way of facing other religions, however that seems a good thing as it looks like sign of tolerance.
When we were leaving the Taj, we didn't resist to by something in the government run shops. We bought a large cloth from Rajasthan, hand painted with plants and elephants, very cute in its naivety. They told us it is silk and cotton, we aren't sure, but it looks rather smooth, so, at least, its touch is much silky. We also bought a box and a set of glass bases made of pietra dura, a local handicraft of Agra. Pietra dura is marble carved with coloured rocks, part of the decoration of the Taj and other mogul monuments was made like that, a very delicate work.
These state run shops, or emporiums, like they call them, are supposed by many to be the best places for buying handicraft. That is probably true when we talk about quality, but I have the impression that it's not the same for price. For a complete ignorant of indian handicraft like me, I found the prices there to be quite higher than in other places, and if your main intention is to get some nice souvenir, you'll find much cheaper stuff in other places. Well, but on the other hand one may consider that, if you are not a great expert, you'd better stick to more trustful places like emporiums.
When we went off the Taj I didn't resist to buy 3 small boxes of pietra dura from a boy who followed us. He begun asking Rs 150, I bought them by Rs 50 or 40. I'm sure that wasn't a very good price, I didn't argue with him, I simply let him keep lowering his price, I didn't show much interest in buying. When we arrived the hotel we discovered that one of the boxes had a top that didn't fit very well, but considering that the box we had bought in the emporium had cost more than Rs 250, it wasn't too bad at all. Of course that the more expensive was considerably more perfect, larger, and its carvings were far smaller and it had more variety of stones, however it cost 5 times the price of those 3 small ones.
We looked for our rikshaw driver, a task that wasn't too easy because of the darkness and the fact of being surrounded by sellers, not only the boy of the stone boxes, but also by others trying to sell postcards and other things. The old man turned out to be where he had told us he would, so we mounted and went back to the hotel.
This ride back was even more thrilling than the first one. It was dark and the rikshaw hadn't any light, so it seemed a real miracle arriving in one piece to the hotel. Rosario decided not to ride rikshaws again in her life, at least at night. We ended up paying the old man 3 times or more the price we had agreed for the going without return. As always, he had said that we wouldn't be charged by the waiting, but when we gave him the money, he started lamenting for the time he had lost, for our long stay in the Taj, and so on. Then, we were feeling sorry for his poverty, after all Rs 60 or Rs 80 were nothing for almost an afternoon. I believe that is a rather complicated matter to the conscience of the major part of the people, on one hand we should pay the normal local prices, on the other hand they're generally so incredibly cheap that one feels a little bad and comes much vulnerable to their sad faces and talkings. Things may be easier if one feels cheated, which isn't very uncommon, however cheaters are the tougher negotiators, so we keep feeling that we paid a lot more than we should.
We hesitated a little bit in deciding where to dinner. We had selected two or three nearby restaurants mentioned in LP, but since the urbanisation of that area is quite dispersed, we feared that what seemed "near" in LP maps turned out to be a little far. Then we weren't feeling in the mood to face a tough discussion with another driver to take us somewhere. This relation with indian drivers (of rikshaws, with or without motor, or taxis) can be rather stressing, not only for the discussion of the prices, but also because one can't always trust we are taken to the right place in the first, second or third time. We ended up dinning at the hotel, after all one of the its restaurants was also mentioned in LP.
The restaurant is nice, not *too* luxurious, nice with its decoration being a mixture of old fashioned and mogul inspired indian. Thick carpets on the floor, dim lights, candles on every table, attentive and much professional waiters, a great view to the dark night (:-). There were three men playing gazals, which I think it's a traditional kind of music that cames from mogul times. The atmosphere was quite nice, peaceful and quite, romantic and fancy. We probably looked a little out of place there, being dressed much more like common backpackers than like expensive hotel guests, but we didn't care. We regretted that the night was so dark and the Taj wasn't lightened, one can see it from there. We asked too much food, but that was quite common to us, because we kept forgetting of how big the portions are in India generally and we didn't never resist to order some aperitifs before the main meal. Sometimes those aperitifs are almost a good meal. The price of the dinner was about Rs 1200, perhaps a little bit more.
