ONE minute you could be completely bowled over and the next minute you could be as frustrated as hell. Welcome to India-the land of contradiction.
You are entranced by the colours and the spectacle of daily life while at the same time you are horrified by the poverty or weary from your senses being bombarded from all angles. You could be in love with the place but you are also being driven demented by the men staring at you or the rickshaw drivers who literally chase you down the street looking for business.
These oppositions were particularly obvious to me while visiting the Taj Mahal, India’s best known monument, and a marvel of architecture that some would argue as one of the wonders of the world.
The Taj was built in 1648, extravagantly built entirely out of marble, by the wealthy emperor Shah Jahan to prove a point-that not even the most beautiful of monuments could possibly surpass the beauty of his wife.
It is in the city of Agra, a four hour train ride south of the capital New Delhi. It is a hellish place, a dizzying pit of madness. Agra teems with crowds and it smells of grime and noxious fumes. It is polluted, noisy, filthy, traffic choked and poverty stricken. Hordes of hardened aggressive touts patrol the streets desperate to earn a rupee. Some are amusing, some are simply irritating; others are downright creepy.
It is like your average Indian city, except far worse, and because it is the home of the bi
ggest tourist attraction on the subcontinent, the touts there are particularly trying and determined to extract as much business as possible from the 15,000 people who visit the Taj daily.
The contrast between what is inside the walls and outside is truly remarkable.
Inside is mostly tout free; there is calm and order; it is a refuge from the madness outside.
I visited the Taj in the early morning before the heaving crowds of day trippers descended. While it was still busy at 7am, the palace grounds were large enough to absorb the volume of tourists. It managed to retain an atmosphere of peace and grandeur.
A tour guide called Raj at the gates convinced me I needed his services, so I ceded to his demands and he gave me a guided tour. I asked how much his fee was. “As you wish, madame,” he replied, a phrase you hear often in India. Raj was happy when I gave him 100 rupees or €2.
Raj was well worth the paltry fee as he was quite knowledgeable. One of the great asp
ects to being a tourist in a developing country is that everything is so cheap. Raj was quaintly polite, and spoke in that style of old English that is a relic of the colonial era.
He told me how the Taj looked its best during a full moon, and how throughout the day, the colour of the marble appears to change, as it reflects the changing light.
It was shortly after daybreak and the palace, with its familiar onion shaped dome, was shrouded in a misty, ethereal white light. The gleaming marble of the palace with its four gently tapered minarets was a heavenly grey white. It took 22,000 men and 1,000 elephants 22 years to build it, Raj informed me.
We all had to remove our shoes to enter the inner sanctum, and wear little cloth ‘footsies’ to protect the marble floors, which were constantly being swept by slim Indian teenage boys. It felt like it could be the cleanest 100 metres squared in the entire country!
The dome was faintly reflected in the long, rectangular fountain. Everything was in perfect symmetry-all the lines, the domes and angles-were in a state of perfect alignment. Tourists queued up to get a picture of themselves in front of the fountain with the famous dome in the background.
The Indians themselves visited in big numbers. They attended in big family units, the women in their colourful saris in one group and the slim men with scarves tied round their heads in another.
Inside the main building was the jewel encrusted tomb of the queen Mumtaz Mahal. Raj told me the jade and crystal came from China, the turquoise gems from Tibet and the marble was transported from the Indian desert state of Rajasthan.
“The only non symmetrical item in this entire complex is this tomb,” he said, pointing to the tomb of the emperor.
The Taj Mahal is considered by romantics to be a celebration of woman in marble, or as some commentator put it, “the proud passions of an emperor’s love wrought in living stones”. UNESCO lauds it as being "the jewel of Muslim art in India and one of the universally admired masterpieces of the world's heritage." It has been recognised as a UNESCO heritage site since 1983.
I expected it to be a bigger and more imposing a structure than it actually was. While it is beautiful to see, visitors must be prepared to stomach passing through a crazy city to get to it. I would recommend taking a day trip from New Delhi, and getting in and out of Agra as rapidly as possible. (And please note the Taj is closed to visitors every Friday.)
Upon emerging from the grounds the madness enveloped me again.
“Rickshaw Madame,” the scores of rickshaw drivers would call. Touts would approach, directly asking where you were going, or trying to drag you into their shop.
“Precious gems, Madame, I give you good price! “they would shout.
