Trip to Agra Part 1: Trains, No Planes, and Automobiles

Whew! The weekend was so full and amazing and colorful and hectic that I don't even really know where to begin. My awesome auto pod here in India took time out of their own lives this weekend to take me on a tour of the "Golden Triangle"--which is how the zone from Delhi to Agra to Jaipur is referred to. It's an area of the country full of history: old forts, historic temples (including the Taj Mahal)...we went in search of food, sun, sightseeing, history--and maybe a little bit of drinking and craziness.

The players in this game were me, 5 gorgeous and extremely cool girls from my team, 1 guy from the team (an adorable 21-year old who really put up with a lot being with 6 girls the whole time--all older than him), and Bryant--my unexpected American Google travel companion throughout this Indian experience. The game plan was to leave Delhi very early Saturday morning, take a train to Agra, see the Taj Mahal and some other sites, and then leave for 2 nights in Jaipur, returning to the office Monday morning.

So here's how it went:

Saturday morning.
Approximately 3:45 a.m.

wah-wah-wah-wah-wahh
My alarm's going off and it's waaaaaaayy too early. Can I hit snooze? Do i dare? My teammate Madhumita is on her way over in a cab to pick me up. What if she gets here and I'm not ready? I can't keep her waiting. I can't make us miss the train. I can't leave this guest house without make-up on. Yep--gotta get out of bed. Waaaaaahhhhh...I'm a less-than-happy camper.

But I drag myself to the bathroom, slap some make up on my face, slide into my clothes, grab my laptop bag (which sans laptop has now become my weekend luggage) and sneak through the quiet guest house down the stairs, hoping to avoid waking the whole place.

Downstairs Madhu has arrived along with her dad (he's accompanying us to the train station to make sure we're ok--did I tell you these people were the kindest ever, or what?), and I can hardly complain about getting out of bed at 3:45 when they got up at 3:00 to come get me! We pile into the cab, which takes us to the central train station in Delhi. We arrive there around 5:15, a bit early for our 6:00 train, and you'd never know there it was still the middle of the night. The place is teeming with humanity. There are people as far as the eye can see...lining up for trains, looking for platforms, and tons and tons just camped out sleeping on the train station floor. I'm glad Madhumita's dad has come with us. We stick close to the cab while we wait for the others to arrive from their respective homes.

Saturday morning
Approximately 6:00 a.m.

Eventually everyone gets there, and we mill about waiting for our train. We have a 2-hour trip to Agra, in a train car called AC3. I was a little nervous about the train in India--not gonna lie--I love trains in Europe, but I'd heard stories...so I'd looked up the exact train car on Google. I was happy to discover that this was a nice air-conditioned car with reserved seating. My hopes were high, and when the train pulled up, it did not disappoint. We had nice clean, spacious seats, with little foot rests and tray tables and all. A woman passed through the aisle handing everyone a complimentary bottle of water, and we were off! I had big plans to sleep on the train, but as often happens when I meet new forms of public transportation, I don't want to miss any of the show--so I stayed wide awake. I was delighted to see that they were offering a free breakfast service. They came around and gave everyone a little tray, asking if they wanted veg or non-veg. Vegetarian dishes are called simply "veg" here. Definitely makes more sense. Anyway, the veg version came with a paper packet in which were 2 slices of bread, a pat of butter, some jam, some kind of fried roll, a dish of some sort of curry, and 2 chocolates. (Non-veg included an omelet). Then they came around with tea. Nice!

Here's a picture of the train. Note that it's dark. It's early!

Here I am on the train with Madhumita, who picked me up, and Tirthanker--the token guy of our group. We call him Bose (his surname), as Tirthanker is a mouthful. He's only pretending to sleep.

Saturday morning

Approximately 8:30 a.m.

(Man--this post is getting long, and it isn't even 9 am!)

Before we knew it, we were in Agra. And the first thing we needed to do was to find transportation for the day. One great thing about India is that taxis are everywhere, they're cheap (at least by my standards), and you can easily rent them for an entire day to just chauffeur you around. Right outside the train station were tons of taxis, rickshaws, buses, and other forms of transport--the haggling was about to begin. I love to watch the Indians haggle. They love to get a deal and are natural salespeople. Most of it goes on in Hindi, so unfortunately, I miss the finer points--but I get the gist. I am a horrible haggler. I end up either just paying what they ask, as I'm too impatient to bargain, or get irritated when they won't come way down in price and end up leaving without the item I want to buy! It's a fine art of which I am sadly ignorant.

Haggling takes a while, as the good ones have patience, and it was at least half an hour before we were settled with a car. We managed to get a small SUV for the day that sported a middle row with a 3-seater bench and 2 chairs facing sideways in the back row. I was lucky enough to never have to sit in the waaaay back. We were all lucky, actually, as sitting for hours in a vomit-smelling car would not have been nice. But we were off! We had an awesome SUV with semi-working air conditioning, a driver who looked like an Indian version of one of my ex-boyfriends, and the driver's MP3 player full of Hindi pop music. It was destined to be a good day.

Tune in again to see what happens next!