We begun our day by solving our situation with the travel agency after having breakfast at the hotel. Everything was almost ok, we had already tickets for the Shatabdi Express to Delhi the next evening and our reservation to friday night at Park Hotel in Delhi was done. Actually this wasn't yet confirmed, but they assured us that it hardly would be any problem. They told us that probably we would have to pay something more because of the different prices of the hotel we had reserved in Jaipur and Park Hotel, but in Delhi someone from the agency would come to meet us. We paid 10% commission by the train tickets, Rs 50 out of Rs 500 for each.
We chose again a luxury hotel in Delhi because after all it was just for one night, our last in India. This honeymoon of ours was not being that expensive, any weekend in Europe would have cost us several times the price of the week in Goa, it was no great sin to go to a fancier place and we didn't want to spend our last night in a place very far from the centre of town.
At the gate of the hotel we were immediately surrounded by the rikshaw drivers. The snake charmer tried again to get some rupees from us, namely offering a snake to put on our shoulders, which horrified Rosario particularly. This time we were tougher, we completely ignore them all, we were decided to walk to the Agra Fort. Nevertheless we were followed by the rikshaw driver from the day before for quite a long distance.
After refusing several offers from auto-rikshaws, we ended up taking one. Agra isn't exactly a very pleasant place to "trek", with all that hot and humid October weather and all the noise and pollution. We agreed on Rs 20 after a little negotiation. There was an interesting thing about that auto-rikshaw, it had a driver and a "boss", who travelled besides the driver and does all the talking and bargaining. That isn't rare in Agra, I guess that someone who owns an auto-rikshaw in India may consider himself as being from an higher social level, so he can have employees driving his bike and reserve for him only the business administration. The boss was a nice and kind, although he tried to convince us to hire him for the rest of the day or at least for some hours, he wasn't too annoying and he didn't hassle us too much.
We reached the entrance of the fort very quickly. We weren't able to make the rikshaw boss to accept our payment, as usual. He insisted he would wait for us no matter how long we would be visiting the fort. At the entrance we were quickly approached and followed by some street vendors and guides. Their offers were postcards, stone necklaces, boxes, miniature wooden games and, of course, guided tours. Past the gate there were only offers from guides and they looked a lot more professional in their attitude.
The fort is quite impressive and beautiful. It hasn't anything to do with our castles and forts. Its red colour and its arabic/persian forms have nothing to do to our grey or brown castles from Portugal. Actually inside of the fort there are very beautiful gardens and palaces made of marble and red stone, all richly decorated with fine relieves and engraveds, as well as pietra dura, much like the Taj, which is of the same period. One of the most interesting things in those palaces was how they were so open. The so called halls of audiences (every mogul palace appears to have two, one private for the VIP's, smaller, and a bigger one, the public, to every common subject) are halls with no walls and a lot of decorated columns in the middle of gardens. Another thing very characteristic and pleasant in mogul monuments is the water systems. Although may of them isn't working nowadays one can still imagine how beautiful those places must have been with running water and fountains everywhere. I don't know exactly if that fascination by the water of the mogul is due to any lack of water in the places from where they come from, but it seems a plausible explanation. In my little knowledge of Afghanistan I see it as a much deserted country.
The Fort is just beside the Yamuna river, the same of the Taj, which is seen from here in the middle of the haze. It looks like we were lucky with the visibility conditions of the day, because LP mentions that sometimes it's difficult to see the Taj from the fort. That isn't due only to the weather but also to pollutant factories that one can see to the opposite side of the Taj. The emperor that order the construction of the Taj in homage to his beloved wife was later imprisoned in the fort by his son and it's said he passed the rest of his life looking at the Taj from his sumptuous prison.
