Trending on Taj

We were sorry to leave chaotic Jaipur. As well as the sumptuous hotel, the vibrant lunacy outside (despite, it must be said, the appalling poverty) was some how infectious. In fact, as we left a little early, the traffic was calmer as we headed out on the five hour drive to Agra.

The countryside was pretty flat and uninspiring but the roadside theatre gave its own entertainment. I wondered if we had things to learn from India. For example, a dog is seen near the M4 and the police are called, the traffic halted and everyone is held up in a bad tempered queue. In India, a chap calmly herds his goats across the highway, everyone just slows down and weaves a bit until he’s across. Why spend millions on ‘Smart motorways’ when the possibility of a large cow in the fast lane would keep everyone on their toes? And traffic coming the wrong way down a dual carriageway here seems to be due to the lack of any places to cross to the other carriageway – presumably if you know this might happen, you drive accordingly and save a fortune on building intersections and turn offs?

I was warming to to these concepts until we experienced two of them; a cow did indeed wander into our path at the one time when our driver had got a bit of speed on and then later, pulling out of the ‘motorway services’, it appeared to be easier to go on the wrong carriageway for a couple of hundred yards to a junction than a mile or back to the previous one. Both incidents gave our driver the chance to learn some basic Anglo-Saxon and us to realise that perhaps the UK road rules had much to recommend!

Perception can also fail you; while waiting for our driver in the ‘Motorway services’, S spotted a chap chasing after two cows that were heading toward the road. “Quick, he needs some help before they get out”, she said. In the seconds it took me to question what sort of help she thought I might offer, it became clear that rather than trying to keep the cows in, he was in fact chasing them out of the car park – and onto the carriageway….

After a very interesting stop-off at the abandoned city of Fatehpur Sikri, which was another stunning testament to what the Mughal kings could build when blessed with unlimited resources, we eventually we arrived in Agra. Agra is an absolute ‘hole’ – and you can use whatever prefix you like! The weather had also become very murky – the driver said fog, we thought smog – but either way, a total lack of clear blue skies for our much anticipated visit to the Taj Mahal to witness ‘sunset’!

We were a bit downcast at the thought of visiting the world’s most famous building in the fog, but in the end, it didn’t matter one bit.

The whole complex of buildings around the Taj are stunning enough but when you first see it in the distance through an arch, it takes your breath away. Millions of words have been written about it and I won’t add to them, but if there’s a more awe-inspiring building on the planet, I don’t know which it is. The weather was simply irrelevant and we were also very lucky that although busy, it certainly wasn’t crowded.

And that could have been the highlight of the whole trip, never mind the day, but right at the end, even this was trumped!

The first sign was us being approached by a very respectable-looking Indian family and asking if we would pose for a photo with them. I went immediately to ‘scam alert’ but it was a perfectly genuine request, and expressing gratitude, they went on their way (The Indians must be he politest people on the planet). There were loads of westerners about, so we found this highly curious.

Then, just as we were leaving, we found ourselves pursued by a crowd of giggling school-girls who, it became clear, wanted us to be in their ‘selfies’. I say ‘us’, but quite quickly, I learnt the Hindi for “ we want pretty lady, not the old git”! There was no escape for S – as she was immediately uploaded onto a thousand social media accounts, audibly being tagged as ‘Cute Blonde Lady!”

Despite the urging of our guide, ‘Cute Blonde Lady’ was showing no eagerness to leave her stage; she was ‘trending’ all over India and was to prove insufferable for the rest of the evening!