Day 11: The Road to Jaipur

Taj Mahal as viewed from Agra Fort

A Beautifully-Clad Woman at Agra Fort

Shotgun at the ATM (Agra)

Manish from T Minus 3: Welcome to Hong Kong emailed me that he couldn’t follow my blog anymore and also deleted me on Facebook. I presume this was after he read yesterday’s article. He like all Indians I've met (back home and here) is proud for me to see his country. I replied back that I believed I understood. What I think I understand is that I’ve shared observations that don’t put India in a positive light. I assume he doesn’t agree. More likely he doesn’t want to me to witness and share the underbelly. Nothing personal Manish. I just need this story to be my Subjective Truth.

As we walked in the mid-day heat, Andrew said, ‘we’re about templed-out.’ We’ve been taken to palaces, mosques, shrines, forts, and temples for three days now. Chris agreed, adding, ‘there’s only so much red sandstone you can take.’ Today it was 47C/117F, according to the driver. I’ve been noticing white jagged lines on my clothing from the salt remains of dried sweat.

The Chocolate Boy with Andrew

In a quiet, meek voice: ‘Hello. Sir. Chocolate? Sir, chocolate? Hello. Ma’am. Chocolate? Hello?' Keep repeating that in random combinations. It was from a small boy carrying a container apparently full of chocolate, though we never inspected. He was looking up to address Andrew, Chris, and Laura. I was standing just behind them, aware but more focused on previewing the photos on my camera. Then I heard it coming from Andrew. The Chocolate Boy, unbeknown to me, had already excused himself to climb a set of stone steps off to the other side of the square. I was sort of creeped out at first, as I looked to make sense of the new peculiarity. Then I realized. Andrew had been exposed to the boy's patter for long enough (perhaps fifteen incessant minute's worth) that it was now "stuck in his head". Andrew was mimicking the small boy on autoplay.

Monkey at Agra Fort

Crispin was almost attacked by a monkey. As he pointed the camera, the creature climbed the castle wall fast as a lightning bolt and lunged towards him. The monkey stopped within a foot of Crispin's face. I thought the monkey was about to jump on Crispin as he jerked back. This was a similar experience to my near dog attack in Chennai. Later, we visited another temple, which apparently had been given to a band of monkeys. Literally. I’m not making this up. They worship monkeys here. Many had babies clinging to them and/or red rashy skin conditions. One had a missing foot. Another had a skin defect on its face that inflated and deflated as it breathed, like a piece of gum being blown to a bubble. They scampered along the cliffs of the rugged mountain terrain as good as any goat. There was a large pool with stagnant water that they drank from, swam in, and mingled around. Walking through the grounds and buildings, we were constantly being surprised by random monkeys popping up onto something nearby, resulting in our efforts to quickly reposition. Of course, there was monkey poop everywhere.

Agra Fort

My camera quit on me today. It flashes, “Err”, which the manual says means to send it in for factory repair. It must have been the heat that did it in. The specifications section says it was designed for operation up to 40C/104F. I’m not sure what I’ll do as far as the blog is concerned. As far as photographing monkeys: I told Andrew at the monkey temple, ‘I’m glad I don’t have my camera with me’. He replied, ‘why, because you’d be going crazy [taking photos]?’ I didn’t say anything. Later I joined Laura and Tom who fear a monkey scratch and the possibility of impending rabies shots even more than I. Laura, who had been taking plenty of photos, finally declared, ‘they’re not really very nice to look at.’ Yep, that’s what I was thinking.

Women in the Field

We drove much of the day from Agra to Jaipur. It was mostly farmland. There were no crowds and the roads were good and the landscape was clean and pretty. There were brick factories with smoking furnace chimneys and perhaps millions of stockpiled, fired bricks stacked neatly around each. Farmers towed crops in giant, overloaded trailers. There were the occasional simple dwellings and thatched, cone shaped roofs that looked to cover great bales of hay. We’d come upon small towns where there were pockets of garbage strewn about again, but not terribly so like yesterday. The people seemed content with clean (and in the women’s case also brilliant) clothing. This was in great contrast to the slum-type environment I described yesterday. It was refreshing.

It’s Chris’ birthday today. Happy birthday mate!