India Study Abroad Journal Entry #2

Day 2: Agra

We got a wakeup call at Oh-God-Thirty in the morning to get ready to go down to breakfast. My roommate, Jennifer, and I headed downstairs about 6:30 and met up with Dr. Ratan. The breakfast was very Westernized but there was a southern Indian dish that was absolutely wonderful. It was so hard to not eat the fruit because it was so colorful and looked so good!

We loaded onto the bus to get our first introduction to Indian traffic. I don’t even know why they bother painting lines on the road, everyone kind of does what they want to anyway. There are no stop lights or signs, no

yield signs, and from what I apparently observed – no drivers licenses. It is so amazing how many people can balance on the back of a scooter or cram into one of the little 3 wheeled taxis.

Small cars are weaving in and out of traffic, people will just start walking across the street, with no care about oncoming traffic at all and animals will lie in the road and everyone will just go around them. I can’t imagine brakes last very long as you can never maintain a constant speed. What I was surprised about though, was that the roads seemed relatively well maintained (later to learn that this is in fact an anomaly).

I was totally transfixed on looking out the window. It was amazing to me how people were getting on at the sides of the highways. Women were carrying huge loads on their heads, men were using hand tools to till up the earth, children were playing at the side of the road (though we didn’t see many of them as school was still in session). Coca-Cola and Pepsi sure have advertising down to an art form in India. You can’t go a kilometer without seeing a Coke/Pepsi stand that is completely decked out in red/blue and slogans. The chairs and tables matched the color, the walls were completely covered – top to bottom, side to side – with slogans as well

(though Coke goes more over the top with it than Pepsi) I don’t

know if I can complain about billboards in America any more after seeing this. The other thing I noticed was the schools (colleges/universities) for things ranging from management to dentistry to engineering. The buildings were generally run down and letters were often missing from the signs, it would be condemned and yet there would be people wandering around outside them. I felt rather safe in our little bubble. We’d stop for traffic in towns and locals would hold things up to the bus windows asking for money and it made me grateful for the doors.

We arrived in Agra and checked in at the hotel and received an Indian greeting (placing a Bindi on our forehead) and had about an hour to relax before heading out to the Taj Mahal. Anurag introduced us to the guide for the Taj.

Arriving at the Taj we got our first introduction to the beggars on the street. It seemed as if we had barely put our feet down on terra-firma when we were swarmed by all the people we’d been watching out the bus window on the drive to Agra. They were shoving post cards, keychains, magnets, and other items that I generally refer as dust-collectors (in retrospect I should bought something of this nature as they turned out to be harder to come by in traditional stores that I would have thought, though I don’t think that was a particularly appropriate moment to do that). Our guide picked up our Taj survival kits (a bottle of water and booties) and we went inside.

I have to say, after years of marveling over photos of the Taj and the general build up to seeing the Taj – you forget to put into perspective that it is in fact – a tomb, a very large, elegant tomb, but a tomb none the less. It had rained for a minute earlier in the day and so now all of the marble was wet. And it was hot, so very hot. So, all that water was evaporating and it felt like a giant steam bath. This is not to say that the Taj wasn’t breathtaking. It was, and I can distinctly remember how amazing it looked as it peaked through the walkway when we approached. I really thought for a moment I was walking into a postcard. Our guide talked to us about the architecture and the history of the Taj (which is a beautiful love story if you discount the other wives that the Shah also had…she was his favorite). For all it is, it still is probably the most recognizable symbol of India (I couldn’t very well go to India and not go to Taj Mahal). I was a little disappointed to find out that we would not be coming back in the evening – I very much wanted to see it at night – but apparently it is not lit up at night?

Thanks to jet lag (something I’ve never experienced with domestic travels) the first few days were a bit of a blur. I remember being very tired and very hot. It almost makes me wish that we’d done the Taj at the end of the trip. We went inside the Taj – and oh good lord, if we thought it was hot and humid outside, it was nothing compared to the interior! Put a couple hundred sweaty, hot people, into a room with no air circulation to speak of, in a building made of marble – and you’ve got yourself a recipe for heat stroke. The tour guide insisted on talking – a lot – while we stood there melting. The Taj is wonderfully romantic from the outside – on the inside I was not quite as convinced that he loved her so much as he wanted her to burn in a fiery inferno.

This is where I first began to see signs of the luxuries I’d taken for granted in my years of traveling solo. Since I turned 18, I have been jet-setting around the US on my own, going at my own pace, doing what I want – and generally when I wanted. So, when my camera was demanding more photos of Times Square one evening – I ended up staying out there, because I could. It’s been so long since I’ve traveled with anyone else that I think I might have forgotten what it was like. Despite the fact that I was relatively certain that I was melting in the Indian heat, I really felt like I could have stayed there for a few more – millennia. There is so much photographic potential to the Taj (duh) and I know that I didn’t get near the opportunity to flesh it out as I really wanted to. But, as everyone else in the group wanted to go…it was time to (though my last shot of the Taj peeking around the building as we were leaving was my attempt to portray this feeling of being dragged away from something akin to a photographer’s Mecca).

The tour guide started explaining to us how the stones were inlayed into the marble, talked about the special properties of the marble, and then he took us to a building – that had air conditioning, water and – ended up being a death trap for Visa (and MasterCard).

We got a demonstration of marble work, and then a nice sales pitch, followed by a guy laying

on the pressure to buy something. I folded like a cheap suit. I wish I’d seen it as a sign of my upcoming spiral into a complete lack of monetary restraint that I was going to develop on this trip. Miriam had a theory – as I was the only first time International traveler in the group – that she later shared with me. Because everything was so new – things to purchase – I felt the need to buy everything, where as other people who had experienced something similar before – didn’t feel that need. I don’t know if that’s true of if I was just recklessly irresponsible with my money, but it makes me feel better so I’m going to go with

that. So, sometime in September, a marble nightstand should be arriving for me. My friend Jennifer gave me a dope slap when I told her this, I suppose I need it (fat lot of good it did me post-purchase though – where was my keeper when I was sitting there getting sweet talked into this purchase!) This was not the last of our high pressure – captured audience – sales pitches we would see either (and I would fold for every.single.one).

That evening we had dinner on the rooftop of our hotel and I escaped to do some night photography. At one point I hit the button to take a shot, and there was a loud bang, and the power grid went completely out.

Welcome to India.