The delayed flight from Varanasi got in two and a half hours late and after dark, putting me in a foul mood. Before we departed, Indian Airlines personnel promised special arrangements would be made to get me into the city, because of our late arrival and my "missed contact." The Airline bus left for the city a half hour after all other commercial transport and no one could convince me during the wait our bus ever would leave. It did finally, driven by a surly guy who resented a civilian passenger. The bus dropped me at the isolated airline office parking lot next to the recommended Clarks Shiraz Hotel. They demanded a room rate of $74 with no quibbling. At that hour looking for an alternative was out of the question.  

The next day I walked toward the Taj Mahal monument and found the deluxe $35 Park Plaza Hotel, an excellent value and only a fifteen minute walk north to the monument. I found a link to a city map HERE. I've previously been in Agra twice before, but being so close on my way to Delhi it seemed a shame not to make a brief third visit. The monument is an architectural wonder, no doubt about it. The symmetry is overwhelming. 

Agra is a pleasant change from the other cities I've visited in India this time around, clean and orderly for the most part. The usual clutch of touts hovered around the entrance to the Taj Mahal grounds offering bad advice and guide services, all of which I ignored. So much has been written about the Taj Mahal itself it seems superfluous to say more.

The first day I walked around the back of the monument grounds and discovered a crematorium next to the river. Several funeral pyres sat ready for bodies on raised stone platforms covered with sand. The facility also had many plain iron gratings ready for more cremations. A corpse lay next to one of the stone platforms covered with flowers, a pile of wood already stacked ready for the fire. Off to the side a group of men carried a bag of ashes from a previous cremation wrapped in a reed mat down to the river's edge, dug a hole and buried it in the sand. A hauntingly lovely popular Buddhist chant played over and over in the background as the funeral dirge. No women were present; only men. A watchful priest sat near the Hindu temple on the property. An unusual scent of incense hung in the air. There were three cremations under preparation. As male mourners arrived they carried arm-loads of wood for the fires. The first group set their little bonfire ablaze promptly at noon. I later learned only special people are cremated so early in the day, that later in the afternoon one could expect to see scores of bodies committed to the fires.  

On the way back I detoured into some undeveloped woods surrounding the monument grounds to get a better look at the Taj Mahal from the outside. An aggressive guy on a bicycle followed me partway down the path blocking my way out and demanded "I want pen!" I looked him in the eye and replied "I want pen!" with the emphasis on the "I." He retorted "You can buy more." I slipped around his bike and briskly walked back to civilization without looking back wondering what his next move might be.  

On another walk near the hotel I met a carpet finisher in his shop across the street from a new mosque currently under construction. He told me Muslims and Hindus live in harmony in his mostly Muslim neighborhood, though there had been politically inspired conflict between people of the two faiths the week before a few kilometers away. As I walked the area admiring the unfinished mosque a crowd gathered to watch me taking pictures. Some of the kids asked for my pens. Later outside the Muslim neighborhood a young boy of about ten chanted in quick succession: "Gimme 10 Rupees. Gimme one Rupee. Gimme 100 Rupees." It seemed he might not know what the words actually meant and wanted to cover all possibilities. I hear quite a few people happily singing Indian melodies on the streets. However, the hotel is the only place I ever heard western music being played. 

Periodically I bundle up no longer needed maps, hotel brochures, and receipts and mail them back home by slow sea mail. The main post office is situated half way across town so I hired a rickshaw to take me the twenty minutes distance. Once there I discovered bedlam. The disorder made me wonder how anyone other than the most determined ever succeeds in sending or receiving mail. Finally, an employee with limited English walked me into the dusty bowels of the chaotic operation, behind the public service windows where lackadaisical postal employees pretended to serve the crowd of people waiting to send mail on the public side.

I got special treatment because I had international mail to process. As it turned out, several others also had important international mail as well; one danced around a pile of perhaps twenty packages wrapped in cloth and stitched closed awaiting processing. I asked him how long he had been waiting and learned he had been there twenty minutes. Surveying the work that had to be processed ahead of me, I made some disgusted sound and started to walk out. Someone who appeared to be a supervisor blocked my way and gestured to the vacant desk indicating the missing employee would soon return to his duties. I thanked him for the information and added in a disgruntled voice that I wanted to send a package today, gesturing toward the other waiting guys and their mountains of packages. With that he called the errant postal clerk back to work immediately and told him things in a language I could not understand. Instantly, the irritated guy grabbed my package, weighed it and thrust it back at me with some notations added. The supervisor then walked me to another desk where the necessary postage fee was paid, a metered stamp produced and affixed to my package. The supervisor took my now processed package and tossed it on a pile with others, indicating we were through. Looking back sheepishly at the still waiting guys who had been ahead of me, I gestured helplessness and they responded in kind. So much for the Indian Postal Service.  

During the rickshaw ride back to the hotel, the driver pleaded with me to take a look at an "art store," adding that he would be paid 20 Rupees for even a brief five minute stop. I agreed and found myself running a gauntlet of hard sell experts who were determined I should not leave empty handed. To be honest, the stores did have some truly beautiful crafts and art and at very reasonable prices. 

Now I am off to Delhi to figure out how to get into western China. Ambiguous information suggests it may be possible to fly into Pakistan and then on into China now that India and  Pakistan are again talking to one another. My first stop in Delhi will be the Chinese Embassy... or a travel agent. Reliable information is hard to come by in this part of the world, so serendipity will play a large role in my next moves. That is all the observations I have from this famous place, so I'll close. 

Peace,
Fred L Bellomy