Arriving in Agra by bus at 11am, we checked into our modest lodgings just outside the infamous Taj Ganj area of the city and strolled towards the UNESCO World Heritage listed Wonder of the World, ludicrously excited despite an unnecessarily long, dusty and thoroughly exhausting bus ride from Delhi.
As we approached the East Gate of the compound, I remember thinking it was rather odd that no-one was imploring us to buy postcards or marble mini-Tajs, drink a can of Coke, use their guide service, eat at their restaurant etc but I was just too excited to pay much heed. There were no queues of tourists milling around for a ticket, in fact there were no tourists to be seen at all, just a large embankment of Indian soldiers guarding the entrance. At this point, it finally occurred to our heat and exhaustion addled brains that something wasn’t quite right. Having been shouted at by a couple of stick wielding soldiers and told to ‘go’, we were informed by one of the less violent looking soldiers that ‘Taj closed’ and shooed away with a swipe of a lustily-wielded stick.
We repaired to the one café in the vicinity that seemed to be open and were greeted by the chuckling proprietor, who must have been tickled by the look of bemusement on our faces. As we settled down with a cup of
chai and a cold refreshing drink, he told us that the King of Belgium was making a surprise visit and that the Taj was being closed for the afternoon, ‘maybe’ to open again the next morning. King of Belgium?
KING OF BELGIUM? I didn’t even know they had a king! We knew that we had to be at Delhi International Airport (200km away) by 12.30pm the next day, and started to fret furiously about our chances of getting there early enough to make our flight to Varanasi. Asking the waiter what he thought our chances were, we were greeted with a smile and a ubiquitous head-wiggle, though that could be more to do with the fact that Indians hate to disappoint anyone and will generally answer any question in the affirmative to avoid doing so!
Leaving the café for another crack at the Taj, we were greeted with more stick wielding, furiously moustached soldiers, and decided to head back to our hotel to work out what to do. One of the reasons we picked the Sheela Inn was that it has a roof terrace complete with restaurant, which seemed like a great place to relax under hot sun and blue skies. Even if we couldn’t go inside the Taj, we could work on our fast developing t shirt tans! Having a rather intimate view of the Taj from the rooftop would normally be a wonderful thing, but when you’ve effectively been banned from visiting, it becomes more than a little frustrating. We found ourselves glaring furiously at the stunning domes and minarets knowing that we had travelled all the way to Agra with the sole intention of fulfilling a life-long dream and seeing the Taj only to find entry denied by a little-known minor European monarch – soul destroying! To satiate our need for calories, if not our need for sight-seeing, we passed the hot afternoon munching on delicious vegetarian delights and quaffing gallons of chai.
At around 5ish, one of the waiters passed on the tip that the Taj would be opening for sunset, so we ran down the road with a spring in our step, only to find our way blocked again by the soldiers, who informed us solemnly that it would remain closed after all. Feeling in a slightly mischievous and malevolent mood, we decided to follow a tour group down a muddy track along the side of the Taj, thinking that their guide must know a sneaky way in. This thought clearly also occurred to another group of travellers who in turn followed us down the track, with a small group of soldiers in tow. Feeling rather like the Pied Piper of Hamlyn, our burgeoning group of around 50 made its way down the path until we found our way blocked by another group of soldiers, this time armed with sub machine guns. We stood blocked at both sides by men in uniform, who subjected us to a minute-long tirade in Hindi before ordering us to go back. We had at least this time had the chance to view some of the outer walls and towers of the Taj up close!
Returning to the hotel somewhat crestfallen, the waiter could sense our misery and offered to sneak out and fetch us some beers. This cheered us up endlessly, and the evening passed swiftly with the drinking of foul (and rather ironically named) Royal Challenge beers and watching the city suffer about 5 power cuts in 2 hours – impressive.
The alarm went off at the ridiculously early hour of 4.30 as we dragged ourselves in and out of the shower and out into the dark streets. Despite being passed by a random herd of camels and some clearly still inebriated cycle rickshaw drivers (motorised rickshaws being wisely banned from the centre of the city for environmental reasons), we made it to the East Gate entrance to the Taj unscathed, where we found a scene of merry hell unfolding. Due to the closure the day before, around double the normal number of tourists were jostling for position around the still closed ticket windows (of which there were only two to serve several hundred people, even at 5am). The ticket office didn’t open until 6, so the next hour basically involved negotiating our way to somewhere remotely near the front the queue, avoiding malevolent ticket touts and hordes of large and unwieldy American pensioners loudly complaining about sore stomachs and the smell/mess/rude Indians etc. When the ticket office finally opened, a small army of touts surged their way to the front and spent twenty five minutes jostling for new positions while the ticket-seller took his time to unwrap the days tickets, polish his heavy brass stamp (surely a colonial relic!), count out his tickets and carefully stamp them all with a number all as slowly as humanly possible: infuriating when you’ve already waited 20 or so hours to get in!
