Day 81 - Agra, India (Taj Mahal)

Day 81 – His.

At half five we were woken by our guide as he went up and down the carriage. We had enough time for a banana and water before the train pulled in. Everyone is a little tired and whiny - which is no real surprise but thankfully our transport to the hotel was waiting and whisked us off pretty sharpish. The most unfortunate thing about arriving so early is that there are no rooms for us at the inn and a distinct lack of stables. So, we hung around the lobby for a while arguing about tips. Tips are such a strange thing. There is such a huge expectation of tips here that normally the guide organises a tipping kitty. This seems reasonable to me but not to the average Australian mind it would seem, and the issue of the tipping kitty just keeps rumbling on – it is beginning to grate a little.

Still, after a stiff coffee and a break we were feeling a little better and we set off to see the red fort. Agra is most well known for the Taj Mahal and very little is said about the red fort but it is truly stunning and built largely in the same style as the Taj Mahal which you can see from the fort walls. Agra is much more prosperous than Varanasty. The streets are largely paved, the people better dressed and there are far more tourists here.

By the time we had walked around it and returned to our hotel, the rooms were ready and I think the thing most of us can think about is getting a shower and having a little sleep before lunch and a trip out to see what everyone comes here to see.

Day 81 – Hers.

The Taj Mahal is stunning.  The white marble, intricately carved and inlaid with semi-precious stones gleams in the sun – a token of love from the fourth Moghul to his wife.  The atmosphere is not as tranquil as I would have liked – tens of thousands of tourists snap photos at every point up to the mausoleum itself – unless you wander a bit into the gardens.  There is also a little museum, not very well visited, that shows details of the inlay techniques,  architectural drawings and some artefacts from the period.  Most interesting – to my mind – is a bowl that purportedly changes colour when it comes into contact with poisoned food.  We posed for and took all the requisite photos, visited the tombs and strolled around for an hour, meeting everyone back at the main gate.

Our local guide for the day then took us to a marble cutter’s – we skipped the hard sell and walked back to the hotel, stopping at a supermarket to buy yet more provisions for another long bus ride tomorrow.  The young Texan girl got to talking to a couple of locals outside the shop, one of whom offered to take her on a ‘beer run’ on the back of his motorbike.  She thought this was a great idea until Rob asked her to think carefully about what she was doing......

We all went out to dinner together to an extremely touristy restaurant – musicians, trinket sellers and over priced curries so mild you could hardly tell they were curries.  I asked for mine to be spicy and they accommodated me by bringing a delicious chili sauce that I could add – much better – but still over-priced for what it was.

The tipping kitty saga rolled on. Our guide has been paying the tips out of his own pocket while several Australians questioned his integrity – 1500 rupees each for 12 days? How do we know it’s actually going to the right people? – we just gave him our share earlier this evening.  The main protagonists then came up with some complicated thing of each signing a sheet to say we were putting in 500 rupees now and having one of the group audit each tip as it was given.  When they approached us to join this, Rob just told them that their plan was disgusting and we want no part of it.  I fear we will now be ostracised – but, honestly, tipping is part of the culture here and it is laid out quite clearly in the trip information.  To question the integrity of our tour guide is out of order and insulting.  I guess we will just keep to ourselves.