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| Me standing in front of the Taj Mahal in India |
After a couple of nights we are leaving the chaos of Delhi behind and heading south to Agra in Uttar Pradesh. This next leg of the short 6 day tour I am booked onto before I commence my teaching will take in the famous Taj Mahal and I for one can barely contain my excitement. Until just a few days ago I would have been hard pressed to pinpoint exactly where on a map of India the Taj Mahal can be located, however despite my ignorance as to it's exact location the Taj has always been a massive symbol of India for me & one of the many wonders of the world that I often dreamed of visiting within my lifetime. Who can forget the image of princess Diana sitting outside of it with the worlds press camped in front of her or indeed the little street children in the movie Slumdog Millionaire as they acted as tour guides for unsuspecting tourists in front of the magnificent, majestic, towering marble mausoleum that is India's Taj Mahal.
So I am really pleased that only a couple of days after I've arrived in India I will be getting to see it for real and even better just a few days before I start teaching. We arrive in Agra at nightfall and the traffic is mental even by Indian standards. The big Hindu festival Dewali (Festival of the Lights) is only a few weeks away on Nov 13th and all the streets we pass through have been decorated in preparation with twinkling christmassy looking tinsel and lights. Traffic is now bumper to bumper as our bus crawls through the busy streets. I entertain myself by looking out the window, everything looks magical as the sparkly red, gold and silver fairy lamps light up the roadside & reflect off the women's decorative sari's and the elaborate hand-painted Hindi signs of the store fronts and street stalls. We pass multiple slum dwellings by the side of the road, tented villages with structures composed of little more than plastic coverings supported by crude wooden stakes and I am instantly reminded of the street kids that I will be teaching in just a few days time. There is never a moment when it is quiet, there is so much going on all at once and there are just people, people, people, everywhere I look as far as the eye can see. Everything is just so colorful, crazy, vibrant and alive and truly a feast for the senses.
The next morning we rise at dawn, the plan is to hit the Taj Mahal just as the sun comes up in order to beat the crowds of tourists. The site of the Taj is only a 10 minute bus journey away from our hotel & as we approach it I am dismayed to find that there are already multiple coach loads of mostly older European, Australian and American tourists pulled up in the car park. All with the customary sunglasses and enormous cameras around their necks being directed by their Indian guides. I suppose it is to be expected but I'm still irritated by how touristy everything is. As we walk towards the entrance of the park, we pass stall after stall selling hand-crafted marble ornaments and magnets, postcards, key-chains & bangles all bearing the image of the Taj, while over exuberant stall owners try desperately to force visits to their shops with promises of 'very good price'.
As we wait in line for over half an hour to enter the park grounds, street children carrying calendars and plastic Taj Mahal snow globes incessantly pester me to make a purchase with the whining mantra 'lady, lady, you buy'. I am half temped by a particularly cheap looking snow globe, it is so tacky that it's kind of cool but decide I have enough crap in the end. I also feel really sad to see that some of these poor street beggars are severely deformed, missing arms and legs and dragging themselves along the ground. Alot of these poor souls are sadly enslaved to the local mafia who have control over their take, we have been told not to give them money and I just feel so sorry for them. If ever I am having a self pitying moment here, I think about these people and the reality that is their lives. How they live and where they 'go home to', one can only imagine and you can't help but count your own blessings at moments like this.
Before long we reach the top of the queue where westerners and Indians are split up to buy their tickets. If you are Indian a ticket to the Taj Mahal will cost you significantly less, ticket prices for western tourists are one hundred times more than what the locals pay but still only about €3.50. We walk up a long park avenue and under an enormous marble archway & pretty soon I see the majestic Taj Mahal floating in front of me like an oasis in the desert. The morning sun is just starting to rise, streaking the sky with pink and yellow and bathing everything in a lovely golden light. The Taj Mahal stands proud and tall, whiter than white against the morning sky. I can hardly believe I am here, it honestly feels like a dream and I know now for certain that I have finally arrived in India!
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The next morning we rise at dawn, the plan is to hit the Taj Mahal just as the sun comes up in order to beat the crowds of tourists. The site of the Taj is only a 10 minute bus journey away from our hotel & as we approach it I am dismayed to find that there are already multiple coach loads of mostly older European, Australian and American tourists pulled up in the car park. All with the customary sunglasses and enormous cameras around their necks being directed by their Indian guides. I suppose it is to be expected but I'm still irritated by how touristy everything is. As we walk towards the entrance of the park, we pass stall after stall selling hand-crafted marble ornaments and magnets, postcards, key-chains & bangles all bearing the image of the Taj, while over exuberant stall owners try desperately to force visits to their shops with promises of 'very good price'.
As we wait in line for over half an hour to enter the park grounds, street children carrying calendars and plastic Taj Mahal snow globes incessantly pester me to make a purchase with the whining mantra 'lady, lady, you buy'. I am half temped by a particularly cheap looking snow globe, it is so tacky that it's kind of cool but decide I have enough crap in the end. I also feel really sad to see that some of these poor street beggars are severely deformed, missing arms and legs and dragging themselves along the ground. Alot of these poor souls are sadly enslaved to the local mafia who have control over their take, we have been told not to give them money and I just feel so sorry for them. If ever I am having a self pitying moment here, I think about these people and the reality that is their lives. How they live and where they 'go home to', one can only imagine and you can't help but count your own blessings at moments like this.
Before long we reach the top of the queue where westerners and Indians are split up to buy their tickets. If you are Indian a ticket to the Taj Mahal will cost you significantly less, ticket prices for western tourists are one hundred times more than what the locals pay but still only about €3.50. We walk up a long park avenue and under an enormous marble archway & pretty soon I see the majestic Taj Mahal floating in front of me like an oasis in the desert. The morning sun is just starting to rise, streaking the sky with pink and yellow and bathing everything in a lovely golden light. The Taj Mahal stands proud and tall, whiter than white against the morning sky. I can hardly believe I am here, it honestly feels like a dream and I know now for certain that I have finally arrived in India!
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| Me standing in front of Taj Mahal my first week in India |
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