Day 272 - Missing Tiger, Hidden Temple

The first thing we did after stepping off the train in Jaipur was extricate ourselves from a potentially violent encounter between a particularly persistent tout and random hot-headed Scottish bloke who we had very briefly befriended on the train (I know! A Scottish hot head! Who would have thought?).

He seemed upset that Indians were constantly trying to trick him. He seemed to believe that physical violence might provide a solution. I smiled sweetly at his (long?) suffering girlfriend, bravely told everyone involved I didn't know him that well and left.

The second thing we did was correctly identify our hotel pick-up guy. This was made particularly challenging by the existence of three other random individuals, all hell-bent on impersonating said pick-up guy. Suddenly the fact our hotel had provide us with a 'secret' code didn't seem quite so ridiculous.

We may have been in different city, but we were definitely still in India.

Vanood - the authentic, 100% genuine pick-up guy and hotel owner - scooped us up in his arms like children from a sandbox and took us upon our way. Just two kilometres later, the Hotel Krishna Palace greeted us with a four-storey smile that looked like it had stepped right out of the British Raj. My inner child clapped it's hands in joy as we were shown to our room; a marble monstrosity, stretching out as far as the eye could see, punctuated in the middle with a big four poster bed. Moments later, hot water was gushing from the shower head strong and even, steam filling the bathroom. It was bliss. The trials of the past week suddenly seemed a long way away.

Obviously, we stayed longer than planned. We took breakfasts on the lawn (wot wot), ate home-cooked curries on the roof and lazed the days away, marveling at the lack of smog. Not even being chased up the street by an opium-crazed tuk tuk driver, convinced we had agreed a price of 2,000Rps (AUD$50, or 20x the going rate) for a nearly disastrous five-minute trip from the markets, could dampen our spirits. Vanood simply smiled and bade us to our room. Within fifteen minutes the clearly-rooted individual was gone, no doubt to deliver another poppy-induced nightmare unto unsuspecting tourists.

We spent 4 nights in all in Jaipur. It's funky little dust-ball of a city with plenty to do and see, in addition to hanging around letting the accumulated stress of Mumbai and Delhi flow away. The monkey temple was as it says on the packet, with only one attack of The Usual Nonsense ("You want me to give 5,000Rps 'to Ganesh' because you tied this piece of string on my wrist?"). The Red Fort was also impressive and the visit to the Old "Pink" Market, so called because it was painted the traditional Indian celebratory colour for the visit of King George, was a very different kind of shopping trip.

Four days later, we jumped in a car and headed south-east. The promise of wild tiger spotting was not one Mrs Bell could pass over.

Ranthambore National Park is, so the brochures say, the most likely place to see wild tigers in India. Unlike many other national parks in the sub-continent, it has not been rorted by corrupt government officials working in legion with poachers. For some reason, some cultures (Chinese cultures, in particular) believe that eating bits of tiger is good for your health. Personally, I am of the opinion that tiger bits look best attached to tigers. Call me old-fashioned.

The evening safari was an enjoyable jaunt around the park in an open-backed truck. The scenery was nice. The conversation was wonderful. We talked about how amazing it would be to head north to Palm Beach one summers' day with a bunch of mates in a similar type of open-backed truck. We saw deer and elk and the occasional monkey. Mr and Mrs Tiger however, all 40-odd of them, chose not to grace us with their presence.

Next day, we decided to try our luck again. This time, an early morning safari. We enjoyed the very same scenery from the back of the very same open-backed truck. We chatted (more quietly this time) about how not-so-good it was to ride around on frosty early mornings in the previously discussed and very same open-backed truck. Again, no shortage of elks, deer, monkeys and even the odd wild boar and crocodile for good measure. The closest we got to tigers was seeing a paw print on the track.

"I don't believe a word of it", said a dejected Mrs Bell as we piled back into the car for the next stage of our trip,"I don't think there are any tigers here at all"
"What are you suggesting?," I inquired, You think they are lying about the tigers? That the poachers got them all?"
"They can bloody well have them," replied Mrs Bell, stuffing her camera back in her bag. "Stupid kitties"

Note to tigers (and other wild animals in general); you might want to sort your game out a bit. You know, make more of an effort for Mrs B in future. She's not been happy with your collective performances of late (see El Manu post). She's into you, but where is the love in return?

And so, to the final leg of our journey; Agra. This tiny little town, a few hours south of Delhi, is a quite unremarkable and charmless little shithole which I would normally rather plumb the depths of my urethra with a rusty coathanger than visit, if it weren't for one thing. The Taj Mahal.

We'd really mulled this one over. The scummy reputation of Agra (otherwise known as Toutsville) had made us decide against going more than once. However, the warnings of a hundred Indian waiters rang in our ears, "You cannot visit India and not see the Taj Mahal".

So, we mounted Operation "In-and-Out". Arriving late at night, we ducked into our hotel and slept. Then, before the sun had even had a chance to think about rising, we were en-route and on foot to (allegedly) the world's most beautiful building.

You may recall the reason we ended up going first to Jaipur, rather than Agra, was because of fog. Well, it turned out that in the week since our absence exactly SFA had changed. We wandered around in the thick pea-souper for a half hour finding a mosque, restaurant, camel stables and man with no legs crawling down the road until we finally found the western gate of the Taj Mahal.

And so entering the famed complex, we trotted up to the hallowed main gate, ready to be met with another of the most famous photos in the world, and we saw...well, do you remember what happened when we finally got to the sun gate at Machu Pichu? Yep, well this was pretty much exactly the same. Fog. Mist. Smog. Whatever you call it, it weren't the Taj, I can tell thee.

In fact, we didn't catch our first glimpse of the Taj until I nearly walked into it, from about five metres away from it

But here's the thing. Our initial disappointment began to give way to something else. As we wandered around the building, marveling at the huge slabs of porcelain marble and ornate carvings, I became slowly aware that we felt very alone. There was, as far as ours eyes could see, very little evidence of other people. As the Taj slowly appeared and disappeared in the mist, illuminated by the blood-red sunrise burning through, it felt like we had it all to ourselves.

Now, I'm not much of a temple connoisseur. I appreciate the history, splendour, opulence and scale of a good building, but I'm not the "ga-ga" type. Once you've seen one pyramid/ obelisk/ ruined Mayan city/ historical palace/ whatever, they all seem to blend in to each other.

The Taj, however, is nothing short of awe-inspiring. It is the ultimate tribute to love or, as Mrs Bell put it;

"Look at it! Why can't every husband be as generous as him?" she says, with playfully accusative tone, aimed in my direction
"Never mind that, my love. If I were you, I'd be more concerned with trying to work out what she did for him, n'est pas?" I volleyed back with interest. She must have been some woman.

The Taj really is one of those places that photos will never do justice. It's not a big as I thought it would be. Somehow though, sat grandly upon it's 5-metre high marble base, it looks enormous. Grandiouse. Ethereal. At times, I had to wonder whether it was truly of this plane of existence, or whether it was floating there ready to phase out into another dimension at a moments' notice.

And another thing they never tell you about the Taj; the acoustics in the main burial chamber are amazing. I could have sat there all day listening to the surreal cacophony being generated simply by people speaking softly within its' walls.

Tomorrow, we head back to Delhi. The day after, we will be far south, in Kerala. I can't say I have loved the north. It is a manic pace of life that doesn't appeal. However, things have improved since that first few days in the country.

Now, let's see what difference 3,000kms makes.


Photos from Jaipur, Ranthambore and Agro, I mean Agra