Fatehpur Sikri on tuk-tuk and back to Delhi by train

First of all, this is what was presented to me as a "salad" on the train last night; I believe it was two slices of cucumber, several radishes and a hot pepper.  The man sitting next to me turned out to be a professor of some biotechnology subject at Delhi University, and he couldn't believe I ate it!  I'm starved for fresh vegetables!!!  I'm a salad gal, after all

These two photos are farewell as I tuk-tuked my way to the train station, Salim at the helm, and I swerving and bumping along in the back seat, waving to strangers just to see them smile and maybe even laugh; sometimes I just like to see that the world doesn't have to take itself quite so seriously...

I went to Katepur Sikri by Tuk Tuk, not Salim's but a fancy new one driven by a man's whose name I simply didn't catch.  He spoke no English, had heavy dents in his face, and all his teeth were ringed in the black from beetle nut.  Another man joined him in the front seat, and when I tell you that it is hot on the highway in those things, I am not lying!  It must have been 120 inside there.  When we got to the bus station, they left me and I wandered, looking for some old palaces, built, as you will remember for Akbar's three wives, a Christian, a Muslim and a Hindi.  These bars, I was told by someone who spoke a little English, were put up by the English; at least they knew these places were treasures!

This was my first attempt, and I walked up this rather desserted road to find nothing but ruins, until I staggered FINALLY onto something that looked more promising, and indeed it was!  I'm hungry for breakfast right now so will post only a few photos.

I did see a bird flying, and the green was spectacular, so I looked for it in the trees and found this little parrot!

This is a vista from the ruins.  That old Akbar sure knew where to situate his pad!

Now we get to the houses and the real site, which was incredible, but as I said, I'm hungry.

The work in the clau was extraordinary if you can see all the different designs and patterns chiselled into this wall.

And finally, the great mosque where the poor, exhausted imam was sound asleep on the floor.  When the time came, he had to get up and lead the prayers all over again; it didn't give me much encouragement to think that he slept in between them.  Surely MY minister doesn't sleep between sermons!!

Over and out for now.   It's a new day.  I'm back in Delhi after arriving after midnight and being told by the guest house that I had to go off into the streets to sleep because they room keys were all locked up and they were done for the night.  I barrelled on through them until I found a wonderful little man with a stick and some keys; he let me into one of the rooms, I threw myself under the cold shower, fell into bed and didn't get up until the man came with "Bed Tea" this morning! Avanti!

Bus Bumping and the Taj Mahal and AGRA

Scroll down; I really did include photos if you'd rather skip the writing part.

God only knows what day it is HERE, but I seem to think it’s May 20, could be the 21^st….  I am in Agra, having made it through the worst nightmare of a seven hour bus ride where I was tossed up into the air so many times when the rickety bus went over the smallest AND biggest bumps.  I love Agra, the pace, the taste, the smell, the piggies and monkeys and cows in the streets, the women floating around, the men in somber chat in their white robes and earnest demeanor, even the tuk-tuk drivers pleading for me to take a ride, “just a little ride around the town,” which is when they take you far away and charge oodles.

When I got off the bus at the Agra Fort, I said no thanks to another fort, particularly at 1:30 in the afternoon where the heat positively pulsed up from the cement and off the clay walls of the fort, all on top of the sun beating down on my head.  A big smiley man asked if I needed “auto” and he “offered” to take me to my hotel for 150 rupees, which I checked around and got down to 100, probably should have been 50…  His name is Salim, and I ended up paying him WAY too much to take me around in the afternoon to the Baby Taj and then to the Meehtab Bagh from which we could see the Taj Mahal at sunset.  I took loads of photos and saw two Japanese girls I had seen earlier;  we agreed to meet at 5:15 in the morning to go the Taj for sunrise.