Like in the Taj, the majority of the many tourists that were in the fort were indians. Almost them all came in big groups and made their visit with a guide. We strolled around a little bit randomly taking some looks at LP once in a while to know what things we were seeing. The buildings are generally in a relatively good shape, although some of them may seem a little bit ruined for our western eyes. I imagine that if they were in a richer country they would be perfectly preserved, specially considering their beauty, however it's notorious that they make quite an effort to maintain everything minimally acceptable. One can't be too critic in a country with so much difficulties. We saw two men restoring some engraved marble stones. Actually they were building a whole piece from scratch. A very delicate job, made only with hammer and a kind of nail. They were quite satisfied when I photographed them, I think they're used to receive some tips for posing to tourists, that's the same all over India and it's not so wrong, they have the right to be paid for the use of their image :-).
A considerable part of the fort was closed because of reconstruction works, namely the big mosque. In the big garden in front of the "hall of public audiences" we saw some squirrels. We had seen some in the Taj also. Another funny thing in that garden is a neo-gothic memorial that looks like a tomb. It was put there by a british governor or vice-king in memoir of a lady that was killed during "the mutiny", a nasty revolt by the indian troops that occurred in 1856. This Agra Fort was one of the main spots of that revolt that endangered considerably the british rule in India.
When we went out the fort we were again surrounded by street vendors. This time we behaved worse than before and so we had quite a trouble getting rid of them. All I did was showing some interest in buying postcards. If they notice any sign of interest we are lost, they will hassle us as much as they can, and they know how to be persistent! Then Rosario showed some interest in some coloured stones necklaces, so when we wanted to go away from them it was too late. Rosario paid Rs 200 for two necklaces, they began asking Rs 400 for each one. In the end they were offering four for Rs 100. Rosario also bought a little wooden game. It cost Rs 110 after the man assured for quite a long time that it cost him Rs 180. We would discover later that those games cost Rs 95 in the hotel shops.
The rikshaw driver was still waiting for us. The vendors followed us even after we were inside the rikshaw, they kept doing proposals and lowering prices, putting things in our hands and inside the rikshaw. That was happening while we were moving slowly, the vendors running beside the bike. When we finally got rid of them we were more than 200 mts from the entrance of the fort. It was one of the more thrilling moments of our staying in India. It seemed nearly impossible to make them go away without buying some more things. Imagine yourself riding inside a rikshaw with four men running beside and shouting at your ears "buy this, buy that, Rs 100 for these four, only Rs 50 for this", putting things in your hands and on the seat. It is quite an experience, it might have been frightening if it wasn't for their peaceful, although agitated, appearance. To help on that mess, there was another new passenger besides the driver and his boss, he was a tout from some shop and he began his talk to convince us to go to his shop even before the street sellers went away. He hadn't any luck, of course. We refused four of five times, maybe some more, then he gave up. Probably he would be much more persisting if he hadn't seen what had just happened, it might be clear that we had already enough "Agra style" shopping for that day.
The rikshaw boss had a neutral attitude during the scene. He gave some time to the street vendors to hassle us, then he instructed the driver to speed up a little so they couldn't follow us. He didn't helped the tout's talk and he accepted to go away when we made our point a little tougher.
We had decided to try "Zorba the Budha", one of the recommended ones in LP. Although it's situated in an uncharacteristic area, near some bike and auto workshops and other "indian non-touristic shops", it is quite a pleasant place, very quiet, cheap and with splendid vegetarian food. Apart from an old indian man, all clients looked very "LP". It is a really good place not only to eat, but also to relax for a while listening to "Osho inspired" music. Osho is a spiritual guru that lives in Pune (Poona) and he's quite popular amongst those sixties' and "pos-neo-sixties" people. The owners of this Zorba place appear to be his followers and all the decoration has a very strong "hippie" appeal, with some poems or thoughts written on the walls and on the menu. We found very interesting the idea of the "new man", who was said that will be a sort of mixture between Zorba, the greek dreamer sailor and Budha. I don't remember very well, but that idea of universality, "west meets east", the dream and physical travel of Zorba together with the more spiritual parts (travels) of Budha, it's very romantic and appealing.
