To sum up: Yesterday (that’s Sunday) at 4am, I had four tickets booked to take me from Pune to Agra and back again. It’s now Monday, ten past noon, and guess how many of those four I’ve used so far? I can’t help but think that I should have taken being told at 4.35am that the car I had booked for 4.30 wasn’t scheduled until 6, but that ‘it would be here in thirty minutes’ as a sign of something or other and gone back to bed.
I didn’t, though, because I’m stubborn like that, and thus began my first (and right now I suspect last, but we shall see about that) foray into the joys of the Indian Transportation Nightmare. Let’s put it like this: In the 36 hours since I got up yesterday, I have spent five asleep, six on planes, 10 in cars and the remainder variously queuing, hanging around and frantically sightseeing.
The first leg of the journey – Pune to Delhi – was painless enough. Apart from the transport guy at the hotel getting mixed up about my car (which was soon corrected by the desk staff), and the heavy bureaucracy of the Pune airport, it went largely according to plan. I got through the various queues and security checks, and my biggest complaints were that my little TV screen didn’t work properly (the colours were badly skewed), and that I didn’t have time to eat my breakfast muffin before boarding. I ate it on the plane instead.
(I should note here that, in a rare moment of forward planning, I had bought two muffins (one chocolate, one blueberry) at the hotel the night before and stuck them in the minibar to take, supposing correctly that I wouldn’t feel like the Indian breakfast they would serve. I should mention it, because it is important to the story. It was the chocolate one that was consumed at this stage.)
Anyway, I disembarked at New Delhi and prepared to settle in for a two-hour layover before the flight to Agra. At this point, I noticed two things: First, that for a major international airport, Delhi is a pretty barren place. Second, that instead of 10:45, the departure time on my ticket was listed as 13:45. I checked with the Kingfisher desk whether this was correct. It was – no delay, they’d just changed the flight schedule. Apparently they can do that. That meant I could do one of two things: Accept the change like an adult, and deal with the five hour wait in a distinctly unwelcoming airport, as well as the significant loss of already scant sightseeing time, or figure out some other way to get to Agra. Guess which one I chose…
My first hope was that there would be another, earlier flight to Agra that I could get on. No such luck: Apparently Agra is an even less significant airport than Pune, and this was the only flight going all day. Next, I thought train. No go: Trains to Agra only run a few times a day. I would never make the morning ones, and the afternoon ones would get me there even later than my rescheduled flight. Finally, there was the car option – paying someone to drive me 200km from Delhi to Agra. I enquired. I was told 8000 rupees. I hesitated. I wasn’t sure whether I would be able to get the flight refunded, and 8000 rupees, while not much for a five hour drive in a nice car with a personal chauffeur, is not exactly loose change. In the end, though, I figured what the hell and went with it. It wouldn’t necessarily get me there faster than the plane, but at least I would get to see some of New Delhi and surrounding countryside, and I will always prefer five hours of steady, comfortable driving to four hours of waiting around followed by a one hour flight.
Anyway, I took it, and I’m glad I did. It was extremely interesting! The car was a beautiful jeep-type thing with back seats built like the front ones (individual, with adjustable backs), air-conditioned and with a nice sound system. I asked the driver to leave in his CD of quiet Hindi songs, and off we went! It took us about an hour and a half to get out of the urban areas, and then three hours of highway to get to Agra. The urban areas were not all that interesting. Mostly they looked like poor parts of Belgium, large, often dilapidated concrete buildings. There was more green than I had expected, though, and a few street markets. At one point, the driver took us down a very narrow street with traditional shops to avoid a traffic jam, which was quite entertaining. The thing that really struck me was how many of the buildings we passed looked like they’d been abandoned half-finished. I don’t know if they truly were abandoned, but many were just concrete shells of factories and office blocks, and there were no signs of ongoing work.
The other thing I noticed was how little people seemed to care that they were walking/sitting/trading not even a meter from where traffic of all types was whizzing by them at potentially lethal speed. That and the cattle. Everywhere, even next to/on/between the lanes of the major highway we were on.
