The Magical Mystery Tour – 29 December 2010

Shortly after leaving Agra we stopped at Fatehpur Sikri, another Mughal palace built in 1569, that was only occupied for 16 years. Akbar met a holy man here who predicted he would have a son, which he duly did and so he moved his capital here along with 60000 people from Agra. He was a bit of a radical in that he had a Hindu, a Muslim and a Christian as his three main wives, He had a goodly number of others, as well as concubines; but for these three favourite wives he built a house each, in the palace complex.

Although he was very enlightened with regard to religious tolerance, he had one peculiar fascination; he liked to to watch people die in front of him so he had a raised stone in the courtyard upon which his favourite elephant would crush the unfortunate victim's head underfoot.

After this stop, today's programme was to be a fairly boring trip to Jaipur but the reality was far from that. About a hour before our scheduled lunch stop we pulled to the side of the dual carriageway in a small village in the middle of nowhere.

We were told that a local farming caste protest group had barricaded the main highway and that we were thus going to take a detour to our designated lunch break stop. All we needed was a guide to escort us along the detour and that he would be with us in about 5 minutes. Five became 30 without any escort appearing but we did provide great amusement for the local kids who came to stare and wave at the foreigners in their midst.

Eventually the driver decided to simply go against the flow of obviously detoured traffic that was coming the other way out off the side road that we were waiting by, a simple and obvious decision that could have been taken much earlier. So, in convoy with some other buses that had joined us and about a dozen cars, we set off down the back road. Whilst it was nominally sealed all the way it was more suited to 4x4 vehicles for significant stretches, It was also not well suited to pass oncoming buses but our driver always managed to squeeze past.

The upside was a fantastic, unscheduled tour through rural India and the locals were obviously as unaccustomed to us as we were to them as they turned out in significant numbers all along the route to cheer and wave as we passed. At one village we saw a number of tractors towing trailers jam-packed with locals and discovered that it was their intention to blockade the detour as well, They graciously allowed our convoy through before completing their plan. A couple of kilometres further on there was a small fire in the middle of road which the bus simply drove over, Whether it was part of the protest or not was not clear.

Having finally met our escort we eventually made it back to the main road and the lunch place but wondered at the end of the meal, why we had bothered, the place, the food and the service all being less than inspiring. After lunch we once again left the main road, this time at an official police detour to venture north around the second protest barricade. Once again it was a wonderful tour through villages and rural towns where life is very much lived on the street, and sights that we would never have seen otherwise. Clearly this extra time taken rather upset the programme for the day but the additional optional-extra scheduled for the evening was one that we had already decided to forgo anyway so no great loss for us.

The hotel for the night was described as 'heritage' with all rooms different. We were welcomed with a hot towel & a coke – interesting mix, and a power outage! The entry room looked fascinating with old family black and white portraits, but we were blown away when shown to our room – really a suite of rooms with marble floors throughout, and about twice the size of our London apartment. Unlike the Clarks Shiraz in Agra, which tried to look like quality, this was the real thing in a rural type of way. Castle Kanota Hotel is down a rural side road in the township of Kanota. The rural setting meant we all had to dine there and because it was a set menu we did not have to decide what we would eat, Fortunately it was all quite delicious.

Agra Fort and the Taj Mahal – 28 December 2010

Visiting the Taj Mahal for sunrise was not an option as the winter fog meant that it would be an exercise in futility. The guides even suggested that we did not make the Taj Mahal our first visit as it would be too crowded with “all the other tour groups there”. What logic drew them to that conclusion, and whether or not it was correct, we will never know but because they were in charge we followed the plan and set off for the Agra Fort.

This imposing structure was built in 1565 and ended up as the location where Mughal Emperor Shahjahan, the builder of the Taj Mahal spent his last 8 years, under house arrest, gazing down the river to his beautiful creation in honour of his favourite wife: The fog prevented us from enjoying that view.

Finally, we arrived at India's crown jewel; the Taj Mahal, which translates to Crown Palace. Regardless of the fact that you may have seen hundreds of photos or documentaries of this building, to walk through the gate and catch your first glimpse of this place is breathtaking.

Naturally everyone is jockeying for the central spot to take the symmetrical photo and everywhere you think there may be an interesting angle or reflection to exploit there is someone standing there ready to point it out to you in return for rupees: A most annoying feature.

Also totally crowded is the “Diana bench” with every man, women and child ready to adopt the pose for family or professional photographers. And there are always those using perspective to pose with them holding up the dome between finger and thumb. Snapped, a little off-centre, they appear quite stupid.

It is a great shame that Shahjahan's son arrested him and prevented him from building his matching black Taj on the opposite bank for his own mausoleum, they would have made an exquisitely stunning pair. But one is certainly better than none and the Taj Mahal truly ranks as one of the world's great sights.

The designers left nothing to chance, even canting out the four minarets by 8” so that they would fall outwards in the case of an earthquake rather than inwards and disturb the tomb.

Reluctantly dragging ourselves away we fought off the trinket sellers and made our way back to our bus for the short ride back to the hotel and lunch. Our (Italian) Tour Manager confirmed what we had read on the web that the cafe in the hotel foyer serve fantastic coffee so we waited an inordinately long time for some coffee to be delivered; one of the worst cups of, supposedly, cappuccino we have ever been served, anywhere.

Still, the waiting filled in the time until we set off for the afternoon excursion to Itmad-Ud-Daulah.
This mausoleum, completed in 1635, three years before the Taj Mahal, was the first building in India built completely in marble. While exquisitely detailed it is considerably smaller than the Taj Mahal, earning it the nickname “Baby Taj” and is thought to be the inspiration for the second and more well known marble building.

