The Road (to Agra)

I read a book called The Road to Agra when I was a kid.  I had forgotten all about it until this trip.  I would like to find it and read it again.

Once we got out of the Delhi traffic jam, it took about 4 hours to arrive in Agra.  Ved, our driver for this trip, is adept at Indian-style driving.  You must constantly weave to avoid a myriad of obstacles:  cows, dogs, goats, donkeys, people, auto-rickshaws, motorcycles, trucks, tractors, horse-drawn carts, speed bumps ("breakers"), potholes.    At each village, you face the congestion of the local bazaar, where the crowds, goods, and pushcarts take up the sides of the roadway. 

Most of the commercial vehicles are colorfully decorated with images of gods, animals, the Indian flag and other emblems.  Many trucks are adorned with black tassles -- for good luck.  The backs of trucks are lettered with signs -- typically requesting other drivers to Blow Horn.  Honking is extremely important because it lets everyone else know you're coming through on one side or the other so they should watch out. 

There were many stops to pay tolls and taxes, or to show that we had already paid the tolls and taxes. The hawkers and beggars hang out at these spots, knocking on the windows of the car to get your attention.  There was even a guy with a monkey.  We had been advised,  "If you look at the monkey, the man will want money, and if you pay the man then everyone else will want money too" -- so we strenuously avoided looking at the monkey, even though it was pressed right up against the car window.

At last we arrived at our hotel, the ITC Mughal, where we were greeted with signs asking our forgiveness for construction work in progress.  Uh-oh.  I was already very anxious because all of our arrangements had been made at the last possible moment by someone else.  And then they told us we'd been upgraded and showed us to to a suite and opened the door to a beautiful, cool suite with the best bathroom ever.  Steve said the tub was "almost too big."  Plus an unbelievable massage chair (it did a complete 14-minute program of neck rolls, shoulder thumps, leg squeezes...). 

The property was beautiful, with singing birds, butterflies, green lawns, and an arboretum. 

Before the sun set that night, we had a chance to walk up to the observatory where we got our first glimpse of the Taj Mahal in the distance.