Day 40 - Sunday, Nov. 24 - Agra to Delhi

I’m leaving the Radisson Citadel today.  That’s the name I’ve given it because it has closed gates at both entrance and exit.  And rightly so in my mind... or else I’m just a wimp.  I walked around Hanoi alone, and a bit in Siem Reap and Shanghai and Kyoto, but it just doesn’t seem like a good idea here... and nowhere attractive to go anyway in the immediate neighborhood.  So citadel is an appropriate name.

Agra traffic

Father & child at Taj Mahal

       My night was interspersed with trips to the bathroom.  Although I’ve eaten no stall food or drunk unbottled water - even brushing my teeth with bottled water - or had ice cubes in anything, I have a mild case of Delhi Belly.  Or Agra Belly.  Didn’t get Montezuma’s Revenge in Mexico, but this is serious stuff.  Luckily I came equipped with meds.  Maybe it’s just the spicy Indian food.  Or else someone in the kitchen isn’t washing their hands.  Or the tea at the carpet store was made with tap water and not boiled... at least not long enough.  I vote for that last explanation.
       At sun-up, still no Taj Mahal view.  As a matter of fact, it’s even murkier today.  The BBC World News was talking about that last night.  I hope Nepal tomorrow will be clear skies and breathable air.
       The hotel kindly lets me keep the room past check-out time, and I spend it mostly sleeping.  Then off by car to the train station and that’s an education!  Pure pandemonium.  No one is wearing a uniform to ask directions.  Doing my Blanche DuBois imitation from Streetcar Named Desire, I depend on the kindness of strangers... to find the right platform and to carry my now-heavy, gift-laden suitcase up a very tall flight of stairs.  One detail:  there is a cow on the platform.  Maybe he/she is also waiting for a train.

Agra station, with cow

Seen from the train

The train arrives, I show my ticket/reservation and board.  I’m seated next to a couple from Croatia.  We were all told that this is the “good train” but maybe a mistake has been made by the booking agent.  If this is the good train, what are the others like?
       At the station in Delhi, Gaurav from the hotel (remember him, my savior from the taxi-gang incident?) has arranged for someone to meet me at my coach.  And boy, I’m glad he did!  Because if I thought the Agra station was a zoo, the Delhi one is even more so, and many, many times larger.  The sheer number of people, some sleeping on the platform, including beggars with totally blackened feet, piles of goods that are somehow going to be put on-board some train... the platform is like the street but without cars.  Same pandemonium.  I follow the driver to his car and then, traffic being heavy, we take as long - 1½ hours - to travel from the train to the hotel as I spent on the train from Agra to Delhi.
       Worn out, it’s directly to bed.  Tomorrow is another day.  (Oops, that’s Scarlett O’Hara, not Blanche DuBois.)

Laundry drying by the Yamuna River in Agra