My First Day in India

After my initial arrival adventure, I slept for a few hours and awoke somewhat early the next morning. We were going to start the trip off with a bang and head to the Taj Mahal. At breakfast, I found out that our hosts Martha and Iftah had already arranged for us to be able to have a semi-private tour with Mr. Faridi at Fatehpur Sikri. He is the 17th descendent of the patron saint, and is next in line as guardian of the property. This was going to be a great and unique experience. We were going to drive up there tonight, have a tour tomorrow morning, and then head to Agra to see the Taj in the afternoon. Sounds like a great plan.

I guess this is as good of a time as any to explain what happens to plans in India. There is absolutely no amount of planning that can account for every thing that can and will go wrong. If I am planning on a 4 hour train ride, I had better not make any plans for the next 6 hours afterwards, because the train will show up 3 hours late and lose another 3 hours somewhere along the trip. Don’t ask me how it happens. It just does. Everything takes twice as long as you would expect, there will be plenty of hassles, and definitely a few unexpected things will go wrong. Knowing this in advance, of course, makes it a little easier. You plan FAR more time than would otherwise be needed, and you realize that you need to laugh at how absurd these situations are.

So right after breakfast, I had my first monkey experience. Walking outside to pack the car, there was a man riding around on a bike with a monkey on a leash (pictured). This man was actually employed by the U.S. embassy to bring his monkey around and scare off other monkeys that might bother the predominantly U.S. residents in the area. Of course, just because he was being paid to do this did not stop him from asking each resident in the area for money as well. This is not uncommon; there is no guiding principal in the culture that would prevent this type of double-dipping. In fact, it is encouraged by the Hindu culture.

The drive to Fatehpur Sikri was trying. Still jet-lagged, I had to deal with a complete nightmare of traffic as we were leaving the city. Cows, cycle rickshaws, auto rickshaws, cars, trucks, and pedestrians all compete for the same two lanes of road. The only true rule of the road is that if you are ahead, you have the right of way. The noxious fumes from people burning everything from plastic bags to cow feces to shoes on the side of the road leave the horizon looking and smelling three times worse than LA on its worst day. This combination almost made me car sick for the first time in my life.

The distance we were traveling was the equivalent to going from Chicago to Champaign, a journey that should only take two hours. Going from Delhi to Fatehpur Sikri, however, took seven hours of driving time. Over the course of the journey, our car hit two people with the mirror, the other car in our entourage ran over a dog, we saw a dead horse laying by the side of the road, and I stopped and peed outside, with about twenty people within close proximity. A group of these people were in their open-air living room watching tv. Believe me, this was more than awkward for me, and an eye-opening way to get used to the country. But it was not unusual for them – there were two other people peeing in the same vicinity as me.

We arrived for a short Sufi (a type of Muslim) religious ceremony at Fatehpur Sikri, headed by Mr. Faridi’s father. Although quite interesting, there were about 300 flies buzzing around a 15x20 foot room, which drove me absolutely insane. None of the natives seemed to be really concerned about it, however.

At our air cooled hotel (read: no heat, no air conditioning), the temperature dipped down to about 5 degrees Celsius, which, when combined with me not being accustomed to the time zone yet, caused me to wake up around 5:30 am. Today, Fatehpur Sikri and then the Taj Mahal!