This morning we had to pass though immigrations before we could leave the ship on our tour to the Taj Mahal. Our group was scheduled for 6:45 AM and we followed the instructions, but the Indian officials didn't quite make it until an hour later (not surprising as we are anticipating running on Indian time). We had 140 unhappy passengers waiting in a very hot line in the passage way and stairway. Once we made it though that process we had to wait until our bus group checked in before we could leave. There are two groups divided into five buses. The only reason for two groups was that on our return flights they couldn't get everyone on the same plane.
The drive to the Mumbai Domestic Airport took about an hour as we drove though the center of Mumbai. Mostly old English buildings, a few modern ones and lots of slums. If you have seen an Indian movie you have some idea of the slums. What they don't tell you in the movies is that Mumbai has the largest slum in India. And the tour manages to circumvent most of the slum. We haven't seen many cows or beggars yet.
The security at the port and the airport is heavy. At the airport there are separate security lines for men and women. Everyone is scanned with a wand. Women get wanded in a private enclosure. So basically you get wand and groped in private instead of publicly.
Our flight to Delhi is on Kingfisher Air. They use Airbuse 300's and this plane was pretty new. We were late leaving the gate but made up most of the time in the air. We had a meal of chicken and rice, which was spicy and good. the service was excellent and I am sure Hal appreciated how attractive the stewardess's were.
Most of us are carrying are bags and so we headed out of the airport to wait for our bus. We met our guide who said to call him Taj which was easy to remember. We are on the number 4 bus. Of the five buses ours is the runt of the litter. It is a few years older then the others, has noisy brakes, rattles a lot and won't go over 40mph, but it has good A/C and the driver is good. We have 27 passengers, a guide, a driver, and his assistant on the bus. It seems everyone has a job, one of the jobs of the assistant driver was to be sure we had plenty of cold bottled water. He also helps you out of the bus as the last step is a doozy. You could have easily solved the problem with a small step stool, but then half of his job would be eliminated to progress. I have no idea of how long he has to do that before he gets to drive.
The drive from Delhi to Agra was advertised at 5 1/2 hours with a stop for a snack and restrooms at 2 1/2 hours. We left the Delhi airport about 12:30 pm and we didn't get to Agra until 8:30 pm. The distance from Delhi to Agra is just over 200km, about 120 miles. The road is mostly two lanes in each direction and in India they drive on the left side of the road, just like in Great Britain. There are 1.2 billion people in India, in a space half the size of the USA. I think most of them live between Delhi and Agra. The drive was like going from Las Vegas to Los Angeles on a holiday weekend plus. There were few traffic lights, so crossing an intersection was a game of chicken. We had to pass though a number of towns and then there would be long areas of farm land. The towns all looked the same, most of the businesses were small buildings with a roll up door that looked like once they were built they were never touched again. No sidewalks and very little landscape. The only buildings that looked maintained were schools and car dealers. They don't have running water in the rural areas and I saw people using hand pumps. There doesn't seem to be many toilets as as we saw most people relieving themselves along the road (men!). There are cattle everywhere, cows are sacred animals, they just wander around. We also saw: sheep, goats, a few horses, many dogs and cats, and even a camel or two. The dogs seem to sleep anywhere and everywhere. If they go home at night is a mystery although we didn't see many at night.
At our halfway point we stopped at a hotel and restaurant called the Country Inn for a bathroom break and a snack. The restaurant was called The Munch!! The bathrooms were clean and nice, we didn't eat the snack, because on the bus we each received a snack with two bananas, a orange, a bag of potato chips, a chocolate bar(Cadbury) and a bottle of water, shortly after we boarded. On the bus we had as much bottled water and cokes as we wanted. In fact during the tour we always had bottle water available either on the bus, in our hotel room and during meals.
We reached Agra in the early evening and it took almost an hour to reach our hotel. Agra has over a million people and there was a lot of traffic. I must say that India looks a lot better at night, most everyone has lights strung on their buildings, and it quite pretty. The lights are different colors and shapes and are in strings like you purchase at Target.
We reached our hotel, Jaypee Palace, about 8:30 PM an hour and a half late. We received our room keys and then went straight to dinner. It was a very good buffet, Indian food, and during dinner we had an Kathak Dance performance, a traditional Indian dance. Our room was very nice, at least a good four and half star hotel. We took showers and went to bed as we had a 4:30 am wake up call in the morning.
Sent from my iPad
Hal
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