11. Saving the best for last: the Taj Mahal

We visited the Taj Mahal on our second to last day in India and it was every bit as marvelous as it was purported to be. It was built between 1631 to 1653 by the Emperor Shah Jahan (and 20,000 workers) as a memorial to his second wife, Mumtaz, who died giving birth to their 14th child. Not long after it was finished, Shah Jahan was overthrown by his son and imprisoned in the Agra Fort where he could only gaze upon his creation from afar. He is buried in the Taj alongside his wife. Rumor has it that Shah Jahan had plans to build a mirror-image Taj of black marble on the opposite river bank and that’s why he was thrown in prison –the Mughal empire couldn’t afford his exorbitant spending. I am certainly glad for his megalomania several hundred years later as is the Indian government, I’m sure!

The Taj sits on the river bank at an angle so that when you walk towards it, it looks like it’s floating in the clouds and the surrounding gardens and reflecting pools are its anchor. More than just the size of the teardrop dome and perfect symmetry of the minarets (although they do lean in towards each other) the white marble is stunning, with gorgeous inlaid marble and semi-precious stones depicting flowers and Arabic quotations from the Quran.
As evidenced by our pictures, it possible to take shots of the Taj with very few people in the foreground because of size of the gardens and the many raised areas along the reflecting pools. There were a lot of people there but not so many that it felt crowded. It is really very peaceful and even more serene on the riverside of the dome. (Although there isn’t much of view from that direction …just a dried-up riverbed.)

This was the only place in India where we saw or heard any Americans, as well as people from all over the world, of course. It is truly a marvel to behold. I won't say any more because Peter's pictures say it all.

10. The grand finale: Agra and the Taj Mahal

Our final three days in India were spent at the home of Vishnu and Arati Lall, family of friends back in Minnesota. After 10 days at hotels, it was a welcome treat to stay with this gracious and generous family. Peter and I had the upstairs apartment of the Lall’s son and Daughter-in-law, who were out of town. Vishnu is a rare jewelry and antiquities dealer who spent 20 years in New York City running the family business in the U.S. before moving back to India to work with his brothers in Agra. He has a gallery in the back of the family compound and his worldwide clientele has included Egyptian royalty, Heads of State, Mick Jaggar and Jackie Onassis.

Our first evening there, a group of women spiritual seekers stopped by for a drink and to see the gallery. These women were friends of friends so Vishnu and Arati did not know them but we all had a good discussion with the international group: three from India, one from New York (definitely upper eastside with the preposterous first name of Fluffy!) and one from Germany by way of Kazakhstan. They had been touring spiritual sites in India as a part of a Saint Germain “I AM” study group and have traveled with each other to Saint Germain meetings throughout the world. Fluffy told us she loves India and comes over often… I wonder how she reconciles the extreme poverty with her own life situation… the poverty is always there like the elephant in the room but not addressed directly. The German woman made the comment that, “ yes, there is poverty but the women and children are all so beautiful” …and malnourished and illiterate too.

The Lalls have many servants, at least five by my count but more seemed to appear off and on, and they are at your every beck and call, which takes some time to get used to. They kindly lent us one of their drivers to take us to the Taj Mahal the next morning and he waited for us at both the Taj and the Agra fort. Now that I have read the White Tiger I wonder how similar he was to the main character in the book. The Lalls said their servants are all from rural areas and that they are very grateful to have this work with good food to eat and a place to live. And I can understand why the Lalls would move back to India even though their children were born and raised in the U.S. Vishnu inherited the family home and he works with his brothers and his son in the family business. They can live very well in India and after living in Queens, the noise, congestion and traffic right outside their beautiful compound might not be so bothersome.
On our last morning in India and before we left for Delhi, Arati took us to a shopping mall to buy things in a place unencumbered by touts and peddlers. It was like a mall in the U.S., with many big chain stores (and dark store fronts) and practically no one there. There is a security checkpoint at the entrance and Indians who looked like they don’t earn more than $2 a day were definitely not welcome. At the few shops that were open we found beautiful, well-made reasonably-priced clothes…if only we had had more time!
We had wonderful food and conversation with the Lalls and at the end of our stay, Vishnu asked us to write in his guest book. We signed on the same page as Tim Pawlenty, Minnesota Governor, who had come over on a trade mission with Vishnu’s brother-in-law Ghopal Khanna. I may not agree with his politics but us Minnesotans need to show solidarity when we venture out into the world.

Next up: the magnificent Taj Mahal.

