Agra to Jaipur - Golden Triangle 5

Agra’s emptying as we leave town. Whole families are on the road, picnic baskets slung between them, paniers on their heads, trailing young, straggling behind. Red flags festoon the dingiest of alleyways, and youths have tinselled fillets bound in their hair. Something’s up.
We ask Sanjay, as the car noses along the gaudy streets. “Ram Nomi,” he says, as if that meant anything to any of us. “Ah, Ram Nomi,” we say, knowledgeably. “Of course.” It’s the celebration of the birth of Shri Ram Ji, I find out later, but Sanjay’s English isn’t up to it for now. Neither, to be honest, is our Hindi.
We drive for mile after hot mile, still passing pilgrims. The route’s punctuated by impromptu resting-places, chairs and decking set out, with refreshment available for weary travellers – like the village hall, without the walls. The celebrants from Agra will take days to reach their destination on foot, but journeying’s all part of the fun.

We pass a pond by the railway, where buffalo are cavorting like teenagers, and get out of the car to take photos. Passing locals, picnics in tow, take a moment out of their Ram Nomi procession to watch us, wondering, laughing. If you found someone taking a photo of a person buying bread at Greggs, you’d laugh too. Although, some of the loaves are wise to the tourist trade. Mr Andrew and I lean out of the car, to photograph a flock of sheep - when it says ‘lamb’ on a menu here, it usually means ‘goat’, so we want substantive evidence of some ovine commitment. The shepherd has his hand out for rupees before the shutters click.
‘Dual carriageway’ is a very fluid notion, in Uttar Pradesh. If they’ve dug up your side of the road, you just slip across to the other for a bit. It’s disconcerting, to find traffic hurtling towards you in what you thought was your overtaking lane – motor bikes, camels, trucks – but Sanjay has the measure of it. We even pop across to the other side ourselves, occasionally. In our new Innova, with AC and liveried chauffeur, we’re quite well up the wayfarers’ pecking order, but I wouldn’t argue with a laden camel-cart.
A man on a bike has a monkey riding pillion, its hand resting companionably on his shoulder. Another cart carries a huge bullock, instead of vice versa. One camel stands, ever patient, while its driver sorts out the spilled load of chaff, blocking the road. The chaff fuels the kilns, in the local brick-factories. Field after field of bricks are stacked to dry in the sun, before being processed through the kiln. No wonder Mumbai’s not finished yet.
By the road, we see women, carrying loads on their heads, with perfect poise. My walk is so uneven, my hair only stays on because it’s attached. They carry any and everything, from a pot of water, to a fardel of kindling. It occurs to me, that, if a woman’s marriageability is measured by the weight she can bear, hereabouts, I’d be an old maid.


And everywhere, there’s poo. It shouldn’t be a surprise, with all the bullocks and goats and camels grazing on every porch. We ask Sanjay, about the little “huts” in all the fields. “Cow, buffalo – latrine,” he says. There’s a pantomime moment, as he tells us what we’d been reluctant to understand. Apparently, the poo’s collected (in handy pats), dried, and stored for fuel. Makes sense, really.
So, if they ask you to a barbecue, in Uttar Pradesh, say, “No.”

Not forgetting Mumtaz - Golden Triangle 4

“His other wives must have been furious,” Diana says. They’ve got thirty-two million reasons to be, because that’s how many rupees his last gift to her cost, nearly four centuries ago. We’re trailing our slack jaws round the Taj Mahal, the most famous symbol of love in the world.
It’s still dark, when we haul ourselves out of bed. The muezzin’s calling, as well as the alarm-clock. Pulling on yesterday’s clothes, for speed, is not an option, given the unmissable photo opportunities of the day ahead. In the hotel foyer, we meet Vijay, our guide, who visits the palace at dawn and dusk, each day. He knows and loves its every last cornelian petal and malachite leaf.



