The Blog of Gord

The plan for Saturday was to go straight from the train station to Alleppey, where I was going for an overnight houseboat trip, and save the Cochin sight-seeing for Sunday.

My driver for the weekend, Anish, told me we had to go about 60 km south, and that it would take about two hours to get there normally, but less at this time of day.  Saturday morning at 6:30am in Ernakulam, there isn’t much traffic yet, so we got out of town easily.

We stopped at a roadside restaurant outside the city, where I had my usual breakfast: masala dosa, sambar, and coconut/chili chutney, with black coffee and, for variety, a bottle of fizzy sour lime juice.  The bill came to about $1.  I’d ordered more stuff, but the waiter, a young boy, came back every couple of minutes with more bad news.  “I’m sorry sir, there is no idli today.”  “I’m sorry sir, there is no vada today.”  “I’m sorry sir, there is no fruit juice today.”  That was for the best, because the dosa was huge!

 
We got to Alleppey around 8:30, too early to checkin at the houseboat, which was expecting me at noon.  Anish suggested going to the beach for a while.  That was a great idea: Alleppey is a resort destination, and the beach was fantastic, several kilometers of clean sand along the Arabian Sea.  Even though it was early, the day was already quite warm, not surprising considering that it’s only 9 degrees north of the equator, roughly level with the northern tip of Sri Lanka.  At this time of year, the nightly lows are about 25 C, the highs in the mid-30’s, and the Arabian Sea is very warm.

 
I rolled up my pant legs and went for a long walk through the surf, then relaxed on a rock under the shade of a coconut tree for a while, watching small fishing boats slowly pass on the water.  A friendly dog curled up on a nearby rock, and an old fellow out for his morning walk stopped by to chat for a while.  The conversation always follows the same pattern…  “Your good name, sir?”  “Which country?”  “Your family is where?”  “How do you like India?”  The beach wasn’t busy at this time of day, a few walkers, a few families out to enjoy it before it gets too hot, and the beach cleaning crews.

 
Back at the car, Anish had called the houseboat to see if they were ready yet, so I got there about 10am.  There wasn’t a dock, just houseboats tied up beside each other at the shore, one after another, hundreds of them.  They were also tied up several deep: to get to my houseboat, I had to walk through half a dozen others.

The houseboat was intended for two people but I was going to have it to myself: just me, the cook, and the skipper.  The busy season is December-January, so now the boats are idle a lot of the time.  At the boat, they showed me my room, which had it’s own bathroom, gave me a coconut with the top hacked off and a straw pushed into it, and told me we’d leave when we could.  Before a boat can leave, all the boats behind it have to be untied and move out of the way.

We were moving by about 11:30… cue the theme to Gilligan’s Island… slowly meandering down the river to Vembanad Lake.  The lake is India’s longest: it runs all the way back to Kochi, a six hour ride at 10 km/h.  We weren’t going that far, though.

After some time on the lake, we turned off into some narrow canals, the backwaters this area is famous for.  It’s called “India’s Venice” and also “The Hundred Thousand Islands”.  The shore is lined with huts and small houses, churches, schools, and businesses.  In behind are rice fields, and everything moves by boat: cement, food, animals, people, whatever.  Everyone has a canoe, some motorized, and there are regular water buses.

Plenty of hammer and sickle flags on display.  Kerala’s government is communist.  That’s supposed to account for Kerala being the only state with 100% literacy, but also not much industry.

 
Some people fish; for lunch we stopped beside a rice field and I had a flat fish called “Black Spot” that comes from the river.  “Black Spot” doesn’t sound very appetizing, but that’s the English translation of the Malayalam name for it.  Lots of bones, not much flesh, but very tasty.

After lunch, we meandered away again, up and down canals, while I sat in my deck chair on the roof, getting a sunburn on my feet.  A lazy cruise in a houseboat for two on Valentines Day… sounds very romantic except my girlfriend is back shoveling snow in Canada.  Bummer.