We had managed to get rid of the rikshaw driver, thing we regretted for a while when we went off Zorba's, because that is an area where taxis and rikshaws are quite rare. We walked until the commercial centre of Agra, which turned out to be much closer than what it seemed. Before we entered a jewellery near Zorba. It didn't look much like a shop for tourists, for its sobriety and the little bargaining of the owner, who was a really kind man who had little to do with those street sellers we were used to. Rosario ended up buying some silver ear-rings.
We took a rikshaw to go to the left bank of the Yamuna river, where there are some monuments. We went first to the "Itimad-ud-daulah", locally known as "Baby Taj", the tomb of one of the aunts of Mumtaz Mahal, the lady for whom the Taj was built. Like it's said in LP, that name "Baby Taj" isn't very adequate. The place is worth seeing, it would be a *must see* place if it wasn't in the same town of Taj, it's beautiful alright and it has the pro of being almost deserted, but it hasn't the magic of the Taj. Any more distracted and uninformed one would discover that both monuments are from the same period, with their "mogul" domes, their fountains and their marble and pietra dura crafts. We had a splendid time there watching the beginning of the sunset near the muddy river.
On the way, the driver stopped to let us see from near the many rhesus monkeys that are quite abundant there. He went to buy some tomatoes to give the monkeys so they would come near us. The place seemed a little zoo - there were monkeys, pigs of more than one kind, cows, buffaloes, dogs, all strolling around in a dusty yard near the road.
The drinkings seller at the entrance of the "Baby Taj" gave us his address and asked us to send him his photo, after he noticed I had photographed Rosario buying him a bottle of Bisleri, the most common mineral water in India. At the time I am writing I didn't send him the photo yet, I haven't yet finished organising the slides, so I'm still waiting to select those I want to put on paper.
Talking about mineral water, that Bisleri brand is quite a mystery to us, behaved to little differences between flavours of beverages of the same brand sold in different countries. There is Bisleri in all India, but it comes from various places, in bottles that are only alike in their form, not the material they are made of. Sometimes they're made of "pet", others they're made of plastic, which gives water that delicious flavour, not to mention the good it brings to our health. Their taste also varies a lot, from the average to the worse we find in tap water in Portugal. Everybody's advice is to check carefully the caps to see if the bottles aren't reused and you are paying for tap water. The thing is that seals are rarely much effective and even real Bisleri has a bad taste sometimes. However, we didn't have any stomach problems with water or food. Maybe luck, I guess, the year before I had been in Nepal and I only had troubles (and they were kind of nasty) when I returned home. The worst I have experienced was a fever of 39.5 deg C. in a moroccan august, possibly because of drinking in a mountain source.
After the Itimad-ud-daulah we went to another monument on the left bank of the Yamuna river, the tomb of a high mogul dignatary. It's rather ruined, we can only imagine the grandeur and beauty it once had. Its style looks older and more primitive than the Taj, the fort and the Itimad-ud-daulah to our inexpert eyes, although it has the same basic lines. The decoration was composed of glazed colour tiles, not carvings and pietra dura like the other monuments. Apparently the irrigation structures of the ancient gardens are used to grow vegetables.
We went further to see the palace of the first mogul emperor, Babur. Like the newer fort, it appears as a mixture of palace and military fort, with strong walls and plenty of gardens with the inside. It's clear and fascinating to see how those people liked running water all around, although the place is rather ruined, with very few remainings of the buildings, one can easily imagine the beauty of the gardens and their fountains, very similar to those of the other monuments. Although the place is rather degraded, it is still agreeable to walk in it, and it was frequented by some locals, who enjoyed the sunset hour like us. It appears that the place is officially closed, one goes in by a closed gate which is easily passed because of its poor state. When we were going out, we were approached by a man that looked like the guard. The driver told us to tip the man, what we did with some rupees. That's India. :-)
It was already getting dark, so we asked the driver to take us to the Kwality restaurant. It is recommended in LP and it was there where we had took the auto-rikshaw. The driver insisted that it was "no good" and he would take us to a much better restaurant. Considering that it was still early, we finally agreed that we had nothing to loose to take a look of the place he was proposing. For what I remember, he told us that he wouldn't charge us for waiting for us to dinner and take us back to the hotel if we chose to stay. Well, it was clear that he was looking for some commission, everyone acts as tout of something in Agra.
