2/3/06: Agra Phobia: 4 Hours To a Room With a View

Yesterday, Prabha sent a special e-mail warning us about the pending drives on India’s highways. Therefore, after an uneventful Air Deccan flight to Delhi, and quick and unproductive U-turns from the WCs in the airport, we aproached the impending 5-hour drive from Delhi to Amritsar with great trepidation. After passing two closed highway rest stops, “our eyes were turning yellow, and it’s time to ‘when in India, do as the Indians do” as Paul so aptly put it. We pulled over alongside the road, and like billions of Indians before us, recycled by a wall in a field. Relieved, we continued toward Agra, sharing the one lane highway with an assortment of carts pulled by bulls, camels, and donkeys, tractor-powered trucks, piled high with lumber and humans. We passed two sad dancing bears, whose owners begged for money while torturing their captive beast. A wedding procession clogged the streets of one village, with the groom looking nervous astride his horse while friends danced and sang around him.

Before reaching the poverty and rubbish-infested streets of Agra, we stopped at the Sikandara tomb of Akbar, another beautiful Moghul monument, built by the first of a line of enlightened Moslems, while he was still alive. Akbar may have been illiterate (like W), but, unlike W, he was a great assimilator and integrator, believing that a great society embraced the best of Islam, Hindu, Jain, and Bhuddist theology. His legacy of tolerance would last 3 generations, until hisw Aurangzeb took the reins (more on him tomorrow). The late afternoon sun softened the red sandstone tomb, as we circled the perfectly symmetrical shrine. As we returned to the front of the tomb, an army of monkeys lined the walkway, while deer and blackbok dotted the grassy landscape to each side. Paul carefully paid a toll of two chunks of papaya to one of the monkeys and we passed unharmed.

Upon arrival at the Oberoi, we passed the elephant statues and reflecting pool, entered the lobby, and caught our first glimpses of the Taj’s dome, beyond the pool and treetops. Even in the dark, it commanded respect. We spent a quiet evening at the hotel, enjoyed a delicious dinner, special-ordered by Sunny, and prepared for an pre-dawn photographic assault.