At 5pm we pulled over to the shore, tied the boat to a coconut tree for the night, and relaxed.  I went for a short walk along the shore: it was short because you can’t walk very far without running into a canal.  I was a little uncomfortable, because I felt like I was walking through people’s front yards, which I was: past their tethered goats, women doing their laundry in the canal, kids playing etc.  I guess they’re used to it, because It’s a popular spot for boats to spend the night.  By dark (sun goes down a little after 6pm), there were quite a few moored there.

Anyway, as I walked along, every couple of minutes I had another conversation.  “Your good name, sir?”  “Which country?”  “Your family is where?”  “How do you like India?”  That is, until I passed a houseboat full of young guys, including one entertainingly drunk fellow named Ranjit who insisted on having a deep and incoherent conversation with me about cultural differences between east and west, Christians and Hindus, somehow all related to the Himalayas.  We sat on his boat for a while as he tugged on a large bottle of Kingfisher (I didn’t join him) and he expounded on his topic.  Eventually the driver of their boat decided to move the boat: I think he realized this group was going to disturb everyone else, and he was right: later their boat was anchored way out on the lake, and I could hear the sounds of singing long into the night.  Before he could pull away, though, everyone got out their camera phones so they could get their picture with me, arms around each other’s shoulders (Ranjit’s were very hairy).  After their hangovers wore off the next day, I’ll bet they were wondering who the heck that sunburned guy was in their mobiles!

While I was out socializing, the cook was busy preparing another feast for me:

After dinner, I sat on the upper deck and watched a few fireworks displays out across the lake, and listened to the Malayalam music coming from some of the distant boats.  It was a mild evening; once the sun went down, it quickly cooled off to about 25 C.  There were mosquitos out, as I discovered when I went downstairs and saw them all gathered around a light shining on a picture of Jesus.  They were being picked off one by one by a gecko that was hiding behind Jesus.  The mosquitos didn’t seem to be biting, fortunately for me since I didn’t bother getting malaria tablets for this trip.  It’s the dry season; who knew I’d be vacationing in a wetland?

About 10pm, thoroughly relaxed, I went to bed for a great night’s sleep which lasted until 5am when the morning chants and music started from a temple/church/mosque somewhere across the lake.  Once the sun was up, I went out to the deck and tried to get a picture of one of fishing birds (a kingfisher, maybe?) that were going after the jumping fish, and watched the water buses going from stop to stop (the bus barely stops– people jump on and off while it’s moving).  I had a cup of tea while the cook prepared a western-style breakfast: omelette, ten (!) slices of toast with pineapple jam, fresh pineapple slices, and coffee.

While I was eating, we pulled away and got back on the river, on our way back to Alleppey.  Everyone was out along the river, brushing their teeth, bathing, washing clothes (the air was full of the sound of wet clothes slapping on rocks), washing the breakfast dishes…

We got back to Alleppey around 9:30am, I said goodbye to the cook and the skipper, and walked back through the string of houseboats to meet my driver, Anish, again.  He’d spent the last 24 hours waiting in the car.

I left the office a bit early on Friday to catch an overnight train from Bangalore to Ernakulam / Cochin, on the Kerala coast.  Bangalore City Rail station is quite a busy place, co-located with both the long distance bus terminal and the city bus terminal, in an area known as Majestic.  The train station itself seems vast, and not well marked, but lucky for me my friends from the office came along to see me off, and make sure I didn’t get lost in the station.

If you can find the right platform (there are 10), the train itself is well marked with which car, or “bogie” as they’re called here, is which.  I was traveling in the “air-conditioned sleeper” car.  For this class, the name and age of everyone booked for the car is posted on a printout at the door, and you can’t get into the car from the adjacent cars.  I was a few minutes early, so while we were waiting, my buddies made sure I was well-laden with bananas and potato chips for the trip.

The train left about 20 minutes late, shortly after 7pm.  I’d been looking forward to a train ride since my last visit in 2006, and now I was finally doing it!  My seat-mates were three young guys, recent MBA graduates, who all work for the same bank chain in Mysore and Bangalore, off to a “relationship banking” conference in Cochin (Kochi), which is adjacent to Ernakulam.

There wasn’t much to see out the window, as the sun goes down at 6:30pm, and the windows were heavily tinted.  So, I just enjoyed the trip.  Check out the amenities.