9. Trust me I'm a naturalist

Tuesday February 3, 2009 (day 11 in India) With my newly cemented tooth in place and our tourist duties in Jaipur satisfied, we head out the next morning for Agra, home of the Taj Mahal. On the way we want to stop at the Keoladeo Ghana National Park, a migratory bird sanctuary about 50 miles outside of Agra. Peter and I have visions of a nice quiet walk in the woods away from traffic noise and peddlers but that dissipates as we reach the entrance and are besieged by men who want to be our guides and a confusing array of charges to enter the park. Not really a national park by U.S. standards, Keoladeo Ghana is about the size of a county park in Minnesota and was a Maharajah’s hunting ground, which has had water diverted from a nearby irrigation canal to create lakes. Migrating birds from Nepal, Russia and China nest there during the winter and we did see many different species of birds that we wouldn’t see here.

We are told that we must have a guide and our “Naturalist” is a pleasant fellow named Sharma (pictured) who shows us his official guide card (they all have them) and we head off on foot after insisting that we don’t want a rickshaw to transport us. We are so looking forward to actually walking rather than sitting in a car for endless hours! Peter takes pictures of birds, deer and monkeys and I listen as our guide points out the birds (memorized from the brochure in his hand with a few variations such as calling parrots “green pigeons”) as we walk along the narrow paths between the marshes. Peter runs through two battery packs taking pictures and we still haven’t seen the pythons, which we are told sunbathe outside of their dens in the winter.

We head to the far end of the park with a dead camera anyway because when else are we going to see pythons in the wild? …or for that matter ever want to? Our guide and a park ranger direct us to a sandy area off the road and we walk past sun-bleached bones of deer and other unfortunate beasts who were python dinner and then regurgitated. About six feet in front of us, the guide points to a bush and we can see a coiled up, very, very large snake. We are in luck as it decides at that moment to uncoil and slither back into its den underground. All 15 feet of him… good thing it wasn’t hungry!

8. Honk OK Please: traffic in India

To say we experienced a lot of traffic in India is putting it mildly. Our trip itinerary was such that we were on the go all of the time, either flying or being driven to our next destination. Before going I had no concept of how massive numbers of people got around in India… I knew the train system was extensive but that was something we were counseled not try on our short visit. In Lima Peru, commuters rely on 26,000 private micro-buses as there is no subway or light rail system so I had experienced major traffic congestion before …but nothing prepared me for Delhi or Mumbai! As I suspect is true in China, the rapid influx of car owners over the last twenty years has overtaxed India’s practically non-existent highway infrastructure. That, along with the Indian way of creatively interpreting traffic rules, made for some pretty interesting road drama. As a remnant of the British Raj, they drive on the left side of the road… sometimes. On numerous occasions while on the National Highway we would see a truck or van barreling towards us on “the wrong side of the road”. Our driver explained that the miscreant just didn’t want to drive an extra kilometer to get to the entrance to the westbound lane so they use the eastbound lane instead. Lanes are just a formality as well… a two lane portion of highway always had at least five or six vehicles across: a couple of cars, a truck, a camel or ox-driven cart, a moto-taxi and several mopeds or motorcycles, which ususally had the entire family on board (with the driver, the man, the only one with a helmet on ...hmmmm). There are signs advising drivers to stay in the lanes but no one takes any notice of them … there also signs on the backs of Moto-taxis warning that “spitting spreads TB” but that’s another story!

So what was the deal with the “Honk Ok Please” bumper stickers on the trucks? When passing another vehicle in the lane you have made for yourself, you honk to let the driver know you are passing him. Needless to say, the cacophony of honking is endless and pervasive, especially in the cities. The only time we didn’t hear traffic (even in those nice luxury hotels) was in the middle of the night. The noise pollution is only second to the air pollution, which we noticed immediately upon our arrival at the Delhi airport at midnight. Engine exhaust mixed with wood and coal smoke as well as raw sewage makes quite the olfactory cocktail!
Another interesting observation on the road in India: I could count on one hand the number of women drivers I saw. While we were travelling, females (except in the airports) were well-hidden, unless they were of a lower caste or school children. Middle and upper class men and woman don’t necessarily drive themselves, in part because driving is considered a lower caste occupation and also because it is really, really hard to drive in India, especially in the big cities. In Delhi there is no rhyme or reason to the street traffic and there are no discernable street signs or logical directions to sites. Our driver from Agra had to ask several times for directions to the restaurant, Karim’s, in old Delhi and only after circling the area several times did we find where we could walk to the location. Parking in the city is also a chore, which is why you hire a driver to wait for you.
Coming back to well-mannered Minnesotan driving was an adjustment. I can’t imagine using my horn here except in dire circumstances and heaven forbid that someone would create another, unsanctioned, lane of traffic! Unheard of --even in California or Boston!