Factories are banned in Agra, he tells us, because of the risk of pollution. All manufacturing industry was shipped out, fifteen years ago. People now commute to work elsewhere, or stay home to till the soil, and guide the tourists. He looks complacent. Cars aren’t allowed within half a kilometre of the palace. We abandon ours, leaving Sanjay to snooze in the car-park, at a safe distance, while we make the final leg of our pilgrimage in an electric tuk-tuk. At the entrance, Vijay procures us tickets, bottles of water and attractive little white bootees, seemingly out of the dawn air, thereby earning his keep in the first two minutes. Foreign visitors, 750 rupees, Indian residents, 520 rupees. It’s the closest to parity we’ve yet seen.
Security’s fierce, but, by now, the day would be incomplete, without being frisked and having our bags rifled. The Taj is a Muslim monument, and, in a post-9/11 world, they’re not taking any chances. Vijay says that after nine o’clock in the morning, no bags at all are allowed in, because of the weight of traffic. With twenty to thirty thousand visitors to process each day, and double at the weekends, you can quite see their point. You’d get repetitive strain injury, unzipping zips.
He sits us in a row, on a marble step, like schoolchildren, to listen to his Taj lore. Stray tourists linger in the vicinity, to hear his words of wisdom, as well they might. Mumtaz Mahal was the Jewel of the Palace. At the age of fourteen, she was betrothed to Emperor Shah Jahan, and married him five years later. He had nine other wives, as Mughal emperors were wont to do, but Mumtaz was favourite, his constant companion, which can’t have made the entente very cordiale in the ladies’ quarters. Mumtaz bore him fourteen children (I think a little something in marble isn’t overdoing it, then) - but died giving birth to the last. Shah Jahan was disconsolate, and went into enclosed mourning for a year. He emerged, hair white, back bent, with the design for the marble mausoleum for Mumtaz, to fulfil his promise, never to forget her. It was to take twenty-two years. Enough to make your lip wobble.



The craftsmen inlayers went blind, Vijay says, creating the intricate decoration of the walls. Each flowerhead’s made up of hundreds of tiny pieces, no bigger than your thumbnail. Not only was the work very fine, but, in an age pre-dating safety goggles, flying chippings and debris took their toll on workers’ eyes, too. Women weren’t allowed to be apprenticed - not because of some warped seventeenth-century take on equal opps, it made sense: if a woman trained to become an inlayer, and then married, she would take the knowledge and expertise out of the family, and into someone else’s. Sic transit....
Taj Mahal means Crown Palace, initially projected to be forty-five years in construction. But then, the planners counted the hours in a day, and decided they were wasting time, sleeping. The builders worked in shifts, cutting stone in the night, piecing it together during the day, thereby halving the estimate. And Shah Jahan was canny – instead of having slave-labourers, he paid his workmen, to ensure their commitment - paid them so well, in fact, they didn’t have to work again. If a workman was injured during building, the Emperor gave the family enough money to be financially secure for generations to come. We hang on Vijay’s every word. He has lovely hands.
It’s completely light, when we come through the portal between the outer courtyard and the gardens. The Taj Mahal’s translucent and warm in the early sun. The white marble’s blinding at midday, but right now, it’s soft as pearl, in the light of breaking day. We stop speaking to one another, eventually, and walk round with our mouths open, close to tears.



Vijay points to a ruin, across the river. After the completion of the white Taj Mahal, he says, Shah Jahan began work on a black one, on the opposite bank, a reflection of the original. Aurangzeb, his third son, had other ideas, however. He’d already murdered his two older brothers, to ensure accession, and now he put his own father under house arrest, so the project collapsed. We sigh. The black Taj was to have been inlaid with diamonds (because lapis lazuli doesn’t show up on black), with a bridge of silver, spanning the river to its white partner. It’d have required some serious coffer-rattling, so you can almost begin to understand Aurangzeb’s parsimony. For the last years of his life, Shah Jahan could only see his beloved Taj, reflected in the mirror over his bed. Diana and I exchange a look, blinking hard.
Vijay encourages us – orders us – to touch the walls. We comply, gingerly, not having been brought up to fondle monuments. The marble absorbs nothing but the glue used for the inlay, and that’s a secret recipe. Grubby tourist fingerprints are washed off by the monsoon, or wiped away in the annual cleaning. Inside the crown itself, it’s quite dark. Vijay puts his torch-face flat against the wall, switches it on. A red flower springs to life. If we gasp any more, we’ll pass out. He recites the litany of semi-precious stones used for the inlay, lapidary poetry: cornelian, agate, malachite, onyx, lapis lazuli. The precious stones - emeralds, sapphires, diamonds - are long since looted, but the crown’s still bright.
Inside the onion-dome, Mumtaz has her cenotaph, in the centre. Shah Jahan’s is offset, but bigger. I’m glad to see this, perfect symmetry makes me twitchy. The actual graves are under our feet, in a locked vault, opened once a year to visitors, who happen to arrive on the right day. I applaud the randomness of access.