The trip is 624 km and 11.5 hours according to Indian Rail, with 16 stops.  This is referred to as the Express train.  The train actually started out in the opposite direction you’d expect, heading east to Kuppam in Andhra Pradesh before cutting south through Tamil Nadu and then southwest to Thrisur on the Kerala coast, and south to Ernakulam.   There’s a detailed map on Indian Railway’s site.  I didn’t realize how circuitous the route was until the next morning when I noticed my mobile phone company had sent me SMSes welcoming me to Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu.

An attendant distributed a sheet, blanket, and a pillow shortly after we had left Bangalore.  The unofficial meal service is a guy who comes around selling boxes of spiced rice with a hard-boiled egg in the middle, which I declined in favour of my chips and bananas.

Around 10pm, we all went to bed.   The seat benches fold down to expose the sleeping pads for the lower berths (I had a lower berth), and a curtain closes off each group of two lowers and two uppers from the light of the corridor and the two berths on the other side of the corridor.  Sound carries pretty well, but overall it was a reasonably quiet ride, just the occasional train whistle, squealing brakes, or sleepless child.  I didn’t sleep much, probably more because I didn’t want to miss any of the trip than due to the hard sleeping surface or sounds.

Still, I did sleep for a while, awakened by the attendant coming around at 6am.  We then had about half an hour to freshen up before arriving in Ernakulam.  Ernakulam station isn’t nearly as big as Bangalore’s, so it wasn’t much trouble to find my way out and locate my ride.

I went to Bangalore City Railway Station today, hoping to get a last-minute train ticket to the coast.  I’m on a business visa, and while there’s an allotment of tickets to foreign tourists, and while I’m certainly foreign enough, a tourist is by definition someone with a tourist visa.  They wouldn’t book a ticket for me, so one of my colleagues and I took an auto-rickshaw over there in the afternoon so I could plead my case at the window in person.

There’s a wicket at the station for “Senior Citizens, Disabled, and Foreign Tourists”, so we stood there.  While we waited, the clerk (processing some complex ticket refund transaction) told us to go to the “Block booking” window, where we were second in line.  Turned out we were behind a couple of older fellows buying about 100 tickets for a group, and the clerk was typing each person’s particulars into the computer from a sheet.  Slowly.  Since we were there for a while, sweating in the 35 C heat of the station, one of the gents turned to me and said “You know this is for bulk tickets.”  “And I’m not very bulky?” I replied.  That got a good laugh.  After a while, we found out that we really should have been back at the other window after all.

By now there was quite a mob of Seniors, Disabled, and Tourists waiting.  I managed to get behind an Aussie who was obviously travelling on the cheap, because he was trying to get a ticket he’d bought from a travel agent in Goa changed to another ticket, and get the original one refunded.  (Based on what I saw today, the clerks spend more time refunding tickets than selling them.)  The negotiations were intense, but at the end, he was stuck buying another ticket.  The rules are the rules.  That’s a bad sign, I thought to myself, because I was next, with another unusual, regulation-defying request.  Another official seemed almost willing to do it, but then thought better of it.  “NRI?” he asked from out of view.  The clerk looked at me again, then said “Um, no.”  What I could do is get a ticket to the coast, then once I got there, apply for another ticket back to Bangalore.  And what were the chances of that happening, we asked.  “Good”.  That didn’t inspire a lot of confidence, so I declined that option.

While it wasn’t the most efficient operation, it was certainly a memorable way to spend a couple of hours.  Later, back at the office, the company’s travel agent found another option that ought to work instead.

…was vast!

There seem to be more guests in the hotel this week, at least I’m not alone in the restaurant, so they’ve started putting out a south-Indian breakfast buffet.  That hasn’t stopped the restaurant “captain” (to whom I’m giving French lessons ) from continuing to bring me more food though… he thinks I don’t eat enough.  Check out the pictures.  Round one was (going clockwise from the left) a couple of idlis (steamed rice cakes), kesari bath (a hot sweet that looks like mashed turnips), a spinach / meat (lamb?) / curd salad, a vada (deep-fried potato/lentil donut), and a chick-pea/green bean curry, with a dish of coconut/chili chutney with toasted chilis in the center.  A dish of sambar (hot vegetable stew) isn’t shown.