Noise from Peter:

I originally thought this blog entry would be about our experience with our guides in India, starting when our guide in Jaipur City jumped in our car and asked “What’s your program?” I had this pretty good rant going in my head centered around this guy—I never got his name—who wore a leather jacket and hairstyle like Bobby Sherman on Shindig. He had his agenda and kind of made ours fit his. But it didn’t set to well with me, this cheap shot I was going to take and I couldn’t see it getting anything but more negative. What I’ve been thinking about since about our second day in India has a bit more substance. I think I finally have begun to process India in my tiny brain.

India is world of contrasts and contradictions. Soaring architecture built on civilizations thousands of years old; Five star hotels next to squatters’ villages; camel drawn carts hauling high tech goods to market; industry and entrepreneurism adjacent to unspeakable poverty; rickshaws navigating streets with Mercedes; beautiful colors and pervasive layer of dust on what seems like everything; business people with graduate degrees relying on illiterate taxi drivers to get them around town; beggar children with faces of cherubs and hands of pick pockets; it’s mud and masala. There seems to be unbridled opportunity and poverty. This is the world’s largest democracy with a government that seems most adept at managing scandal. Infrastructure seems as fantastic a concept as drivers who obey traffic laws.

So I don’t begrudge our Hindi Eddie Haskell (how Laura & I refer to our Jaipur guide) from setting us up at all the usual tourist traps. He survives, I’ll bet even prospers. Like India he uses modern technology building on an ancient foundation to navigate the 21^st century, another lotus blooming in the mud.

Namaste.

7. Hallo Madam: Dueling Economies in India

I had a vague concept of poverty (or individual entrepreneurism if you want to look at it in a positive light) in India before going there but I didn’t really understand the reality of it until we became the target of every peddler, beggar, tour guide and huckster within view whenever we stepped outside of our bubble. By the end of our trip, we had become hardened to the constant haranguing and just made our way through to our destination without making eye contact. When visiting the Taj Mahal in Agra, our driver had to leave us at the edge of the “green zone”, a mile-wide radius that prohibits cars in order to protect the white marble of the Taj and at this point in the trip, we had become old hands at steeling ourselves to the constant entreaties and “Hallo Madam’s”, briskly walking past all the pleading rickshaw drivers directly to the gate.
At every museum and historical site there are separate tickets for visitors (usually around 250 INR’s, or $6) and Indians (usually 20 rupies, or about 40 cents). At the Taj Mahal the entry is 750 rupies for visitors and I think it was over 50 rupies for Indians, which explained why not many natives were inside the gates. I can understand the dual pricing system for tourist site and certainly we can afford it but the dual system wears a bit thin over time.

At our first rest stop on the way to Jaipur, our guide and driver disappeared for about a half an hour and Peter and I were left locked out of the car, wondering where they had gone. It was after the second stop that we realized that they head to the “crew members” section and we were expected to go to the tourist restaurant or the gift shop and spend money for things at highly inflated prices. We also learned from our friends in Agra that our guides took us to shops where they get a cut of the proceeds …sometimes up to 40 percent! If you understand that this just the way tourist business is done in India then I guess it shouldn’t be bothersome… but it bothered me to have an engaging conversation with our driver (Jantin spoke very good English because he had gone to a catholic school in Kerela) and then have him disappear down below while we were ushered up to the clip joints with all the other tourist sheep. We were the masters and they were the servants… but they were taking a good piece out of us at the same time.


I picked up a copy of the book “The White Tiger” by Aravind Adiga at the airport on the way home and found it hard to put down. It won the Booker prize in 2008 and it doesn’t pull any punches in talking about the underbelly of the Indian economy and the vast underclass who is struggling to survive and, at times, move up and out of oppression. The main character comes from “the darkness” --rural and impoverished India-- and becomes a driver to an upper class family in Delhi. I could picture the drivers in the novel as our drivers, waiting for hours on end as we did our site seeing and shopping. The class system is alive and well in India and Adiga makes the case that it’s a self-imposed oppression that keeps everyone in line and willing to put up with the system… so there’s not a need for a dictatorship-type government like in China to keep the peace. Not surprisingly, “The White Tiger” created quite a bit of negative press in India when it first came out.

