Part IV: Lost in India (Take 1)

Note: this is part 4 of a 4 part series. It begins with Introduction to Agra.

The way to the temple involved more head ducking, which I was unbelievably unhappy about. By this point Megan had covered her head with a scarf and was unrecognizeable – I, on the other hand, no longer aching for sleep as I was in the morning, lay down to carsickness and an aching head, wanting desperately to do anything except rest my head on my bookbag and pretend to be sleeping. This part of the ride was short, but painful, and thankfully we were not detained.

We stopped at a McDonalds and I got a Maharaja Burger (think of it as a combination spicy-chicken sandwich and Big Mac), and we traveled on to Khan Temple (I think that’s how it’s spelled/pronounced). The temple is in a random town (I don’t know the name) halfway between Agra and home, and is, shall we say, in a crowded section of town. By this point, I know that cell phones and cameras are not supposed to be used in the temples, and so I take them out and place them in my bag, which stays in the backseat of the car.

We were dropped off in the dark in the middle of a traffic jam. When I say that, know that I mean we were dropped off in the middle of traffic. While our lane was not moving very much, immediately upon exit we were assaulted by hordes of fast moving traffic. Now there was actually slightly more to it than that. In these temples, not only are you supposed to be barefoot, but they discourage taking your shoes with you, so we left them in the car.

After dodging through the traffic, we made our way through the metal detectors and walked into the temple. The whole thing smelled of roses. Bright colors, yellows and blues and pinks, adorned the walls. While the back was lined with shops, the front had some beautiful idols. A crowd of people gathered around the idols, some falling flat to the ground and moving their arms up and down, their bodies in a straight line. In the center, near the area where the idols stood looking happy and excited and golden, a group of men sat cross-legged on the floor singing praises to the gods. The center of the temple was open air, and a tree grew up through the center. While the hubbub of people was difficult to deny, the tree, the air, the smell of flowers and the singing made it all a purely serene experience.

I waded untouched through the crowd, stopping here and there to look at this painting, that idol. When we were all done, we went outside, where I immediately went into one of the marble buildings on the side. Turns out it was a shrine to a guru, some wise man who is now worshipped. As yet I cannot figure out what the purpose of that worship is or the rationale behind it (even after talking to Megan, who seems intensely knowledgeable on the subject), and I would imagine that it may be something which is inevitably outside my grasp.

We try to get in touch with our driver using a cell phone one person had brought with him, but cell phone service seems not to work in this area, and so we are left with no recourse but to find the car ourselves. And thus I wind up halfway across the world, on a street somewhere in India, so lost I know not which town I am in, with no cell phone, and in bare feet, wandering around with no knowledge of where I might find my transportation home. Worse, as we wander through the streets, we get company…and not the good kind. A young girl, skinny as a stick, in dirty, torn clothes comes up to us and holds out her hand. She whispers so softly that I can’t hear her, and I realize that if I could I wouldn’t be able to figure out what she was saying anyway, as it’s in Hindi. But I don’t need to – she’s asking for money.

A note about beggars: they’re here. All of them. Every streetcorner, every stoplight – if you look around, you’re bound to find a couple. And they are persistent. Every guide you might get regarding travel in India, and every native you meet, will tell you never to give to one, unless you want to attract the mob. Many of them also seem organized, as though there were a beggar’s union and they were pooling their profits.

Anyway, the point of the story is to not give to beggars. So as a reminder, not hours after being coddled by this amazing tour guide at one of the world’s most beautiful places, I find myself on a dark, dirty street corner, lost, in bare feet, and with a child beggar nipping my heels with her hand held out.

Okay, that’s where the ridiculousness ends. Eventually, a friend got the beggar to go away, we managed to get just enough reception to get our driver to come look for us, and we hung out at the street corner until he arrived. Unfortunately, he forgot to bring the car with him, so we hiked a short ways back to his car. And of course, as luck would have it, he winds up being parked next to a 25 foot tall golden statue of a Hindi god. Go figure.

We got into the car and drove home, with only one minor minor issue – THE ENTIRE ROAD WAS COVERED IN 18-WHEELERS. Apparently, they let them come into the city at night so they don’t crowd it in the daytime – a good policy, until you’re the small car stuck in between them. It was a 360-degree view of the sides of trailers. And of course, if you know anything about Delhi driving, you know that there was every chance that one of them would run over us.

When we finally got to the guesthouse, it was a little after 11. Man was I tired. But also excited – in one day, I had seen one of the most beautiful places in the world, and the land where people take bull dung and dry it out to cook food over. I was in a popular tourist attraction and a place where nobody appeared to have seen a white man before. I had seen peacocks, camels, and monkeys, that were native to India, and plants and trees from all over the world. I had a bad tour guide, a good tour guide, and toured without a guide. I had a morning where all I wanted to do was sleep, and then when I finally got a decent chance to put my head down, all I wanted to do was put it back up again. And best of all, I had gone from the beauty of farms and plains into the small town of Agra, and then into the truck-infested Delhi suburbs. All in all a pretty good day.