The street sellers were flogging their wares: fried nuts, samosas (delicious fried vegetables wrapped in pastry), chai (spiced tea), popcorn, tourist trinkets and souvenir junk. Cows would wander the streets, causing traffic jams. Little kids would run up to me trying to sell me Taj Mahal postcards, maps and books on India. As a white person you are almost walking around with dollar bill signs flashing on your forehead, so quite obviously you become a target for touts. It was pretty much impossible to walk around much outside my guesthouse (Hotel Kamal, which is Lonely Planet listed. It was adequate with a nice rooftop restaurant, but quite noisy and had dodgy showers) without getting plagued by somebody selling something. It gets exasperating after a while.
Sometimes it is just easier to give in and buy something-afterall as a Western person you are absolutely loaded. A rupee means nothing to you, but to them it could mean they will get a good meal that night.
The memory that sticks out in my head of Agra was the moment the train pulled in to the city. The train slowly rounded the brow of a hill and the city, with a pallor of smoke hanging overhead, came into view. It was dusk on a muggy, sticky day. The air was stifled with the smoke from fires the city dwellers were burning for cooking and the awful fumes emanating from the diesel trucks and auto rickshaws cramming the streets.
The rickshaw-a kind of three wheeler motorised taxi, is a disaster in terms of noise pollution, fumes and environmental efficiency. Yet they are dead handy to get around and somewhat of a novelty for an Irish person.
The air was almost dead in the humid oppressing heat. From a distance the fires looked like thousands of lighting candles. The effect of the pollution on the Taj Mahal is a huge worry for the Indian government and earlier this year they applied mud to the building in a desperate bid to whiten the yellowing marble. General dirt, dust and industrial pollution has taken its toll over the years, hence the ‘mudpack’ treatment.
As the train moved closer to the station and into the bowels of the city, a stench of stale urine wafted in the window. I could almost see it rising off the steamy pavements, mixed with the smell of rancid open sewers and fresh cow dung.
I saw a warren of backstreet markets selling colourful Indian fabrics alongside fresh vegetable stalls. The smell of peanuts roasting on an open pan on the side of the street briefly replaced the unpleasant smells.
India really is a country of paradox, where extreme wealth and extreme poverty live side by side, where beauty and filth inhabit the same streets, where chaos and disorder live comfortably alongside eachother.
You are entranced by the colours and the spectacle of daily life while at the same time you are horrified by the poverty or weary from your senses being bombarded from all angles. You could be in love with the place but you are also being driven demented by the men staring at you or the rickshaw drivers who literally chase you down the street looking for business.
These oppositions were particularly obvious to me while visiting the Taj Mahal, India’s best known monument, and a marvel of architecture that some would argue as one of the wonders of the world.
The Taj was built in 1648, extravagantly built entirely out of marble, by the wealthy emperor Shah Jahan to prove a point-that not even the most beautiful of monuments could possibly surpass the beauty of his wife.
It is in the city of Agra, a four hour train ride south of the capital New Delhi. It is a hellish place, a dizzying pit of madness. Agra teems with crowds and it smells of grime and noxious fumes. It is polluted, noisy, filthy, traffic choked and poverty stricken. Hordes of hardened aggressive touts patrol the streets desperate to earn a rupee. Some are amusing, some are simply irritating; others are downright creepy.
It is like your average Indian city, except far worse, and because it is the home of the bi
ggest tourist attraction on the subcontinent, the touts there are particularly trying and determined to extract as much business as possible from the 15,000 people who visit the Taj daily.The contrast between what is inside the walls and outside is truly remarkable.
Inside is mostly tout free; there is calm and order; it is a refuge from the madness outside.
I visited the Taj in the early morning before the heaving crowds of day trippers descended. While it was still busy at 7am, the palace grounds were large enough to absorb the volume of tourists. It managed to retain an atmosphere of peace and grandeur.
A tour guide called Raj at the gates convinced me I needed his services, so I ceded to his demands and he gave me a guided tour. I asked how much his fee was. “As you wish, madame,” he replied, a phrase you hear often in India. Raj was happy when I gave him 100 rupees or €2.
Raj was well worth the paltry fee as he was quite knowledgeable. One of the great asp
ects to being a tourist in a developing country is that everything is so cheap. Raj was quaintly polite, and spoke in that style of old English that is a relic of the colonial era.He told me how the Taj looked its best during a full moon, and how throughout the day, the colour of the marble appears to change, as it reflects the changing light.