The traffic was wicked, and Salim told me he hated his job; I could see why.  The traffic was a nightmare, but it made me laugh: bicycles, motorcycles, rickshaws (bike and hand held), trucks, busses, cars and people all walking on a road that was SO jammed we moved maybe one foot every 10 minutes.  One guy with a small truck decided that this was the time to wash his truck and was out there with rag and water, giving it the once over.  One truck was so packed with little children whose eyes I caught, and we smiled and laughed and pointed at each other to pass the time.  Some motorcycles cut into the opposite traffic and tried to go against the traffic.  It was mayhem, but only in the nicest way, as Dame Edna would say.

After Salim got us back in one piece, I said, “Okay, beer is on me,” and we went to a  place that had beer – gigantic Kingfishers that we belted back as he ate some “hand chips” which are French fries.  He told me something about his upbringing.  His parents died when his 21 year old brother was two, and Salim was his sole caretaker.  He always worked and had been a tool and die maker (whatever that is), but when I asked him if he had an email address, he admitted that he was illiterate and could not read or write.  He is Muslim but had NO PROBLEM swilling that Kingfisher!

I arose at 5:00 to meet the Japanese girls to go to the opening of the Taj at 5:30, but I never found them so trudged off alone, but not before stopping along the side of the road to sit on a bench with an old geezer in a little dhoti (I think that’s the short pants-skirt-diaper special they wear), no shirt, one beaded necklace and a heavily lined face.  I wanted to take his photo but wanted more to just sit and drink cha with him, and so I did.  We sat on a bench and loudly and pensively sipped our cha.  It was fine.

Off I went and the park around the Taj was FILLED with groups of running men, singing women, walking families; it was wonderful.  I entered in the West Gate and almost lost my heart and soul when I walked through the gate and saw the Taj Mahal.  I began walking tentatively up to it when a little guy came up to me and told me where to take fabulous pictures, then, he grabbed my camera, and he began to take photos himself, some of the best photographs you can imagine; he even had me posing as though I were a movie star.  He was good.  Really good – and fast and such a gleam and twinkle in his eye.  He was slithering under benches, squatting over pools, and positioning himself to take the most enchanting and well-balanced pictures of the Taj AND of me.  NOBODY ever takes photos of me when I travel, and now I have a slew of them, thanks to Raj, my little friend who swears he goes to school, but God only knows.  He made a pretty good penny from me, I can assure you, but then, I was a sucker with Salim also because it seems that these guys work hard, and there is no point in denying them some decent recompense for their kindness and their good service.

Today Salim will take me to the bus station where I shall catch a bus (one every 30 minutes) to Fatehpur Sikri, the Mughal capital between 1571 to 1585 under Emperor Akbar, where he built three palaces for his three wives, one Hindu, one Christian and one Muslim.  I will get back in time to take the 8:30 train back to Delhi, assuming my ticket purchase wasn’t also a scam.  I will wait and see.

Oh, and the best lassi here?  Definitely the Taj Café where I slugged back two in one sitting yesterday afternoon; its’ thirsty in these parts!

This is where the bus to Agra stopped for "breakfast," and it was such a hullabaloo that I raced to the counter where all the "men" congregated for food while the women sat and waited for their men to bring it to their tables.  I found a nice young man, ordered a dhosa and coffee; when he brought it to me, he took me into a room, turned on the ac, got a container of napkins and loaded my plate with two forks, a knife and a spoon.  I am sure he couldn't figure out HOW anyone would bother using utensils, but he was accomodating at best.

 One of my first friends in Agra.

 The Taj sighting over the Agra Fort wall

 Who can resist?

 This is the baby Taj, really the Itmad-ud-Daulah, a tomb built by Persian nobleman Mumtaz Mahal's daughter in 1622-1628 before the Taj was built; my Lonely Planet book claims this was the first Mughal marble structure.

Piggies snorffling around in garbage

Camel who had big teeth and chewed the way our mother told us NOT TO.

A sunset Taj Mahal

 Bringing home the livestock

 REALLY bad traffic, really sweet children

 Salim having a beer with me

The Taj Majal before 6:00 a.m.

 Don't be fooled, the thing is MASSIVE!

 The mosque

Door to another door - with bicycle?

