Train Trips and Palace Visits

I have now been in India for a month! It is hard to believe – it feels like I have been away from home forever but it has also been going by quickly!

3 AC section of the train

Last weekend (a week and a half ago now. We haven’t had internet in a while.) we went on a trip to Agra and Delhi. It was immediately clear why the Lonely Planet Guide to India lists the railway system as one of the most important things to see in the country!  The ride from Varanasi to Agra took about 14 hours so we left on Friday evening and arrived in Agra early Saturday morning. Once we got settled on the train it was actually fairly comfortable but the frequent bumps, yells of “Chai? Chai??” and people getting on and off made it hard to sleep.

Our first stop in Agra was the Taj Mahal which was so much more shockingly beautiful than I expected. We took lots of pictures before we even made it up to the building. At one place that we were taking pictures, a man came up and began shaking my hand and had his family member take a picture of him shaking my hand in front of the Taj. He then proceeded to line his entire family up and try to take pictures of each of them, one by one shaking my hand. This would make me feel like a celebrity if I had actually done anything to warrant this attention, but instead it made our whole group rather uncomfortable.

The inside of the Taj is equally as amazing as the outside, with the tombs of the commissioner and his wife whose tomb he had the palace built to hold. The walls are decorated with semi-precious stone inlaying and after our Taj visit we went to an emporium where they make similar marble art with semi-precious stone inlaying, employing exclusively ancestors of the builders of the Taj, of course.

In the afternoon we went to Agra Fort where we were most interested in the ancient form of air conditioning that we wished was still functioning and the beautiful view of the Taj down the river. That evening we took a much shorter train ride from Agra to Delhi where we were staying in the apartment of one of teachers here at Nirman.

We saw a lot in Delhi including the National Museum, Jantar Mantar, our personal favorite, Qutub Minar, and many markets and emporiums. Delhi is a completely different world from Varanasi. It has a very big city feeling. People somewhat obey normal traffic laws like driving in lanes and stopping at lights and there are no cows in the street! The streets are also much cleaner than in Varanasi and we were surprised to see so many big buildings and people wearing western style clothing. In the end, it was a very nice break from the craziness of Varanasi but I am overall happy that we are living in this hectic city. It is the most quintessential Indian experience there is!

Jantar Mantar

Qutub Minar

We came home from our exciting adventure for another week of classes and are now onto another week until this weekend when we will be traveling to Lucknow!

We had another funny interaction this weekend when we were preparing to make an American dinner and wanted to make chicken burgers. We told our friend who was helping us collect ingredients that we would need minced chicken meat. He tried to help to the best of his understanding and took two of the girls to a shop where they killed a chicken right in front of them, skinned it, and handed it to them. We had to explain to him that we would not be able to grind this up to make a burger, but in the end had to get mutton instead. We really enjoyed our American meal of mutton burgers and mac and cheese but our Indian friends found it somewhat bland...