AGRA + THE TAJ MAHAL | LETTERS & PICTURES FROM ASIA, 1988 | PART 6

In 1988, when I was eighteen years old I set off from New Zealand to Asia on an adventure. Accompanying me was my high school friend David. We were inspired by Tintin comics and National Geographic magazines. Although we had never actually been overseas before, we wanted begin our travels somewhere more exotic than the usual teenage Kiwi destinations. Our plans were vague - first Nepal, then India - then, after that, as far as our meagre holiday savings would take us. Once on the road, I wrote detailed and mostly illegible aerogrammes home, which my father kindly typed up to make readable for the rest of the family. My father also generously lent me his Pentax Spotmatic camera to ensure I got some good pictures. 

This is the sixth letter/postcard, sent after travelling from Varanasi to Agra in India. Read the very first letter from Kathmandu here.

Agra
6 May 1988
Postcard of the Taj Mahal

Dear Everyone,

It's very hot here in Agra. There has been a power cut which happens about every 5 hours, so our fan has stopped. I am dripping with sweat and writing is an effort. That's funny, just as I wrote that the power came back on and it's a lot cooler now. This climate means it's not the best time to visit Agra!

So this is where the Taj Mahal is. It is about two minutes walk from here. It is easily the most magnificent monument or man-made structure that I have ever seen. I wasn't expecting anything very special, but when I walked in through the gate I was awestruck; it is so huge and has such complex detail. There are beautiful gardens surrounding the buildings and everything is perfectly symmetrical. The close-up detail is amazing. The whole of the inside and most of the outside is covered in patterns with flowers the size of my thumbnail; each flower is made with more than fifty tiny pieces of stone inlaid in the marble. Inside the main chamber, the acoustics are amazing; the echoing sound of everyone whispering is the most awesome sound.

I am not sure that the postcard really portrays the splendour of the Taj. I think that it might be a painting because the direction that the sun appears to be setting in is the East and you don't get sunrises like that. Postcards in India, when you can find them, are pretty bad mostly.

The Taj Mahal gets full of tourists - mostly wealthy Indian tourists - during the day, so dawn and dusk are the best times to go. It is also not so unbearably hot at those times, just hot!

We caught a second class overnight train from Varanasi to Agra and the Taj. On the way to the station our cycle rickshaw crashed, bowling over a cyclist and smashing into another rickshaw. No-one was hurt but it was nerve-wracking. There is no need to worry about dangerous traffic accidents as the roads are always totally jammed with bikes, rickshaws, pedestrians and those dreaded holy cows. Varanasi is full of them. Everything moves at a snail's pace in a completely chaotic way; no rules, just abuse people and toot your horn. There are very few cars.

The train ride was easy. We had bunks for the night and so we could sleep for at least some of the 12 hour trip. The trouble was that at every one of the hundreds of stations, tea and food sellers walk down the aisles and past the windows, shouting at the tops of their voices, "CHAI, CHAI!". This is understandably infuriating!

Sometime just after 4 in the morning we were awakened by someone yelling, "Agra, Agra, quick, get off". He was banging David on the head! Half asleep we grabbed our stuff and jumped off. The train was pulling away when David and a Swiss-Israeli couple who have been travelling with us since Kathmandu jumped off. I thought that they weren't going to make it and I was going to be stuck on this dark station full of homeless sleeping people by myself.

The guy who woke us up was a rickshaw driver and it turned out that the real stop for Agra was further down the line and he had just made us panic and jump off so that we would all have to pay for a rickshaw ride to the Taj. The real station was right next to it. Not only did he rip us off in this way but we went through the same ritual as in Varanasi where he took us to all these hotels that we had already said we didn't want. This is a hassle when you are still half asleep at 4.30am. Eventually we all got to the cheap hotels in Agra near the Taj Mahal.

I have much more to say but I've run out of room!

Read the next letter from New Delhi here.