Once we moved out of the cities, it was just one long, straight stretch of road to Agra. It was very pleasant, actually. The Indians have a peculiar way of driving, even on a straight road where everyone (more or less) is going in the same direction. For one thing, the neatly painted lanes mean bugger all to them. Trucks, cars, rickshaws and scooters, with the occasional bicycle thrown in, weave seamlessly in and out of the traffic in a constantly evolving pattern. You know how, in general, the European/American philosophy of driving is basically ‘follow the guy in front of you unless you have a good reason not to’? Well, the Indian style seems to be based more an idea that every square inch of road must be filled, so if you see an empty spot in front of you, even if it’s two lanes over, it’s your obligation as a good driver to fill it. It kind of reminds me of those beautifully ornate Hindu artworks, where every square centimetre of space is occupied by something. Everyone does it, and it seems to work; it’s just the way they drive here.
They also use the horn. A lot. I mentioned in a post a little while back that it seemed to be used more as an expression of feeling than a driving aid, but I take that back. I now think that it has a very specific purpose, but I only got tacit confirmation of this much later, so you’ll have to keep reading to find out what that is.
But enough about the driving. The area we were going through was very rural, full of fields and small trees, and every 30km or so, a settlement. I guess the best way of describing them would be as little villages, but really they seemed to me like no more than a smattering of shacks by the roadside (literally sheet metal or canvas mounted on wooden frames, nothing else). Still, there was usually a traffic light and a little crossroads, and one or two more sturdily built dwellings. Above all in these places, there was movement. A lot of movement. People coming and going, buying and selling, children playing by the roadside, groups of teenagers hanging around, and cattle everywhere. I think the cattle were actually my favourite part. They were almost all Zebu or domestic water buffalo, and so pretty! Seriously, I love water buffalo, and the Zebu-types are so cute with their big floppy ears and huge eyes. Sometimes you saw them being used to pull traditional carts, but mostly they were just wandering about by themselves, with no visible means of identification. I loved them!
We made two stops on the way, not counting the toll booths. The first was an army checkpoint. They had a quick look inside the car, and then the driver wandered away for a few minutes to talk to them. I opted to stay in the car, mainly because I wasn’t sure he wouldn’t be finished immediately, and boy am I glad I did! Within seconds of the driver disappearing, the hawkers were on it like white on rice. It started with one guy with a portable wooden chess set, and soon I had chess man, two guys with jewellery, one with a monkey on a string and a boy with a cobra. Honestly, immediately when I turned away from the jewellery guys and saw the monkey sitting in the opposite window, my first reaction was ‘oooh, how much?’ (then I came to my senses, and anyway, he wasn’t selling, just offering to let me take a picture with it). My favourite, though, was the cobra boy, not because he had a cobra, but because when he opened his little flat basket to show me, the snake wasn’t exactly enthusiastic. To get it to perform, he poked it gently in the neck a few times, and the snake got this look on its face like ‘okay, I’m up, I’m up. Flare hood, wiggle wiggle, hiss. Happy now?’ before settling back down. I don’t know why, but I thought it was hysterical. I am easily amused… The sad thing is, I would actually quite have liked a closer look at some of their stuff, but they were so incredibly aggressive that I didn’t feel the least bit comfortable about leaving the car. So they got none of my money.
The other stop we made was so that the driver could take a break and some tea. It was quite a nice rest stop, obviously designed for tourists, shaped like a very small bazaar. It was full of souvenirs, lots of gods in bronze, wood and ‘ivory’ (probably resin), some of them very pretty. The sales people didn’t seem to care about you one way or the other, which was nice, and although I didn’t buy anything, I certainly would have if I’d found the right object. It was also just before we got to here that I ate my blueberry muffin, around noon. Take note.
When we finally got into Agra, we picked up the driver’s ‘boss’, who was supposed to guide us to the hotel. He took us to the wrong one first, at the wrong gate to the Taj, and then claimed the car couldn’t get to the correct one, while simultaneously trying to sell me an all-day sightseeing tour, so how much help he actually was, I don’t know. Anyway, we did eventually find it, which led to my third surprise of the day: The hotel, which I had believed to be a little family B&B style of place, was, in fact, an all out hostel. It looked clean enough and once I got over the first bout of surprise I quite liked it, but still. I was Surprised.