Here is the little fellow who took the photos, slithering under benches, scrunching behind bushes and lining up steps to take artistic, sensitive photos - and I am even in some of them - a rare event when you travel along.  Wouldn't you be taken in by this little smile?  He was so cunning and bequiling that I was ready to stay in India for him!!!

Where to begin?

I've got these photos all jangled up, but bear with me.  These first ones are from today when I took the HOHO bus (Hop on Hop off) bus and managed to go to the Red Fort, The Museum of Art, Hamayun's Tomb, The National Museum AND the whacky Jantar Mantar.  Here is part of the enormous Hamayun's Tomb, the one in the middle is HIS tomb, and those around the site are many others', including the barber's.

This is back on the train from Calcutta to Delhi when I got up to go to the bathroom in the night; these are the sleeping porters, right on the floor, and I just had to step lightly lest I wake them...

These two grafitti signs were on the wall as I drove to the Delhi University Guest House.  The outrage over the rapes is palpable; so, too, is the police coverage for the rallies that go on outside one of the gates to the Red Fort and the high security in the metro stations where one must put his/her bags through the radar tunnel and walk through the X-ray camera every time you ride the metro!  

This was some of the jumble at Chandni Chowk last night after we went to the Jama Masjid, the mosque that can hold 25,000 people.

This was a door at that mosque.

Below you can see a glimpse of the Red Fort where I took so many photos of miniscule things like the flower designs in the walls that it would be a crashing bore to post.

There have been tons of people who have stopped me to ask if they could take their photo with me, and this is just ONE of my series of new best friends, all of whom seem to want to be photographed with the zombie in the short skirt!

This is something I only read about but didn't actually see; The Bird Hospital where they take ONLY vegetarian birds; however, they will tend carnivores on an outpatient basis.  Ha.

15-5-2013

Taking the Raidhani Express from Sealdah Station yesterday made me happy that I’d had experiences on the Chinese train system, which was full of joy, sights, smells and adventure.  Last night’s “adventure” proved to be more trying because I was in a compartment with a very, very loud Indian man who had NO sense of other, shoving  their 6 bags under all the seats, asking me to trade my bed for an upper bunk (no, thank you, said I), stepping on my hand whenever he climbed up to his bunk, but mostly just yapping at enormously loud decibels as I tried to read.  The older women traveling with him and the older man who had to struggle up to the higher sleeping berth were lovely, but HE was incorrigible and thoughtless, as I am beginning to believe most Indian men are…

I have forgotten about the man getting a shave on the street in Calcutta, and after his facial shave, the man with his knife shaved under his arms!  Who knew?

New Delhi station was a madhouse, but I got the prepaid auto, as instructed, arrived at the University of Delhi Guesthouse without a problem and even ate lunch – a help yourself rice, dal, veggie, curd, chapatti affair.  I finally got through to Afroja’s daughter Utsa who says she is not available until 5, which is fine with me as I shall walk around the campus and perhaps try my hand at the metro which looks really organized and has a stop nearby.

Afroja’s son Ujon had led me to believe that the food on the train was terrific and endless and delicious.  All I can say is, don’t count on it, but the fare from Calcutta to Delhi for 3^rd class was less than $100, and I did get to see the countryside WHILE experiencing Mr. Loudmouth who seems to work for a medical company of sorts, headquartered in New York but he’s never been to headquarters, which says it all.

I forgot that at the Indian Museum in Calcutta there was a diorama depicting something about some gods or other, and the figures used were BARBIE DOLLS.  It was too, too wonderful, but I was forbidden to use my camera.  Also, last night taking the metro to DU Guest House I watched one train where men were packed in so tightly that one man’s stomach protruded enough so the door was not going to be able to close; just at that moment ONE more man came barging into the sardined group on that train and wedged HIMself into the jumble of bodies.  The door closed (it just HAS to be curved!), and off it zipped with arms, legs, torso, heads all lapped over one another so that it looked like a puzzle.