I thought that would be enough, but then the captain brought out a plate of dosas, one masala (stuffed with a big helping of potato curry), another dish of sambar, more chutney, another dish of kesari bath, and a glass of mango juice.  And a pot of black coffee.

Stuffed to the gills, I waddled over to the office.  It was just as well that I’d had such a big breakfast… I needed it to sustain me through the 2.5-hour whiteboard tutorial on cryptography and PKI that I gave to 30 people before lunch.

Here’s how to get a pre-paid SIM card in India, or at least my experience.  It’s not quite as simple as going to Best Buy and signing a credit card receipt…

Thursday: pick up application form.

Assemble the following:
o   Application form,  including father’s name.
o   Passport-sized photograph.
o   Photocopy of passport.
o   Letter from company HR department.
o   Reference from an Indian person.
o   Rs 510 (about $13).
o   Borrow a phone.

Friday: return to the dealer with stack of paperwork, wait an hour, sign name about 20 times, fork over the cash.  Discover that one more passport photocopy is required… the office next door that has a photocopier is too busy, so agree to send that over later in the afternoon.

Wait one hour for the phone to be activated.  Two hours later, call Customer Care.  “No sir, it will take four hours.”  Four hours later, “It will be done by tomorrow.”

Weekend:  No answer on the Customer Care line.

Monday: “No sir, you have to go back to the dealer to complete the activation.”  At the dealer, “What, it hasn’t been activated?”  Over the next hour, various people at the dealer make about a dozen phone calls each.  “It will be 10 minutes.”  Ten minutes later, a few more phone calls, and… I have a working phone!  Woo-hoo!

This weekend I thought I’d take it easy, do some walking, and get reacquainted with Bangalore.  Yesterday, Saturday, I walked 15 km (according to my GPS) through Cubbon Park, past the Vidhana Soudha (State Legislature), the High Court of Karnataka, and the General Post Office.  I didn’t see Cubbon Park last time I was here, nor the state library.  The park is green, but dusty, as it’s the dry season right now.

…And then downtown to Brigade Road where the pubs are.

Pub World is still there.  They still only have Kingfisher on tap, and it was even the same bartender!  He didn’t recognize me though.  I spent a couple of pleasant hours out of the heat, enjoying pints of Kingfisher, watching cricket, and chatting with a banker about the effect of the global economic meltdown on outsourcing.

Oh yes, the heat… 31 degrees Celsius and bright sunshine!  Quite a departure from -20 C and snow in Ottawa; I think my toque will be spending the next few weeks at the bottom of my duffle bag.  Unfortunately I didn’t think to bring (or wear) any sunscreen, and now it’s too late: I’ve got myself a bright red sunburn.

For walk #2 today, I wore a hat.  This walk was 19 km, up around the Bangalore Palace grounds for a start.  There was a chocolate festival going on there, and not being a chocolate fan, I didn’t go in.  I’m keeping my eyes peeled for a popcorn festival.

It was a long, dusty walk.  I ended up downtown again, and had a bottle of water on Coffee Day’s patio on Mahatma Gandhi Road.  M.G. Road has changed a lot since my last visit, as the new metro rail system is being built along its north side.  The plans were still being made during my last visit, and already there’s a considerable amount of progress.  Contrast that with Ottawa, where the planning for light rail starts from scratch every couple of years.

I’ve got a hundred channels on the TV in my hotel room (mostly movies in Hindi, Kannada, etc), but nothing that carries Battlestar Galactica.  Sigh.  I can’t even get it over the internet; Space doesn’t stream outside Canada.  I’m not sure if it would work even if I could get it… my internet connection is limited to only 256 kbps and drops every so often.

I guess I’ll have to wait until I get back before I can see Gaeta and Zarek get what’s coming to them.

I wonder if there’s a “Bollywood-star Galactica” I could watch instead?

I’m back!  Back on this blog, and better yet, back in India.

