My Summary – Part IV
The road to Agra was a good drive. There was lots to see including gigantic statues of ancient Gods, dancing monkeys and an elephant, which overtook us.
However, the highlight of this stretch of Indian dust path was the bridge that we crossed as we neared the fabled masoleum. As we crossed the bridge over the river we could just about make out the Taj on the river bank in front of us and it hit home that we had covered half of our journey in very good time. Easy peasy …
We pulled up in the parking lot and got the electric shuttle to the West Gate to obtain entry to the majestic area. Of course are tickets were the “tourist tickets” costing us £9 to see the sight and we had to wait for about an hour in a queue in the sun. I still didn’t tan one shade.
As we neared the security we were all funneled like cattle through the metal detector things and we saw a female security officer lay out a tourist. Boom.
The area is much larger than I had expected. It is a massive complex with three large sandstone gates, a mosque and a guest house not to mention the beautiful gardens and masoleum. We had a tour guide who seemed extremely bored as he relayed the history to us and then let us wonder off on our own.
It was an amazing place and we spent a couple of hours looking inside and out. Interesting history behind it but I won’t bore you. Wiki it.
Leaving Agra
As we left Agra I was in control of the bucket and trusted another adventurer with the navigation *cough cough*. A slight mishap with the compass saw us travelling north and not south and by the time we spotted our error Delhi was under 100km away and so we thought “why not”.
Delhi actually provided most of the laughs of the trip up to this point (and including the subsequent days). Not only did we have our rickshaw stolen by the people that rented it to us but we were chased and attacked by beggars, met a philosophic man named Sunny and went to the place Gandhi was shot (ok that bit isn’t really funny).
Also saw some lepers. Gross.
By the time we got to Delhi it was evident that we actually had the dreaded “Delhi Belly” which, just because we were in Delhi, escalated. Its like the virus knows when it is home.
It was of course in Delhi where our rickshaw was stolen and ransomed to us as explained in a previous post. We refused to pay the ransom and meant that our rickshaw days had been cut off half way through our trip. We still wanted to rickshaw to Mumbai (the finish line) but this was no longer possible.
We went to the train station and found that we had just missed a train by ten minutes and that the next one to Mumbai was seven hours away (not to mention that it takes 29 hours to get to its destination). Lame. The ticket office was a strange place. There was no form of queue, we just had to move people to get to the desk and when we got there we saw a sign to highlight that we were in the right “queue” because the sign stated that “Tourists and Freedom Fighters” can purchase tickets at this desk. What? Freedom Fighters? Since when do terrorists get their own column and is it really wise to let terrorists mix with tourists?
Only in bloody India.
So we waited. And we waited. And we waited a little longer until eventually seven hours had passed and we only had 29 left. We ran up and down the train looking for the sleeper carriage as this was compeltely alien to us. Once we had scrambled aboard we located our bed. There was only one ticket left in the sleeper carriage and it had to sleep all three of us!
And so began 29 hours of hell.
Luckily, the other people in our area got off at a stop after about six hours which freed up the whole compartment (four beds). I say compartment but what I mean is four beds (2 bunk beds) separated by a curtain. We now had four beds for the three of us and so we spread out a little. The train was a horrible place. Proper skanky. No word of a lie there were rats running around beneath us, thick dust lay all around and it appeared it had not been cleaned for years. The toilets were gross and you did your business right on the track which you can appreciate for the two with Delhi Belly this was a precarious situation, water and electricity DO NOT MIX WELL! Finally there was the annoying twat chaiwalla (tea boy) who would walk up and down constantly screaming “Chai, Chai, veg cutlet, CHAI CHAI CHAI” and tapping the feet of those unlucky enough to be over five foot five whose feet stuck off the end of the bed.
Oh well, it was an experience. A dirty one, but an experience none the less. It marked the first thirty hour period that we had gone without food. Only the Bisleri was keeping us alive (water).
Mumbai
Eventually our train pulled into Mumbai and this meant that we had completed (albeit by somewhat of a different route) our trip. Things were looking up. Manon, who has the hook up in India, managed to get us into a 5* Deluxe hotel for £21 per night (£7 per person per night, WTF).
The Taj Lands End hotel, Mumbai. What a place. However, it turned out that we had arrived here during the state elections and one idiot political person decided that during election time the state should be a DRY state. What? No Booze! Shocking.
We had wanted to party in Mumbai to mark our week of hell!!!
Instead we just gatecrashed the parties being held in the conference center in the vain hope that they would be serving booze at the MTV Press Conference … nope. Still no booze. The launching of the new Chevrolet? Nope, no booze. Eventually they cottoned on to the fact that our charity connections were getting us into conferences that bore no relevance to each other and they kicked us out. Still got free food though.
Due to the lack of booze we decided to end our stay in Mumbai quickly and head back to Goa. We had heard a lot of good things about Goa.
Goa
We got a coach to Goa which took twelve hours on an overnight journey. It was a great idea for the coach stop to be right next to a stagnant pool of water because we all got bitten to buggery as the coach decided to roll up 45 minutes late.
This marked our second thirty hour period without food because we soon found out when we got to Goa that we had spent all of our money in Mumbai! Nilz and I did not have a single bean left on us and Manon was thinking about delving into his mothers credit card!
It was back to the tent for us until we could find a source of cash.
We saw on the news just before we got to Goa that there was a serial killer on the loose. Ten charred bodies had been found in four days. Trouble was following us everywhere. Not only that but there was a terrorist attack (called Freedom Fighters in India) in the city where a motorcyclist bezzed it through and blew himself up. He was the only person killed though. Indian Terrorists – FAIL.
We did get to sleep on the beach though … this was because the Goan beaches were empty! Goa prides itself on its beaches but it doesn’t tell you in your tourist manual that they are all empty!! Grrrrrrrr. No chicks in sight.
