I arrived in the city of Agra late. I remember this because I only got about 4-5 hours of sleep before my 5:20am alarm went off. Everyone says to see the Taj Mahal at sunrise. That way, you get to see the beautiful white marble change color at different moments of the sun’s progress from its emergence beneath the horizon to its filling the grounds with light. That and you’ll have less of the crowds to deal with.
Not wanting to chance missing the sunrise, I checked prices on Uber to get a car. The “rush hour” price for only being about a mile away seemed like way more than I could grab with a tuk tuk on the street, so I made my way towards the exit to check the street. In the lobby of the hostel, I saw a small group of other travelers waiting. I asked if they were getting a ride and if they wanted another person to split the cost with them. They said they didn’t want another person because “they didn’t want to be late.”
Which… doesn’t make sense.
After only about ten steps on the street, a tuk tuk pulled up, told me to hop in to get to the Taj Mahal – because why else would a foreigner be walking out on the streets at 5:30 in the morning? If my notes are to be trusted, I ended up paying less than a dollar for that ride – and no rented cars passed us, so I ended up arriving before those guys that didn’t want to be late.
I estimate I was somewhere around the 80th person in line at the front gate. At 6am sharp, everyone began to move forward. I was about to see one of the most renowned buildings in all the world.
The Taj Mahal was everything I thought it would be and better.
The grounds are a beautiful, symmetrical combination of pathways, manicured flora, and the little rectangular pond leading up to a gorgeously white (and impressively symmetrical) building. In the morning mist, the Taj Mahal looked just a little eerie and mysterious.
Tourists were everywhere taking every shot and angle that pleased them. Little platforms in the middle of the walk were raised for everyone to get “that shot” that you would see when you see pictures of the Taj Mahal.
The short version of the story of the building is that Shah Jahan commissioned it to be built in 1632 as a mausoleum for his (favorite) wife to show his love for her. One of the more interesting legends attached to that story involves the ruler putting to death all of the workers and blinding the main architect after its completion because he didn’t want anyone to create a more beautiful building than the Taj Mahal. Could it be true? With no evidence to prove such a thing, it’s probably just a legend, but an intense one to think about regardless.
I walked the route, passing by the two red sandstone buildings on either side of the Taj Mahal. They are designed to mirror one another. One was built as a mosque, the other possibly as a type of guesthouse. Tourists can walk inside the Taj Mahal (no shoes on!), though the inside, while still beautiful, doesn’t have that same level of spectacle that the outside does.
I hope you can forgive that this post will mostly just be photos of the same building from different angles. I just enjoyed taking pictures of it so much.
During my walk around the building, who should I run into but Ricardo! I had met him previously at the Monkey Temple in Jaipur and here he was, rocking yet another neon colored shirt at a beautiful Indian site. I took a second loop around the building with Ricardo and we made plans to get lunch later in the day after we both took respective naps. I took another round of photos of the Taj Mahal in the more direct morning light and made my way back to the hostel after many turn-backs to get extra glimpses of the only reason I had originally planned to visit Agra.
Oh, I should also mention during my time I had many locals asking to take selfies with me, but my favorite was when a girl approached me to take a picture and one of her family members said I should take a picture with the whole family. The concept was so funny to me that I handed them my phone to make sure I got a copy to show off my new Indian family that adopted me at the Taj Mahal.
After resting at the hostel, Ricardo and I met up for an excellent lunch in an empty hotel restaurant and I bid him farewell as he continued his life of travel and adventure. The evening was a relaxing one working on the blog and my visa for my next expected country: Myanmar.
Sometime before 5am a number of alarms went off in my room. All of the new travelers sleeping there were off to see the sunrise at the Taj Mahal themselves. I wished them well in my head as I rolled over to enjoy the fact that I did not feel the need to get up early and head back to that lovely building again. It’s a little funny to realize that so many of us are similar people doing the same actions and yet it is still very important for each of us to individually experience that part of travel. No matter how many people visit the Taj Mahal at sunrise every day, to each specific individual the experience will be profound. It’s comforting to me to think this way.