For the wise-guys who keep asking if I’m ever coming back from India, based on the lack of closure from my previous trip, I guess I should bring you up to date.  My last blog entry was in August 2006, and I returned to Canada a couple of weeks later, about a week or so after the liquid bomb scare at Heathrow.  Since I returned through Heathrow, the trip back was a bit nerve-wracking, as I only had two hours to make my connection, and the security lineups were making the news due to their length.  Luckily the British Airways flight from Bangalore was on time, because I needed every second of that two hours to get to the Air Canada gate in the other terminal.  Unluckily, it was impossible to get a drink of water at the Air Canada gate, or even on the plane until an hour into the flight.  On the British Airways flight out of Bangalore, since people couldn’t bring water on board, the crew started handing out water bottles as soon as we boarded.  On Air Canada, “No sir, we can’t give you water on the ground, you’ll have to wait.”  An hour into the flight we were grudgingly granted a small glass of water, and then waited another hour for the attendant to come around again with the possibility of a second drink.

This time, not wanting to die of thirst over the Atlantic, I decided to try Air France.  They don’t fly out of Ottawa, but they do provide a handy shuttle bus service to Dorval in Montreal.  That worked quite well, and the connection at Charles De Gaulle in Paris was also smooth.  We were late getting out of Paris to Bangalore, due to the unusual amount of snow falling in Paris that day, but in spite of that, the flight was only half an hour late getting into Bangalore.  The plane was only half full, which was nice for being able to stretch out, and the service on Air France was as good as on British Airways.

Bangalore’s new airport is quite a change from the old one.  The international terminal at the old HAL was full of rubble and looked like it had last been maintained sometime before the Wright brothers first flew.  The new BLR airport, on the other hand, is modern and clean… a much more pleasant arrival experience.  Baggage still takes quite a while to dribble out of the plane to the conveyor belts though.

I was again amazed at how easy it is to find the right driver out of the sea of drivers (hundreds?) waiting outside the terminal in the middle of the night.  The only drawback of the new airport is that it’s a long way out of the city, but the road there is very good.  I finally got to the hotel at 3am, about 27 hours after leaving Ottawa.

Yes, it’s a hotel this time.  The company I’m visiting closed its guest house due to the poor economy.  That’s too bad, because the guest house was great, much like being at home if I had a cook, driver, and laundry person at home, but this hotel seems to be OK too.  It’s small, with around 40 rooms, and an attached restaurant.  The restaurant is always empty when I’m there, so I get the constant attention of the restaurant captain, and the hotel manager, and the waiting staff.  I surprised them the first morning, when they asked me if I’d like an omelette, I said no, how about some dosas, pickle, and curd?  So, this week I’ve been having a variety of South Indian breakfast foods, vada, puri, dosa, and various soups, curries, and chutneys.

That picture was taken about 5 hours after I arrived in India, and I went into the office shortly after.  I couldn’t sleep anyway, due to jet lag, so after resting for a couple of hours, and having breakfast, I walked over to the office first thing in the morning.  It was a busy week, with 11-12 hour days, sorting through the initial startup issues with the new teams I’m training.  I should explain that I’m training a contracting company’s engineers in the use and troubleshooting of my company’s software products so that they can develop and test them here in India.  My trip in 2006 was the startup trip; this time I’m just adding another couple of products to the mix.

The food’s been great, as I expected.  Lunch has been at various restaurants and the company cafeteria, all buffet-style affairs, and all delicious.  I’ve found it all surprisingly mild in terms of spicy-hotness levels, unlike my first trip where every meal was a sinus-clearing experience.  Knowing what I was in for, and wanting to avoid the shock to my digestive tract that was a major feature of the first weekend of my last trip, I had been acclimating myself the last couple of months with increasingly large doses of an unbelievably hot Vietnamese chili-in-oil sauce.  It seems to have worked.

The British handed over power on August 15, 1947.  For some history, see here and here.

This past weekend was my big trip to see the Taj Mahal, and it was excellent! After years of seeing pictures and hearing about it, it was quite exciting to actually be there to see it in person and touch it.

