Day 4: Agra Fort, and where my planning was derailed (pun intended)

So it turns out, I made a mistake when planning this part of our trip. Initially, I planned for us to get into Agra on Thursday night, spend Friday touring around Agra, and head off to our next destination on Saturday morning. After I planned the rest of our trip, I discovered that the Taj Mahal is actually closed to visitors on Fridays. Since I had already planned so much of the rest of the trip, I decided the best way to solve this little problem was to cut short the first leg of our stay in Delhi, and head to Agra on Wednesday night so we would be able to see the Taj Mahal on Thursday, and then spend Friday going to see some of the other Agra sights. 

Except, there wasn't THAT much for me to stretch into Friday. So I angsted a little bit about "wasting" time on our vacation. Then, to compound that frustration, I was getting a little nervous about how we were going to leave Agra on Saturday. As I mentioned in my last post, I had scheduled a train for us out of Agra at 4 AM on Saturday, but there were two problems: 1) We were waitlisted on the train, and 2) after seeing the Agra Fort train station, I really wasn't thrilled about being waitlisted for a train at 4 AM in that part of town. I was getting very stressed out about how we were going to make it to our next destination, and also upset that it seemed like we would just be sitting around for the day. 

Fortunately, I was traveling with J, who is nothing if not a good, calming influence on me. He pointed out that 1) It's not the worst thing in the world if we relax a little on our VACATION and don't spend every minute sight seeing, and 2) there are other ways to travel besides train, and we are fortunate enough that we had made such budget accommodations for the first half of the trip that we could probably afford to hire a car and driver to get us to our next spot. So he went to the front desk of our hotel and asked if they could arrange a car and driver. I remained incredibly skeptical, since our next destination was a 6 hour drive away, and how could we get a driver for the next day who wouldn't charge us an arm and a leg? However, within 30 minutes, they were able to arrange someone for us no problem. Total cost was a little over $100, which was the most we paid for transportation the entire time we were there. It's steep, in Indian terms, but think about how much it would cost to have a private driver schlep you somewhere six hours away in the States. I was still a little disappointed in myself for not being able to handle things the "authentic" way and sticking to our original plan.

With those issues taken care of, we actually got to sleep in a bit on the fourth day of our vacation, since we were finally adjusting to the time change (10 1/2 hours!) and also, were wearing ourselves out. At the time, it didn't seem like we were doing that much, but writing these blog posts has made me realize just how much we were doing and seeing every day! We woke up and decided to mosey on over to the Agra Fort, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The Agra Fort was really a neat site, and one that I didn't think I would like as much as I did. It is less a "fort" the way we think of them in the States (military encampment), and more of a walled city made almost entirely of red sandstone (except for the white marble palace). Construction on the fort first started in the 11th century, though it wasn't substantially completed in its current form until the late 16th century. The most famous inhabitant of the fort was Shah Jahan, who constructed the Taj Mahal. He was actually imprisoned in the Fort in the later part of his life, and was able to look out over the Taj Mahal before he died.

The fort was very beautiful, but unfortunately, there were not a lot of signs or information about what it was we were looking at. I had read that it might be a good idea to get a guide, and in retrospect, I kind of wish we had. I did spend some time walking around behind other tour groups, listening to snippets of their guides, but it wasn't quite the same. Also, the weather was very hazy during our visit, and incredibly muggy, so we were just a little "draggy." I got some good photos, but I don't think they really do this site justice.

Reminded me a little bit of Petra

I kept expecting the music from a theme park to start playing out of the bushes!

Downside to visiting forts: They are all uphill.

Taking a break.

The White Marble part of the palace.

I got a lot of good interior decorating ideas.

Those dogs were barking.

Our first "up close and personal" Macaque Monkey!

Where Shah Jahan was kept, looking over the Taj Mahal you could not see.

Ugly history of colonialism is still visible in monuments.

And of course, because I was visiting....part of the site was under construction.

After we finished touring around, we sat in the public space at the Fort for a little while, people watching and enjoying the scenery. I also discovered that in India, there are no squirrels as we know them here in North America. Indian squirrels are known as "Indian Palm Squirrels." Also known as, the cutest squirrel in the world.

There were a TON of Indian palm squirrels at the Agra Fort, and there was a squirrel tamer, who was holding them and letting them crawl all over him. He offered to let me take a picture of him holding a squirrel...for a fee. I declined, politely, and sat down on a bench to watch the non-domesticated squirrels. Or so I thought.

A palm squirrel approached me, and looked at me very curiously. I looked back. I wasn't moving a ton, as I didn't want to spook the squirrel. No worries, this squirrel was NOT afraid. In fact, he was so unafraid, he crawled up my leg and on to my arms. 

Anyone who knows me knows that I am a hypochondriac. In my mind, this squirrel became rabid, and wild, and I was convinced I was about to have my eyes and veins all clawed out of me and I'd have to go get a rabies shot (the one vaccination I did not contemplate getting before we left). It was on me for an ETERNITY. Or, according to J, approximately 15 seconds 5 seconds (After reading this entry to him, he advised me that I was still exaggerating). It realized I did not have any potato chips (unlike the people next to us), and scampered away. 

We also saw a really beautiful garden full of poppies, which are some of my favorite flowers.

After a while, we decided to head back to the hotel to relax for the afternoon. We took an auto rickshaw to the head of the street where the hotel was located and started to walk back. It was hot, and we came across an ice cream rickshaw. We ended up buying some delicious ice cream sticks, but at that point, we were a little tired of negotiating for EVERYTHING, so we just paid the asking price of 100 rupees per ice cream the guy asked for. I think he was legitimately shocked we paid that much for an ice cream. It was pretty delicious though.

We spent the rest of the afternoon on the hotel rooftop, looking out over Agra and reading our books, relaxing. It was a nice way to spend the day, especially since I realized that I had developed very very bad blisters on the back of both of my heels and on the top of my right foot. It turns out, the black Ahnu shoes that I bought were garbage, and I did not wear them again the rest of the time we were in India. The "mushroom" colored Clarks I bought were better, but the first day, the elastic on the top of them pinched my foot and created the top foot blister. I spent the rest of the trip putting bandaids over these spots on my feet. I think part of the problem was that I procrastinated and bought the shoes so close to the trip that I didn't have time to break them in or find out where they would rub.

We went to dinner at a vegetarian restaurant J picked that was ok, and I got my first Indian mosquito bite, which I felt was pretty momentous. I then promptly sprayed myself with 100% DEET, which actually made my skin burn a little bit. 

We took another auto rickshaw back to our hotel, and again, encountered many of the same problems with road closures we had encountered the night before. This time, however, things got a little nastier. At one of the road closures, our auto rickshaw driver tried to turn onto the closed road. The police then swarmed up and started talking rapidly at the driver. Before we knew what was happening, a police officer actually reached inside the auto rickshaw and started dragging the driver out. Fortunately, a passerby stopped the police officer and pointed to us, speaking rapidly in Hindi. I obviously don't know what was said, but the passerby told us to show our hotel key to the police officer. I got the idea that the fact that there were tourists around served as a deterrent to what I can only imagine would have not been a very legal Terry stop. It obviously made J and I think about everything going on in the US Media about police stops, and made us realize that there was no outrage from anyone who saw what happened. One of those instances where the fact that we were American lawyers did us not one lick of good. 

Fortunately, we got back to our hotel after another detour through the Village (no sanitation trucks blocking our way this time), and pretty quickly hit the hay.

Next up....Ranthambore National Park! (Spoiler Alert: TIGERS)