Off to Agra – 27 December 2010

The first scheduled stop in Delhi at the ruins of an old mosque was abandoned at the gate because of the thick fog, so we settled in for the 6-hour coach trip to Agra. The first stop was a rather smart restaurant where we enjoyed a light lunch.

As compensation for missing out on the fog-shrouded Qutub Minar, we stopped instead at Sikandra, the mausoleum for Emperor Akbar, built by his son. It has an interesting mix of Hindu (flowers) and Muslim (geometric designs) architecture. The water features no longer contain water, but considering it was completed in 1613, it is a remarkably well preserved monument. It is very dominated by the number 4 or multiples thereof in the towers, gates, rooms and so on. The only exception being that it has 5 floors,

Agra was only a short distance away, but soon after leaving Sikandra, the traffic jams began in earnest. The population here is 2.5 million compared to Delhi's 18 million, but they also can create serious traffic jams.

Our Hotel was the pleasant Clarks Shiraz, and after an tasty Indian meal, we could still hear the car horns tooting outside on one of the 'quiet' streets in Agra. I suspect they may go all night!

Welcome to India - 26 December 2010

Flying overseas on Christmas Day is a good value option, provided you have a friendly taxi driver living next door, as there is no public transport.

After all the snow chaos of the past week, Heathrow was looking very calm and organised. We boarded in good time, but didn't actually leave on time as we had to wait for the ground staff to compete the de-icing. However we landed in Delhi on time; swapping ice for fog.

As Kiwis, we were "privileged" to partake in an Indian 1-year trial system of getting a visa on arrival rather than posting off our passports ahead of time. Also, it was slightly cheaper – what could possibly go wrong?

We found the Visa on Arrival desk very easily, good start; and there was no queue, very positive, so we began. What a performance! We had filled out a customs arrival form on the plane and now we had another two-sided, very poorly laid out form to fill in. If they had posted this form on their website we could have been all prepared. If they had told us on the website we needed a photograph with us, we could have been all prepared. All they had said was that we needed $US60 per person; which we had duly brought. However, money man one came along and demanded $US61 per person, there being a $1 transaction fee as the money had to be converted to rupees. Why not tell us to bring rupees as none of the countries that can use this new system actually use $US?

After a little “discussion” we settled on $60 and eventually money man two came back with the rupees which we handed to money man three. Meanwhile two gentlemen behind the counter were laboriously transcribing the details from our forms into huge bound ledgers and handwriting receipts etc. The whole process took 45 minutes and we could then see the reason that they had provided seating for about 50 in the area in front of the Visa on Arrival desk. The only positive was that at the end of the procedure we were personally escorted past all the other people queuing at the immigration check-point desks. Fortunately the baggage handling was equally inefficient as the visa process so we did not hold up the rest of our party.

Out hotel was about 30 minute's drive from the airport and we had a few minutes to freshen up before we needed to leave for the tour of Delhi. The urgency was that the Jama Mosque we were to visit closed for prayers at 4pm.

Delhi traffic is everything anybody ever said about it in terms of chaos, especially once you cross from New Delhi to Old Delhi. Suddenly there are Sunday street markets and people spilling out on to the road to further impede the flow of bicycles, rickshaws, tuk-tuks, taxis, cars, trucks and buses,

We duly made it to the mosque before closing and all the women, regardless of their dress style, had to don gaudy “hospital gowns” before entering. The sole purpose of this seemed to be to embarrass the westerners as the locals were no more or less modestly dressed than our party. Although the mosque is the largest in India it is really quite disappointing compared to the Moorish mosques we have visited.

Our next stop was a large park where Gandhi was cremated in 1948. It may have looked more glorious in the past but on a foggy evening in 2010 it seemed a little tired.

Also very tired were two weary travellers and as soon as we could, after returning to the hotel, we slipped away from our group and went to bed skipping dinner as we had no desire to fall asleep with our head in a bowl of soup.

Snow in the countryside - 19 December 2010

The snow finished on Saturday as abruptly as it began, and left a thick white blanket over the whole Greater London area. Surprisingly, the trains out of London were all running, so we decided to head for the countryside by train, to enjoy the snow.

Sevenoaks is a pleasant town, south-east of London, just outside the M25. The fast train got us there in 30 minutes from central London, and after looking around the snowy town, we enjoyed walking around the National Trust property of Knole. The large Tudor mansion was closed for winter, but the park is open to visitors, and it was brilliant to walk around some of the park, watching the deer apparently oblivious to the cold, trying to find some nourishment beneath the snow. Families were out with sleds and toboggans, enjoying the wide open slopes.

A hot pub meal was the perfect way to fortify ourselves for the train trip back home.

Boots and ballet pumps – 18 December 2010

10 to 20cm of snow was forecast to arrive today in the Greater London area. We had a behind-the-scenes tour of the Coliseum booked at 11.30am, so made sure we arrived early just in case the transport system broke down.

The snow was very slight as we started the tour, but by the time it finished an hour later, there was nearly 10cm settled on the ground. The tour was really interesting, as we have attended many performances at the Coliseum over the years. We learnt the interesting history of the building, constructed in 1904 and the story behind unique features of the original style of entertainment. The aim was to bring ancient Rome to London, so the shape of the theatre and the lavish decorations reflect that.

After the tour, we enjoyed walking around central London as it continued snowing. The normal Christmas crowds were not in evidence, so there was plenty of fresh, clean snow.

The novelty had not worn off when we headed back to the Coliseum for the matinee show, but it was good to head into the warmth. We've never considered boots to be suitable footwear for the theatre before, but were very glad we had been sensible and, not surprisingly, many people seemed to be there in walking shoes.

But onstage, it was all ballet pumps, and the fun of the Nutcracker. We had seen a modern interpretation previously at the Coliseum, but this year's production of the Nutcracker took a more traditional approach; both versions were very enjoyable.