The ticket man served about ten or so touts first of all, sent to the front to buy huge blocks of tickets for the bus-loads of package tourists who were whisked in on expensive tours so that they wouldn’t have to suffer the indignity of actually having to buy their own tickets. The ponderous and extremely thorough ticket man was though sure to sell and number each ticket painstakingly slowly, meaning that by the time I managed to shove in front of a couple of touts and make my presence known, another 30 minutes had elapsed. An hour after arriving, we finally got our hands on two 750R tickets (about £10 each – steep considering that the locals pay about 30p!) and made our way to the next layer of hell – the metal detectors. Narrowly avoiding a fight with another backpacker, who was enraged at my procuring of tickets before his tout had been able to buy his for him, we joined a throng of people ‘queuing’ for the security checks. The crowd had to divide itself into men and women (there were seperate lines for each), and the difference in behaviour between the two was marked; the men waiting stoically for their turn, but the woman pushing and shoving for position, regardless of age, colour or wealth. I’m not exaggerating when I say that I saw a rather fragile looking American pensioner violently floored by some over-exuberant French queue-bargers. By this point, the sun had started to rise, and our time in Agra was running short – we had a taxi coming to pick us up at 9.30 and it was now nearly 8.
By the time we finally got in, we were stressed, tired, hurried and bad-tempered. But all of the bad feeling instantly evaporated the second we rounded the final corner and glimpsed the magnificence of the tomb itself for the first time. Wow. Just wow. There are almost no words that can sum up quite how stunning it is – no building in the world has ever had such a jaw-dropping effect on me. Here’s a small bit of history on the Taj Mahal, taken from Wikipedia (don’t say I don’t do my research!):
In 1631, Shah Jahan, emperor during the Mughal empire's period of greatest prosperity, was grief-stricken when his third wife, Mumtaz Mahal, died during the birth of their fourteenth child, Gauhara Begum. Construction of the Taj Mahal began in 1632, one year after her death. The court chronicles of Shah Jahan's grief illustrate the love story traditionally held as an inspiration for the Taj Mahal. The principal mausoleum was completed in 1648 and the surrounding buildings and garden were finished five years later. Emperor Shah Jahan himself described the Taj in these words:
Should guilty seek asylum here,
Like one pardoned, he becomes free from sin.
Should a sinner make his way to this mansion,
All his past sins are to be washed away.
The sight of this mansion creates sorrowing sighs;
And the sun and the moon shed tears from their eyes.
In this world this edifice has been made;
To display thereby the creator's glory.
The Taj Mahal incorporates and expands on design traditions of Persian architecture and earlier Mughal architecture. Specific inspiration came from successful Timurid and Mughal buildings including; the Gur-e Amir (the tomb of Timur, progenitor of the Mughal dynasty, in Samarkand), Humayun's Tomb, Itmad-Ud-Daulah's Tomb (sometimes called the Baby Taj), and Shah Jahan's own Jama Masjid in Delhi. While earlier Mughal buildings were primarily constructed of red sandstone, Shah Jahan promoted the use of white marble inlaid with semi-precious stones, and buildings under his patronage reached new levels of refinement.
History lesson over, and what I will say is that I could see exactly what many people have said before – this is a building that has a soul. We spent as much time as possible given our rather miniscule timescales exploring the grounds and getting up close and personal to the Taj itself. Even at this early hour, a number of locals have found diverse ways to rid you of your cash by means of hefty tips, by offering to take photos of you, lending you slippers to wear inside the Taj itself (supposed to be included in the entry price) and following you at distance shouting facts about the site before claiming you owe them guiding fees! Good old India! It was soon time to drag ourselves away, even though I could have stayed for hours exploring everything the complex has to offer. After a dash back to the hotel, we just had time to grab our bags and check out before jumping in our booked car back to Delhi, where we made our flight to Varanasi with minutes to spare ready to experience another mind-bendingly mental Indian city!
In short, the beautifully kept gardens, wonderfully maintained mausoleum and stunning grounds made every second of stress and insanity involved in actually getting into the Taj Mahal well, well worth it. Damn the King of Belgium for making our life more difficult, but it certainly made us appreciate our visit all the more!
Practical Stuff:
We stayed at the
Hotel Sheela Inn, about 600 yards from the East Gate of the Taj, which cost 600R for a double room and had an excellent roof-top restaurant.
We paid for a private car to take us back to Delhi, which cost around 1200R. This is a lot more than the bus, but took half the time!
Entry to the Taj costs 750R for a foreigner, and tickets are no longer available from the East Gate itself. Instead you buy your tickets at the nearby Shilpgram outlet.
Please find the funtotravel.info guide to Agra on the
Agra page of the funtotravel.info site
Click
here for more information on the history of the Taj Mahal itself can be found at.
