Day 41 - Monday, Nov. 25 - Off to Nepal

First sight of the Himalayas, the Roof of the World

Yet another day of airports!
       But it isn’t supposed to be.  The plane was to leave Delhi at 12:50 and arrive in Kathmandu at 2:35.  1 hour and 45 minutes.  That’s all.  Even leaving for the nearby airport at 10... completely fine.  That’s what was supposed to happen.

       Instead, what happens is that the flight leaves at 1:15, with no explanation given - although one passenger thought she heard “air quality” mentioned.  Maybe they were just inspecting the checked-in baggage for coconuts, something that for some unknown reason is forbidden in your bags.  Lord knows it wasn’t to check passengers, because that’s done at the doors into the airport; if you don’t have a ticket to somewhere, you don’t even get into the building past that point... something I’ve never seen anywhere else. 

Kathmandu Airport thinks of everything

       Whatever the reason, we arrive in Kathmandu a little past 3.  Still O.K.
       And then the lines started.
       The Nepali website said Americans could get a visa at the airport.  Like in Cambodia.  Fair enough.  I had even saved the $30 cash required.  But two or three planes have arrived at the same time.  The first line is to fill out the visa form.  Second line to pay for the visa.  Third line for immigration.  Fourth line for a second security check to get into baggage claim, a new one on me!  Total time:  two hours! 

Kantipur Temple House Hotel

       That means the ride into town is in rush hour.  Traffic with the same non-laws as in India, but honking is forbidden in Nepal, except in extreme cases.  The taxi van barely fits down the narrow lanes of the hotel’s neighborhood.  But we make it.

The hotel is a quiet bubble amid the clamor.  An eco-friendly place with solar power from panels on the roof, and no TV or A/C.  Which is fine.  It’s not hot and I don’t need to hear about the world’s miseries.

       I haven’t eaten in two days to let my Agra Belly calm itself, so I go down to the restaurant early and sit cross-legged at a low Japanese-style table to have some veggie dumplings, what Nepal calls momos.  Seems bland enough.  But after three of the ten served up, I’m full.  I reassure the worried waiter, who says there’ll be no charge.  And I head for bed.

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

Day 39 - Saturday, Nov. 23 - Agra

After a good night’s sleep - still recovering from the Cambodia-Shanghai-India trip plus the ride down to Agra - I’m up at 6 a.m., ready for the Taj Mahal, even if I still can’t see it from the window, as advertised.

       My guide Mohinsha arrives soon after breakfast and we drive through not-yet-ridiculous traffic to the Taj Mahal’s East Gate.  Warned by a friend before I left for Asia that Indians dress with respect at this monument, I’ve donned my one skirt and brought my scarf for the mosque part.

It took 20,000 Persian workers 22 years (1631-1653) to build the Taj Mahal, designed by a Persian architect... all at a cost of the equivalent of $4 million.  Why Persians?  Because the Moghuls ruled India then and they were Persians.  

       Shah Jahan built it for his beloved second wife, Arjumand Banu, renamed Mumtaz Mahal.  Although he’d loved her since childhood, she was the daughter of a servant, and therefore not worthy in the eyes of Shah Jahan’s father.  So he had to marry a noble, but never had children with her.  When his father died, he married his always-love.  They had 14 children; only 6 of them survived.  

       And when she died, he had this monument built to her.  When the foundations were ready, he moved her tomb onto the site and the building was constructed over her.  The tomb you see is not hers, just a monument.  He planned to build a black marble replica on the opposite side of the Yamuna River for himself.  It would have cost three times more, so his son arrested him and emprisoned him - in majestic quarters - in Agra Fort, from where he could see his beloved’s mausoleum.  Eight years later, he died of natural causes and was buried next to her “tomb” in the Taj Mahal.

       So much for the history.  Now we visit; no photos allowed and no writing in the inner sanctum.  But I have images in my memory and they are amazing.

First around the courtyard, there are 210 “rooms” - niches - for visitors because there were no inns at that time.  Around the gates are verses from the Koran in black onyx from Belgium, which was very far away at that time; inside that are red flowers and green leaves of precious stones inset in the sandstone.  Mohinsha tells me they glow in the moonlight, a fact demonstrated by the gemsmith we visit later.  The red sandstone of the other buildings comes from here in the region, but white marble was conveyed, by elephant, from Rajastan almost 300 miles (400 km) away.  To one side of the Taj Mahal is the mosque (Persians were Muslims), and we go in - thus the shawl - so I can say a prayer for baby grandson Ibrahim, who died at premature birth.  On the opposite side of the Taj is the guesthouse, where I will obviously be staying on my next visit.

       The Taj itself is breath-taking.  Looking so white from afar, even in the haze, darker details become visible as we approach.  And the many panels inside, with no joints, are like lacework.  How many were ruined before one was completed?  What craftsmanship!

Mosque of Taj Mahal

The visit is over too soon and we head back through the gardens, along the reflecting pool.  Back to the hotel for lunch and a change to shorts, then Mohinsha is back and we’re off to Agra Fort.  The red sandstone walls look high and forbidding, running 2.5 km around (1½ mi).

Agra Fort

Walls of Agra Fort

This is more than just a fort.  Part is the residence of Shah Jahan’s two daughters, who were not allowed to marry, ever.  (You wonder how they felt about that.)  One part of each daughter’s palace is a white marble palanquin that looks like the one they would have been carried in on their wedding day, just in case they forgot they were doomed to be old maids.  I kind of felt like that’s adding insult to injury, but...

       Past the two daughters’ palace is the palace that served as a cell for Shah Jahan after his son arrested him.  Jailed in splendor, he spent his days looking out the lace-like white marble window at his beloved Mumtaz’s mausoleum in the semi-distance.

       We exit through the gardens, where chipmunks chase each other and a mama dog nurses her six pups.  We exit down the long ramp where troops could pour boiling oil down on any invaders, should they manage to cross the raised drawbridge.  This fort is far more than I’d expected.

Daughters' palace, in the shape of a bridal palanquin

Last on the list, the Khas Mahal, a park across the Yamuna River from the Taj, where you can walk to the bank and see the Taj Mahal reflected in its waters.  This is the spot where Shah Jahan was planning to build his own black marble mausoleum.  I think he’s better off closer to her.  (N.B.  Entrance price for Indians to this park:  25 rupees (35 cents).  Price for foreigners:  300 ($4).)

       On the return to the hotel, Mohinsha drags me to a rug merchant, the usual routine for guides in some places, but which I’ve been spared until now.  I don’t need a rug, even if they’re willing to send it to me.  (After all, I bought that silk comforter in Shanghai, which I’ll find on my doorstep a day after my return home.)  I do give in and buy a Black Star of India necklace, a gemstone black star diopside gemstone with needle-like inclusions that create a unique four-pointed cross star in the right light.

       Back at the hotel, I’m just in time for the end of lunch (3:00).  My “friend” waiter Ram, who served me Indian wine at lunch yesterday, jokingly chides me for not coming down to dinner last night; I tell him I doubt if I’ll be down tonight either.  He reappears with some lovely garlic naan again, like yesterday, the best I’ve ever tasted... all because he remembers I liked them.

       With a full stomach and a head full of the wonders I’ve seen, I retreat to my room, where I can just make out the silhouette of the Taj Mahal from my window.  Maybe tomorrow, before I head back to Delhi, it will be the view I was promised.

From across the Yamuna River, the site of Shah Jahan's never-built tomb