Having completed the only thing I felt I needed to complete in Agra, I treated myself to a shower and breakfast at a slow pace. In a way, this was like a rare day off in the midst of an adventure where I was doing so much moving. I booked my bus for the late afternoon and continued working the blog while I relaxed away from the Indian heat outside.
Even with all the time I gave myself, I somehow only barely made my bus. The traffic in Agra ended up being way worse than my online maps showed me – it took me three times as long to get to the bus as both Google and my hostel’s workers told me. I was told to not worry about leaving early since it would only take “7 minutes. 10 max.” It almost took me 30. To top it off, the bus wasn’t even at the location described by the bus company online. I walked inside the company store – which was an empty room with just one desk – and was told that the bus was two blocks away. I was led to a dirt lot (how was someone supposed to find that?) and there was my bus just sitting there almost ten minutes after it was supposed to have left. I was ushered past the group of people all standing outside the main door and after I took my seat (I think only a few people booked ahead) the bus quickly became full with people who had been standing outside. Oh, but when I say “full with people,” I may initially have meant that every seat was filled, but in fact it was even more full than that. After every seat had been occupied, more people filed in with plastic chairs and after placing the chairs down from back to front, we had officially hit what I would consider maximum capacity. There would be no standing, no bathrooms, and no A/C for this 5-hour ride from Agra to Delhi. I recall the older woman next to me spending two of those hours sleeping on my shoulder. There are no personal bubbles when you travel in India.
BIG shout-out to Prakhar Gupta. This young guy ended up sitting next to me and when we arrived in Delhi, he took me to the metro and showed me to get the card used to pay for rides there. He even took a different route to his place so he could ride with me and ensure I got off at the right stop. He’ll probably never read this, but I want everyone following along here to know that he’s a hero in my book.
I woke up the next morning with a swollen throat. For me, this is usually one of the first signs of getting sick. However, it is also usually a point early enough in the illness that with a little rest, I can feel much better. I decided to cancel the food tour I was scheduled to take in the morning and opted to rest longer. I had a whole new country to fly to in just two days time and wanted to feel healthy as soon as possible beforehand.
I got outside in the afternoon only to discover that many of the nearby monuments from where I was staying in Delhi are closed on Mondays, so I did some laundry back at the hostel and treated myself to a filling biryani lunch. Biryani is a rice dish generally including meat, spices, and sometimes egg in my case.
That evening I met up with Darpendar, a friend of a friend who was local and willing to hang out with a foreigner for a few hours and share stories of what people’s lives are like in Delhi. We met at a rooftop restaurant/bar at enjoyed chickpea and peanut-based appetizers, a pesto chicken entrée with different kinds of hummus for dipping, lamb kawarma (which is chopped lamb prepared for the hummus), and as many rum and cokes as made sense since he loved rum so much. Darpender was well connected in the city and frequented the spot, so we had sat down at a reserved table and he shared what he did for work, what locals do for fun, and a bit about his personal belief in Sikhism. I can’t recall if I’ve ever spoken to someone who practices Sikhism and it was a fun opportunity to learn about a religion I knew very little about.
Darpendar ended up covering all of the food and drinks and half-joked that I can pay for dinner and drinks if he ever makes it out to America. If our paths cross again, I’d definitely cash in that favor if I were him!
My final day in Delhi was fairly uneventful. I checked out the Lotus Temple, one of the most famous Baha’i temples. There I learned a bit more about the faith system of that religion, which over-simplified could be described as a combination of all major world religions. The building itself has a really interesting design and thankfully gave me at least a few opportunities for some photos.
That evening I flew out of Delhi with a very early morning layover in Bangkok. One more flight later I was in Myanmar, a country that affected me in unexpected ways…
A Return Trip 
I am happy that the sore throat went away. Loved the picture of you with the India family.
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