I flew from Bangalore to Delhi on Kingfisher Airlines, a domestic carrier which is the best airline I’ve flown on in quite a while. The food was great (even had metal utensils), the staff friendly, every seat had a personal video system, and the legroom was excellent. Kingfisher is the same company that makes Kingfisher beer, but ironically, alcohol consumption is prohibited on Indian domestic flights. I flew on a new Airbus A320.

My driver was waiting for me, and we were off. The first thing that struck me about Delhi was the heat. After a summer in mild Bangalore, a temperature in the mid-30’s seemed especially hot. Fortunately, the car had air-conditioning, which I became increasingly glad of as the day wore on. The second thing that struck me was that people are more inclined to follow traffic laws. The fact that the roads,at least in the new part of Delhi, are broader than those in Bangalore probably helps, but it can’t explain all of it. Delhi also has more modern rules, like seatbelt laws, helmet laws for motorcycles (mostly adhered to), and no more than two people on a bike (mostly ignored).

My plan for the day was to drive around Delhi to do some sightseeing before continuing on to Agra. There are so many things to see in Delhi, though, that it’s impossible to see them all in one day. I told the driver the list of places I had in mind, and he laughed, saying that would take at least three days. We would have spent most of the day just sitting in traffic. The bulk of the my sights were located in the new part of Delhi, so that’s where we focused. The main items on my list that I didn’t see were the Red Fort and Chandni Chowk, the old market.

First stop was the Qutb Minar, a 72.5 metre brick minaret constructed 800 years ago. As with most of the ancient buildings here, it was put up by the Muslim invaders who ruled most of India for centuries. There were a lot of ruins to wander around in. I spent an hour there, and with the heat coming off the red sandstone, by the end I felt like a piece of pottery in a kiln.

Next was the Parliament Building and the president’s residence (Rastrapati Bhavan), neither of which could be entered (at least, not with an introduction letter from the High Commission), and further down Rajpath, India Gate (tomb of the unknown soldier).

There were a couple of snake charmers at India Gate, young boys with a cobra in a basket. A boy with a basket would run up in front of some tourists, put the basket down and pull then lid off, then play the flute while coaxing the cobra out. One time the snake didn’t need any coaxing: as soon as the lid was off, it lunged at the boy and bit his hand!

Along the way we passed the Canadian High Commission. Looks like we have quite a nice place in Delhi. I stopped for a while at the Baha’i “Lotus” temple, an interestingly-shaped building in a large park. In spite of the large number of visitors, inside it was very quiet.

Then we were off to Agra, passing through the state of Haryana to Uttar Pradesh. Delhi is in a corner of Haryana bordering Uttar Pradesh, close to Rajasthan (which borders Pakistan). The road was in good shape, but still it’s slow going, with the large number of slow vehicles on it. While in south India there are a lot of ox carts on the road, here there were a lot camels pulling vast loads.

In fact, most vehicles had vast loads. We came up two overturned trucks on the highway, both of which had taken curves too quickly for their high centres of gravity. Also here’s a bus that I’m glad I wasn’t on, and a train where you can make out the people in the doorways.

It was about a 4.5 hour drive, including a stop for lunch at the Rajasthan Motel, an over-priced restaurant (and hotel) in the middle of nowhere. Everyone was dressed in period costumes, including giant moustaches– I mean larger than the rather fancy moustaches that most men in this area seem to favour. Too bad I don’t have mine anymore! Anyway, in spite of the traditional feel of the place, the restaurant served nothing but Chinese food, and pretty good too.

There were a number of toll and tax stops along the way. At one of them, a man with a pet monkey on a leash went from car to car hoping for handouts while the monkey crawled all over the windows.

Just outside Agra, in Sikandra, we stopped to see the tomb of Akbar, a Moghul emperor who lived about 450 years ago. Akbar was the son of the emperor Humayun (more on him later).

The driver dropped me off at my hotel for the night, the Taj View hotel. This is a fancy hotel. When I tried to check in, the staff ushered me to an armchair, put a lotus garland around my neck, and gave me a glass of fresh lime juice to drink while they did the paperwork. The room was an even bigger surprise: it really did have a view of the Taj Mahal.

