I don’t know that the drive from Delhi to Agra was the worst we will see, but our first view of the Taj Mahal must certainly be the best view of anything I’ve ever seen.
Our hotel, the Oberoi Amarvilas, is reputed to be the best in Asia which makes it one of the best in the world, and as we stood on our balcony with a clear view of the Taj Majal we were stunned.
As you can see, the contrasts are extraordinary. The lows are really low and the highs can’t be topped. The drive was about 220 km (about 135 miles for you non-metric philistines), but it took almost six hours, most of which was spent getting out of Delhi and into Agra. I’m not sure I have adequate words to fully describe the chaos that is driving in India. I thought I’d seen it all. Mexico City, Bangkok, Manila…..but there’s nothing even close in my experience. I spent a good deal of the time, as did S. with my eyes closed, gripping the door support, with my sphincter clutched sure that I was going to die or be maimed in the next two minutes. Our driver, Gupta, who was quite good, thankfully, attributed most of the problems to what he called “wrong way drivers”. The road was divided for the most part with parts of two lanes each way, but the Indians, ever the clever fellows, figure that if their side is crowded they can switch over to the other side, blink there lights, honk there horn, and zig sag through the on-coming traffic on the wrong side of the road. This includes, cars, trucks, buses, camels, ox-carts, motorcycles, bicycle rickshaws and numerous other means of conveyance.
On the outskirts of Agra we stopped at a RR crossing for about twenty minutes, and as we waited vehicles of all sorts filled our lanes as well as the on-coming lanes. The same process took place on the other side of the tracks. We were hemmed in by an ox cart, a motor rickshaw meant to carry three with a load of fifteen school children, six motor cycles, a truck and a bus. When the trains finally passed through and the safety arm was raised, the predictable chaos ensued. It took another twenty minutes for the mess to untangle itself. In all, there must have been five hundred or so vehicles in a traffic jam that wouldn’t even be understood on the San Diego Freeway in rush hour.
We reached the Amarvilas just at the point where we couldn’t take any more and were met by a staff of six bowing with hands together chanting, “namaste, namaste” and shown directly to our room with a healing libation while the paper work was dealt with and we ogled the Taj Mahal.