Outside again, the sun’s revving up and the coaches are beginning to arrive. We take off our j-cloth overshoes. A team of bullocks, yoked to a mower, quarters the lawns, flanking the watercourses.
Until today, the Taj Mahal seems to me anodyne perfection, a piece of wedding-cake architecture. Right now, up close and intimate, I change my mind, and give my heart away. You need to go and see for yourself.

En Route - Golden Triangle 3

We top and tail the second day with a Red Fort, first in Delhi, then in Agra. In Northern India, Red Fort’s a bit like High Street back home, there’s one in every town. By now, we’d be disappointed if it weren’t a million rupees, for us to get in, and fourpence, for residents. Acceptance is key. Karma, if you like.
You know, when you scatter crumbs on a pond, there’s a mad flurry of ducks, splashing and arguing, trying to grab a beakful? It’s like that, with the hawkers, when we put our noses round the gate. We are the bread on the water.
I say, as I always say, “Later...” and the boy, with an armful of postcards, says, “Promise? Look at my face.” He gestures. “See this face? Remember me. Ali. What’s my name?” “Ali,” I say, obediently. “Be careful in Fort, Madame. Pickpockets.” So we spend the next hour, more concerned with the other sightseers, than the sights to see. Have you ever noticed, once you have decided to be suspicious, how suspicious everyone is? Even so, with the one eye we can spare for tourism, it’s seriously impressive.
On the way out, Ali steps in my path. I have absent-mindedly bought forty-eight postcards, in the Fort itself. I give him two rupees, for tipping me the wink, and his mates rib him, for earning without sales.
The journey to Agra proves even more fascinating than the World Heritage Sites. We stop to take pictures of camel-carts, to the amusement of an entire busload of local factory-workers, with nothing better to do than spectate. An hour further down the road, we get camel-casual, until we see one beast pulling his cart along, clip-clop, with the driver firmly asleep in the cart. Who wouldn’t want his job?

Here, everybody and thing carries more than you think it should. Bullocks, camels, donkeys, all bear loads the size of garden sheds. Men – either loose or on bikes – carry more than their own body-weight, on their backs, in their arms, or balanced on their heads. Buses and cars drip passengers. We count eighteen passengers, in one three-passengers-maximum tuk-tuk. In the hotel lift, with our not-inconsiderable luggage, we stop, a floor early. I assume the person will look in, and wave us on. But no, she beckons to her mates, and all seven of them get in, too. It’s cosy. Every man, beast and machine earns its keep, here.
Sanjay stops to pay road tax, as we cross the border into Uttar Pradesh. The sideshow immediately turns up, a man leading two monkeys on bits of string, who do somersaults and back-flips to command. On the other side of the car, a beggar, with shrivelled legs, knuckles his way across the dusty road. All we can see of him are his fingers, strumming the window. We’re glad when Sanjay, the litter-lout, climbs back into the car.
We step out of the gritty heat, and into the Taj View Hotel, Agra. In the foyer, the resident barberella, Mr Agrawal, reads palms and stars for guests. If you don’t want your fortune told, you can have a curling green dragon painted up your forearm. Or, you can listen to the sitar-player, with his percussive side-kick on the tabla, in the bar, with a beer in front of you. Guess which we choose. A coconut with a straw, for the first three correct answers....