It was shortly after daybreak and the palace, with its familiar onion shaped dome, was shrouded in a misty, ethereal white light. The gleaming marble of the palace with its four gently tapered minarets was a heavenly grey white. It took 22,000 men and 1,000 elephants 22 years to build it, Raj informed me.
We all had to remove our shoes to enter the inner sanctum, and wear little cloth ‘footsies’ to protect the marble floors, which were constantly being swept by slim Indian teenage boys. It felt like it could be the cleanest 100 metres squared in the entire country!
The dome was faintly reflected in the long, rectangular fountain. Everything was in perfect symmetry-all the lines, the domes and angles-were in a state of perfect alignment. Tourists queued up to get a picture of themselves in front of the fountain with the famous dome in the background.
The Indians themselves visited in big numbers. They attended in big family units, the women in their colourful saris in one group and the slim men with scarves tied round their heads in another.
Inside the main building was the jewel encrusted tomb of the queen Mumtaz Mahal. Raj told me the jade and crystal came from China, the turquoise gems from Tibet and the marble was transported from the Indian desert state of Rajasthan.
“The only non symmetrical item in this entire complex is this tomb,” he said, pointing to the tomb of the emperor.
The Taj Mahal is considered by romantics to be a celebration of woman in marble, or as some commentator put it, “the proud passions of an emperor’s love wrought in living stones”. UNESCO lauds it as being "the jewel of Muslim art in India and one of the universally admired masterpieces of the world's heritage." It has been recognised as a UNESCO heritage site since 1983.
I expected it to be a bigger and more imposing a structure than it actually was. While it is beautiful to see, visitors must be prepared to stomach passing through a crazy city to get to it. I would recommend taking a day trip from New Delhi, and getting in and out of Agra as rapidly as possible. (And please note the Taj is closed to visitors every Friday.)
Upon emerging from the grounds the madness enveloped me again.
“Rickshaw Madame,” the scores of rickshaw drivers would call. Touts would approach, directly asking where you were going, or trying to drag you into their shop.
“Precious gems, Madame, I give you good price! “they would shout.
The street sellers were flogging their wares: fried nuts, samosas (delicious fried vegetables wrapped in pastry), chai (spiced tea), popcorn, tourist trinkets and souvenir junk. Cows would wander the streets, causing traffic jams. Little kids would run up to me trying to sell me Taj Mahal postcards, maps and books on India. As a white person you are almost walking around with dollar bill signs flashing on your forehead, so quite obviously you become a target for touts. It was pretty much impossible to walk around much outside my guesthouse (Hotel Kamal, which is Lonely Planet listed. It was adequate with a nice rooftop restaurant, but quite noisy and had dodgy showers) without getting plagued by somebody selling something. It gets exasperating after a while.
Sometimes it is just easier to give in and buy something-afterall as a Western person you are absolutely loaded. A rupee means nothing to you, but to them it could mean they will get a good meal that night.
The memory that sticks out in my head of Agra was the moment the train pulled in to the city. The train slowly rounded the brow of a hill and the city, with a pallor of smoke hanging overhead, came into view. It was dusk on a muggy, sticky day. The air was stifled with the smoke from fires the city dwellers were burning for cooking and the awful fumes emanating from the diesel trucks and auto rickshaws cramming the streets.
The rickshaw-a kind of three wheeler motorised taxi, is a disaster in terms of noise pollution, fumes and environmental efficiency. Yet they are dead handy to get around and somewhat of a novelty for an Irish person.
The air was almost dead in the humid oppressing heat. From a distance the fires looked like thousands of lighting candles. The effect of the pollution on the Taj Mahal is a huge worry for the Indian government and earlier this year they applied mud to the building in a desperate bid to whiten the yellowing marble. General dirt, dust and industrial pollution has taken its toll over the years, hence the ‘mudpack’ treatment.
As the train moved closer to the station and into the bowels of the city, a stench of stale urine wafted in the window. I could almost see it rising off the steamy pavements, mixed with the smell of rancid open sewers and fresh cow dung.
I saw a warren of backstreet markets selling colourful Indian fabrics alongside fresh vegetable stalls. The smell of peanuts roasting on an open pan on the side of the street briefly replaced the unpleasant smells.
India really is a country of paradox, where extreme wealth and extreme poverty live side by side, where beauty and filth inhabit the same streets, where chaos and disorder live comfortably alongside eachother.