After a shower, and a visit from someone sent to turn down my bed, I spent the evening at the bar in the lounge, drinking Kingfishers and watching people. There was a magician doing tricks for a group of older Japanese men, a portrait artist, an astrologer in a fancy turban who wasn’t getting much business, and a piano player playing Beatles tunes, lounge-style. Later in the evening, he was replaced by two musicians (drums and an accordian-like instrument) and a dancer in a blue, sparkly sari. It was quite a nice evening.

Early the next morning, I was off to the Taj Mahal. There’s a no-exhaust zone around the Taj Mahal, so we had to park nearby where I had a choice of walking, bicycle rickshaw, or camel cart. Even at 08h00, the heat was starting to rule out walking, and sitting behind a camel didn’t seem that attractive, so I chose a bicycle rickshaw. Also I hired a guide, so I wouldn’t miss anything important.

At the gate, there’s a security check that was more thorough than anything I’ve had at an airport. I knew in advance that nothing is allowed inside except water and cameras, so I’d left everything else in the car. Still, the guard spent a couple of minutes checking every pocket in my backpack for gum or other contraband.

The Taj Mahal is, of course, a grand spectacle. It was built about 350 years ago by the Moghul emperor Shah Jahan for his favourite wife who had died in childbirth. That sounds very romantic, but she died giving him his 14th child in 19 years, so I figure she was probably glad of a rest. It took 22 years and 20,000 people to build it, and shortly after it was completed, he was overthrown by his son, imprisoned, and later entombed beside his wife. I mention that because it’s the only asymmetrical aspect to the whole place: everything including the other buildings and gates has a mirror image, except that his crypt is off to one side of his wife’s which is in the center. Read the Wikipedia link and this link for the rest of the history.

It was a cloudy, humid day, but whenever the sun came out, the building glowed. Pictures don’t do it justice. Up close, the detail of the inlay and carving was incredible, and the marble was in fine shape, even after so many years of exposure. Inside the building (wearing gauze shoe-covers instead of going barefoot) we could see replicas of the crypts; the actual crypts are downstairs, not accessible to tourists.

Speaking of tourists, there weren’t that many first thing in the morning. There were plenty of people, but it wasn’t crowded. Going early was smart, partly to avoid the mid-day heat, and partly because two hours later when I left, there was a long lineup waiting for the security check. This is the off-season, so I imagine it would be much worse during the cooler tourist season.

Across the Yamuna river, you can see the place where the so-called “Black Taj” was supposed to be built. Depending on which story you’d like to believe, this was supposed to be a mirror image of the white Taj Mahal to complete the symmetry, or a mausoleum for Shah Jahan in black marble to symbolize his mourning.

Outside, my guide took me around the maze of small streets surrounding the Taj Mahal to a jeweller (nothing to interest me there) and a place where craftsmen make marble inlay items the same way as it was done 350 years ago, though of course wearing safety glasses now.

Next stop was the Agra Fort, a huge walled palace from which Akbar the Great (Shah Jahan’s grandfather) governed his empire. I spent another couple of hours there, again getting baked by all the red and white stone. The best part, for me, was the view of the Taj Mahal down the river.

When I was properly cooked, I found my driver and we drove back to Delhi in air-conditioned comfort.

Back in Delhi, it was still blazing hot, but at least the sun was starting to get low in the sky, so we made one more tourist stop, at Humayun’s tomb. Humayun was Akbar’s father, and the second Moghul emperor. Humayun’s wife built the mausoleum for him about 450 years ago, in a large, walled complex of buildings.

By the time I was finished exploring, it was getting dark, so I went to the hotel and said goodbye to the driver. The Taj Ambassador isn’t anything like the Taj View, though part of the same chain: this is a business hotel, and once inside I could have been in an upscale business hotel anywhere. After a shower, I spent some time in the cramped bar drinking some Golden Eagle beer. It was OK, especially after spending a day out in the heat.

Monday morning I flew back to Bangalore, and on the drive back to the guest house from the airport, it felt like I’d returned home.