6. Is it paining?? aka root canal in Jaipur

We flew from Goa back to Delhi again on SpiceJet (this time the flight was pretty much on schedule and uneventful) and a hotel driver met us at the airport to take us to the Park Plaza Hotel in Gurgaon, suburb of Delhi that looks like most U.S. Office Parks with high rises and malls... except for the shanties and makeshift slums nestled in between. The Park Plaza was a very sleek, efficient business hotel full of accidental tourists with a nice restaurant where we had no choice but to go that evening for dinner. We had wanted to go into Delhi but it would have taken about an hour in the endless traffic and we weren't sure where we would have gone once we got there. That was the drawback of this trip... remaining inside the bubble meant eating at the hotel, and while the food was very good, it didn't feel like we were really experiencing our surroundings. The Lonely Planet suggestions were all for those who were willing to get their feet wet and more-than-likely to get sick.

The next morning at our usual breakfast buffet while chewing on a piece of roti, I felt and heard a crack as half of my molar broke off. I looked at Peter with such a stunned expression, I am sure he thought I must be having a stroke and my mind raced as I tried to comprehend what had just happened. With a gaping hole in my mouth and half of a tooth in my hand I knew this wasn't just going to go away. Our guide, Lalit, and driver, Jantin, were coming to pick us up that morning (it was Sunday) to drive to Jaipur, a four hour drive from Delhi. When Lalit arrived, I anxiously told him of my predicament, thinking that it would make sense to look for a dentist in Delhi, a city of 13 million people vs. Jaipur, pop. 2 million, but he wanted to get going to Jaipur saying that he had family there who could give us recommendations.

The drive to Jaipur on the "National Highway" is only about 125 miles but it takes 4 hours because for most of the time the Highway is a parking lot of cars, trucks, rickshaws, mototaxis, camel and buffalo carts, mopeds, motorbikes and people...more on traffic in an upcoming post!

We arrive in Jaipur at our last Carlson stay, the Country Inn and Suites, an 8-story high rise looming above the "pink city". After passing through a rigorous security check, I ask the lovely sari-clad women at the front desk if they can recommend a dentist and they tell they will research it and give me an answer later that day. We do a bit of preliminary sight seeing with our Jaipur guide, an Eddie Haskell-ish, smarmy character with pointy shoes and badly colored hair, and then return to the hotel to find out about dentists. They tell us they have found one right around the corner and we can go there now. So all four of us, Lalit, Jantin, Peter and me, drive around the corner to a sketchy-looking store front with a bright neon sign flashing "Gupta's Dental Care".

We proceed to the waiting room and an older woman tells us that the Doctor will be with us shortly. I look around at the walls and wonder if we are in the right place. It is clearly a waiting room for a medical doctor: are they one and the same in India?? Neither Lalit or Jantin seem to know either: I don't think they frequent these establishments very often. (we later find out that Gupta Sr. is the MD and Jr. is the DDS... as in most of India, it's all in the family.) After about an hour the woman comes out to tell us we can see Dr. Gupta now and instructs Peter and me to head up some stairs on the outside of the building to the Dental office. Dr. Basant Gupta, who looks about 17, greets us with a very confident and brisk manner and asks me to sit in his dental chair. It is a bare bones office, with one florescent light, a dental chair and sink, a desk and a TV turned to music videos (Beyonce is pictured here).

Dr. Gupta blasts a jet of air into my cracked tooth and I practically jump out of the chair. "We have to do a root canal" he pronounces. I protest and ask why we can't just do a temporary fix but he insists I will be in serious pain soon if I don't do anything and I can't really argue with that. He calls his endodontist friend who comes over in less than 15 minutes and they begin working on me for the next four hours. Peter stays with me, taking pictures and chatting with the two dentists, who are clearly happy to have a challenging case and a paying patient. As far as root canals go, this was really not too painful...although I did have to insist on another shot of Novocaine and the endodontist (a very serious fellow whose name I never got) kept asking me "is it paining?" as he stuck the needles further into the roots of my tooth. By 10:30 that evening (This is Sunday night but I have a feeling Dr. Gupta doesn't keep regular hours) I have a neatly cemented root canal and impressions of my tooth have been sent out for a crown to be implanted the next day...all for 34,000 INR's or about $600, which explains the burgeoning medical/dental tourism in this country. Although Dr. Gupta's specialty is cosmetic dentistry, he spends most of his time pulling teeth of his Indian patients because they can't afford anything else. No wonder he pulls out all the stops when he gets a willing and desperate American!

Postscript on my dental drama: after three weeks, my tooth is just fine; Dr. Gupta did an excellent job. The only residual effect is a very sore jaw joint from having held my jaw open for over four hours without the assistance of a dental block to allow the joint to rest. I guess that's a small price to pay for an adventure definitely worth writing home about!