The place where we were taken looked rather dirty and not so inviting inside. It was a pity, it was located in a garden area, probably not very far from our hotel. We ended up going to Kwality, with the driver not posing any objections. I think he was expecting that the restaurant people would receive us in a more friendly and polite manner, so he must have understood he would have little success arguing with us. We gave him some extra rupees beside the amount he had told us it would be, but he asked for, as every Agra driver does. We didn't cede that time, we explained that we were already paying him more than what he had said it would be. This was an "easy" driver, he didn't argue very much and we said goodbye smiling at each other.
We had a great dinner at Kwality. There were much "LP" tourists like us, but it was frequented by some indian families too. Although it may look very old-fashioned and a little degraded too, it's a nice restaurant, with uniformed waiters who pay the customers a service we are only used to see in fancy restaurants. The prices may be a little high for indian standards, but very low to us (about Rs 100 or 120 each plate, with really big portions).
After dinner we took a look to the shops nearby. It was still early and everything was opened. We had decided to do our main shoppings in Agra. Although it wasn't the best place, at least compared to Delhi, we had little alternative, considering the little time we would have in Delhi. We were needing a suitcase, as we had only brought from home my big backpack and two other smaller ones. We discover that those wheeled suitcases with not so bad aspect were cheap and maybe we had luck with its quality. We wanted also to buy some silk to my mother, she was still a little jealous of the silk shirts I had brought to my sister from Thailand the year before. We had already looked for silk in Pangim, but we were finding very difficult to find suitable colours. Indians have a taste for gaudy colours. Some of the tissues had excellent aspect and touch, although some of them had little defects. They explained us that might be a sign of quality, the defects came from being hand made. Again, it wasn't that time we would find a suitable colour.
We decided to come buy some wooden things tomorrow, in a tent of Gangotri, the Uttar Pradesh government emporium of handicraft. probably we would find similar things cheaper in other places, but the quality there seemed really fine and since it was government owned, maybe it wasn't too naive to trust the quality.
On the way back we assured ourselves to choose a auto-rikshaw with lights. We weren't in the mood to repeat the haunting experience of the day before. I'm not sure, but I think that the afternoon rikshaw also didn't have lights, we found that it's quite common in Agra and also in Delhi. Without knowing, we did the bargaining with a tout, it seems very difficult to do business directly with the drivers.
We had unexpected company (well, considering that it was our second day in Agra, it wasn't quite a big surprise) in our ride. It was a young man who spoke and understood english very well, that's not so common. His talk was also interesting, he wasn't too hassling. He asked where we were from and guessed we would have come from Goa. He knew something of goan-portuguese history, and he told us that he had already worked in Goa and he was planning to go back there for the high touristic season, which is from December to February. He asked me also if I had goan ascendants, he found I looked a little bit goan. I guess he was trying to get our sympathy to get us to buy some taxi or rikshaw tour around town. It was a little bit difficult to get rid of him when we arrived the hotel. We were already quite used to the other uncultivated touts, but this was quite smarter and he really knew how to keep us talking to him. He insisted that his objective wasn't only selling something, he liked a lot to talk to educated and interesting people from abroad.
He made also a little blackmail, trying to subtlety blackmail us with we being wealthy (we were staying in an expensive hotel) and he was a poor student, trying to get some money to his studies. He didn't said it directly, he was very clever, but it was clearly that he was appealing to our conscience and have pity on him.
Sometimes I think it's sad that the existence of so many hasslers, specially in poor countries like India, makes things very complicated to communicate with local people. We end up minimising talking with people, involuntarily fearing that they try to sell us something or ask us some money for the supposed service they did to us. I imagine that's an easy path to the common local consider all the touristic to be antipathetic fellows with superiority feelings.
© J. Mário Pires, 96
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