Last night to Jama Masjid where we had to put on flowered, enormous, billowing polyester long house coats to walk around the edges and into the mosque where our “guide” took our photos, pointed out good places for us to take photos, until one snippy little Muslim woman came up to me and jerked the loosened lower part of my dress around to cover my legs.  For shame!  I wanted to smack her.  Meanwhile whole families were picnicking along the edges of the mosque and goats were prancing around a little enclosed corral below in anticipation of tonight’s wedding feast that was set up in a huge tent .

I am too tired to write any more, but leave you to turn your computer to see this photo of my and Utsa who had to put on these polyester house coats in order to go around the mosque yesterday; you just cannot beat the attire - OR the poses!

Time Difference and "Goat and Dog

I learned at last that Kolcata is 10 hours ahead of Philadelphia.  Today began as follows, but I could not take photographs because the scene was entirely too intimate:

Goat and Dog

This morning I walked in the gray, muffled heat of early India street life and came upon a butcher who was skinning a goat.  I stood, stunned but mesmerized as he tidily stretched and pulled off the skin, little by little, washing the raw, naked goat down with water and making little cuts to ease off the black, hairy skin.  The goat was hung by his two back legs, the tips of which were still black and hairy.  Its bloody head was prominently displayed on the wooden table, its ears lying bedraggled and listless beside it on the table. 

The man finally slithered the whole skin off the goat as it dangled, slippery and shiny, from its two black hoofs.  He balled up the skin and tossed it under the wooden table.  Then, he went back to work eviscerating the goat with a slit down its belly.  A bloated stomach slithered out, along with other bulbous innards encased in their thin membranes; the man began slowly, slowly pulling on a long stringy intestine that seemed to go on forever.  He gathered together the jiggling life forces and tossed them casually over the wall into the rubble behind it.  He cut off a leg and some ribs for an awaiting customer and chopped it into small pieces, placing gently each piece onto the scale.  Just then I heard the bleat of a little goat.

I walked down the street where a local stray dog was sitting on his haunches looking up at a woman at her window.  He sat in the dead middle of the street.  I looked at his longing eyes, his obeisant stance, and then I looked up at the woman and smiled at her, nodding my head in encouragement.  She looked up and down the street and then threw out to the dog a big piece of bread.  I made clapping gestures up at the woman, we smiled at each other, and the dog bound into the road to gather up his breakfast. 

I hoped the woman was not going to be eating goat for dinner this evening.

Another Indian museum and the Kalighat Temple...

The Indian Museum on Chowringhee Road is SUCH a mish mash of things from here and there with no particular focus on India itself that I had to laugh as we lunged for the Egyptian Room solely because of its air conditioning!  There were Zoology Rooms with old carcasses of all sorts of animals, there was a Birds Room that had birds of South America, there were old, washed-out paintings of the Tagore clan once again, and finally all the prehistoric fossils and then statuary, of which only these two struck my fancy.  Who can resist a dancing Ganesh?

 Then, we took the metro over the Kalighat Temple, about which Afroja hesitated, and justifiably so because it was a tawdry neighborhood, the temple was filthy, and the carryings-on were nothing but ritualistic, children wearing brass helments and wigs, and men hanging their arms through dangling red sashes.  Bizarre.  The ONLY thing we missed was a sacrificial goad, but because we were forbidden to photograph I couldn't even take away the image of the place where they lacerate and kill the goats...  Oh well, it is all best put behind me.

The woman below was on her balcony, and I looked up and asked if I could take her picture; she acquiesced and then kindly threw herself into a kind of pose.  We grinned, waved and thumbs upped each other, and off I went.

 How about hanging your sari out to dry, and it goes down to the next floor?  This is a tough job when you live in an apartment...

 I am a door lover, a lock lover and a mailbox lover, and these were my targets today as we walked.

 These little fellows were having such fun in the water, lathering soap all over themselves and squealing as they splashed under the water pump.

This is the actual top of the Kalighat Temple, and below is a young man selling geegaws for the temple; note the warning sign.  The rest of the photos are doors, doors, doors, but they capture some of the spirit of South Kolcata through my very astigmatism-riddled eyes.