I was also Surprised to find that, contrary to my admittedly ill-researched expectations, the main gate to the Taj Mahal is actually down an incredibly narrow little street, in an area full of other narrow little streets and higgledy-piggledy houses, most of which were literally falling apart, and people. So many people, all stuffed together in this tiny little space. This was India the way you see it on TV, and I think I realised at that moment that the reason I haven’t experienced the culture shock people warned me about is that Pune is not India like that. It was really very dramatic.
Anyway, I quickly learned that the Taj Mahal and Agra Fort both close at sunset (around 5.30), and not at 8 as I had been led to believe. And also, that neither of them were open on a Monday. By that time it was 2.45, so I wasted no time in dumping my rucksack in my room and heading back out. I started with the Taj, and somehow managed to pick up a guide. He was an old man, probably seventy-ish, and seemed a bit daft at first. He was very proud of the fact that he had worked at the Taj for 40 years and was a certified Agra city tour guide. He showed me his little laminated card, totally worn out. I ended up with him because I couldn’t think of a nice way to shake him (I didn’t feel I could just roll my eyes and walk away like I would have with the younger guides), but he turned out to be extremely useful. He liked to tell me when to take pictures, which was a bit annoying, but it balanced out because he knew every corner of that monument. Every. Single. One. He would tell me where to stand for this or that optical illusion, where to crouch to see the sun hitting the minarets just right, everything. When I told him I was in a hurry, he took it seriously, and walked me round the whole thing in record time. He also skipped me past the enormous queue to get into the burial room, which quite frankly was worth the 500 rupees I gave him all by itself. If he hadn’t been there, I never would have got inside in time, which I would have been sad about, because I really wanted to see it. The line went all the way around the building (and it’s a big building), but he just stepped in near the front, and nobody likes to argue with the venerable old man in the neat white taqiya who behaves as though he owns the place (and, I suspect, probably feels like he does). At it turns out, the inside wasn’t actually all that interesting, but it was the principle of the thing. I would hate to have gone all the way there and just looked at the outside.
Afterwards, I let him drag me to the marble shop outside, in which I spent too much money and probably got ripped off, but eh, it looked much more official than the other souvenir shops along the street, and I didn’t pay more than I thought it was worth. I managed to get most of the souvenirs I needed, plus a pink marble elephant for myself. I don’t know, I just saw it on a shelf behind the seller and really liked the face and stance. He needs a name, I think.
By that time it was four o’clock, so I jumped in a rickshaw and zoomed off to the Agra Fort to get it in before closing. It was as I was walking up to the main gate that I began to feel the fact that I had been awake for 12 hours and so far only consumed two muffins. There was nothing to eat around there, though, so I got on with it. I got a guide here too. He was less good, but I needed him much more than I did for the Taj. The Taj only really has one story, and I already knew it before I went, so I really could have viewed it myself. The Fort, though, has a much, much more complicated history, and is, in my own opinion, far more interesting to walk around than the Taj. The Taj is pretty, but the Fort has a character that comes from having so many lives lived in it. I’ll spare you the details of the visit. Suffice to say I saw it, it was impressive, I left and went back to the hostel.
At this point, I was hot, sticky (no shower in the bathroom), and extremely tired. I had managed to drag myself off the bed and head downstairs in search of food, when it occurred to me that it might be smart to just check whether the flight times for the return journey were unchanged. The hostel chef, who was a lovely old man, took me to an internet café, where I discovered that, first of all, trying to find Indian flight schedules online is a lot harder than it should be, and second, that double checking is always a good idea. Because, of course, they had changed. The Agra-Delhi flight had been pushed back so far that there was no way I could make my connection to Pune, meaning that I wouldn’t be getting home until early Tuesday morning, if that.
You have to understand my feelings at that point: I’d been awake since 4am. I’d been flying for two hours, then driving for five. The frantic sightseeing had left me hot, sticky and dusty, and there was no hope of a shower until I got back to Pune. I was tired and frustrated, and absolutely not in the mood to play ball.
So I didn’t. Long story short, I ended up booking another taxi for 8pm to take me back to Delhi. I did consider waiting till the next morning and taking one then to make my connection, but honestly, at that stage I just couldn’t face going to bed knowing that I would have to wake up at 6am to drive another five hours back again. So I got the hotel to order me one for that night (at a fraction of the price), in the hope of finding another, earlier flight I could get on to Pune. In the intervening hour, I:
- Made friends with the old chef, Jimmy.
