Final days in India

During our final three days in India we took a day hike from a small town about 30 miles outside of Jaiper. The town is very old with narrow streets and many crumbling walls and city gates, the usual fort, and a palace converted into a 5 star hotel. We began a long climb up some steps leading to a trail that gets to a temple after about a 2 mile hike passing through rocky, arid country with big boulders and some cactus. We enjoyed the conversation with the young man who accompanied us on this hike. I suspect he wanted to be our guide at first even though we didn't want a guide. We had a wide ranging discussion with him about the problems of society, religion, and gender equality. We veered off the main path before the popular temple continuing another mile or so to a more isolated temple with lots of monkeys around. The scenery was wonderful and the air fresh. We left the man praying to his gods in the small Hindu temple at the end of the trail and made our way back down to the car and rode back to Jaiper.

That evening in spite of the horrendous traffic, we went for another walk near our hotel. We saw so many homeless people on the streets in very desperate straits. We also saw a couple of elephants lumbering through the crowded streets with their human riders on their backs.

The next day was spent driving to Agra, the site of the magnificant Taj Mahal. The Moghul emperor of the time (17th century) ordered the Taj Mahal to be built in memory of his deceased wife. On the way, we stopped in a medium sized city (Barahtpur) and walked around looking at the crumbling old buildings and the fort with a moat around it. We also visited a small English language school and briefly talked with a teacher and administrator there. Unfortunately, the students were not there as the morning classes were finished.

Our last day in India, we got up at 5:30 in order to walk to the Taj Mahal, hoping to catch the 6 am opening to see the sun rising over the site. However, we encountered a long line of tourists waiting to buy tickets and then waited about an hour until the doors opened at 7 am, an hour late and well after the sunrise. This place is truly awesome in so many ways, definitely worth visiting although you would have to endure the extremely aggressive street and stall merchants trying to hustle up some business from the foreigners.

That afternoon we drove to Delhi. It seemed to be practically one city all the way from Agra to Delhi, about 130 miles. It took us about 6 hours because the traffic was so bad. We found Delhi to have a very large quantity of shanty towns and many people in quite desperate straits. Sometimes when waiting in traffic, children would knock on our car window pleading for a handout. It was quite depressing. In spite of the high percentage of homeless people,we have not seen evidence of housing construction for low-income people. All this with India participating in an international military air show extravaganza in Bangalore this week. What mistaken priorities. Reminds me of the United States.

In the evening, we drove by the independence monument in New Delhi located in the wealthy sector where the embassies can be found. Then, Shambhu brought us to the airport. We paid him a hefty tip, said goodbye, and entered the airport to await our 1 am flight to Bangkok.