- Ate some porridge.
- Went for a walk with Jimmy.
- Let Jimmy’s brother sell me some fabulous silver jewellery. I wouldn’t normally have done that, but four beautiful solid silver pendants with semi-precious stones for less than €100? Yeah, I’m there.
- Watched a monkey exorcism. Yes, really. A wild monkey got into the hostel laundry room, so the manager and two other guys went up clutching large sticks, to flush it out with noise. It eventually went shooting out of the room and out onto the roof to freedom.
Cab arrived and off we went! This car was much smaller, more a Golf than a jeep, and at first I wondered whether it wouldn’t be a bit slow. I needn’t have worried, because that car had some serious juice! It was during this trip that my hypothesis regarding the use of horns when driving was confirmed (in a totally unscientific way, but nevertheless…). As it turns out, Indians think mirrors make fabulous aesthetic additions, but have no use for them as driving tools. The honking, therefore, is to let the people you are in the process of weaving between know that you’re there. Most of the trucks actually have ‘blow horn’ or ‘honk please’ written in ornate lettering across the back (and the trucks, by the way, are fabulous in themselves – heavily decorated, almost like gypsy caravans!). It seems to work… At some stage it did occur to me to wonder just how clever it was to allow a slightly nutty old man drive me 200 km of unlit road in a car with no side mirrors and no buckle for the seatbelt. Ahem. I managed to doze most of the way, so I mostly only noticed our near-misses by the sharp breaking…
It took four and a half hours to get to Delhi airport, by which time it was half past midnight. I got my tickets cancelled (including the earlier one for Delhi-Agra), and booked myself onto the 9am flight to Pune instead. I then got a hotel room in the only hotel nearby to spend the night in. Of course, they only had the most expensive rooms left, but once I saw what that looked like, I was kind of glad I wasn’t in the cheaper options. Still, it was clean and perfectly serviceable, and I managed to shower a bit (water kept changing temperature), eat a Snickers bar from the mini bar, and, once I stopped debating whether I wasn’t better off getting on the 7.15 flight to Pune with another airline, get some sleep.
So, just to recap: Up until now, I don’t think I would have done anything differently given the choice (except maybe pick a different weekend to come…). This next part, on the other hand…
I woke up at about ten to six, and immediately decided to try for the 7.15 flight after all. I threw on all my clothes, harried the hotel into checking me out as quickly as humanly possible, and flew (pun intended) over to the airport, with the sole intention of getting back to Pune and my wonderful room as early as possible. Where I managed to get my ticket, after a slightly stressful period when the Visa machine wouldn’t accept my card and the lady had to print out my ticket and follow me to the ATM in the Departures area (she was very sweet, so thanks, lady!). As it turns out, Delhi actually has more shops than I thought, but I only just managed to go to the bathroom and pick up a muffin and a bottle of water at Costa before boarding.
An hour and a half later we landed, and I discovered that, while I was on a plane going to Pune, it had another stop first. Yeah. I’d had a suspicion before, but the flight attendant’s English wasn’t very clear. At that point, though, I was fairly comfortable, the plane was half empty, and I didn’t really care that much anymore. Especially because I had no one to blame but myself, for forgetting to ask. In any case, it ended up landing in Pune at 11, which was still a little earlier than the 9 o’clock one would have, so it’s not like I lost out.
And then I got a rickshaw back to the hotel, where I showered (bliss…), ordered lunch and then sat around in the fabulous fluffy white bathrobe provided by the hotel and wrote this post for four hours. And if anyone ever gets to the end of it, I shall be beyond impressed.
Overall, I don’t think that the trip was a total disaster: I saw what I wanted to see, plus some other stuff I would never have seen if it hadn’t gone the way it had. I’m hoping that, assuming the refunds come through okay, I won’t have spent that much more money than I otherwise would have. Most of it balances out, the only major extra expense is really the airport hotel room, but it couldn’t be helped. Nevertheless, I think the next couple of weekends will be devoted to sightseeing within driving distance of Pune…
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