7-31-2011 On to Agra

We left the Gandhi Smriti and began the ride to Agra. The road is a four lane road akin to a four lane highway such as US 74 in design. That is where the similarity ends. The road contains the same assortment of vehicles and animals as are found on all of the roads in India. For vehicles that means trucks, buses, auto rickshaws, motorcycles, scooters and bicycles. For animals that means cows, water buffalo, pigs, goats. Dogs ,donkeys and monkeys. As such a drive on the Delhi to Agra highway, a mere 200 km, can take anywhere from 4 to 6.5 hours to navigate. 
     On the way down, Vinod stopped about halfway for us to get a clean bathroom break and some lunch. Before we got to the place, we went through a border crossing where Vinod had to pay a toll. While we sat in the car, two guys approached with monkeys on leashes. They wanted to collect so,e money from us using the monkeys. One of him threw his monkey up onto the window glass next to where I was sitting. I secretly began to shoot video of the monkey using my little Kodak zip digital recorder. I knew if the guy saw me he would try to get some money. I figured he had never seen a device like this and as such had no way to figure out what iwas doing. However, he began to motion that he wanted some money and began saying 'camera' and I said no, it is not a camera and we drove off.
     The bathroom/lunch place was also a trip because it was like an Indian version of cracker barrel with a bunch of bs souvenirs for sale at excessive prices. And of course the guys were trying to hawk the stuff. Regardless, the food was good. I had some chicken masala that was not hot enough so I had them to provide me with some chili peppers which I ate along with the meal. Fariba and Troy had their favorite, tandoori chicken. It was all good and reasonably priced.
      We returned to the road and drove onward toward Agra. Vinod took us off on a side road so that we could see a Hindu shrine that looked like something out of Disneyworld. It was one of those multiple armed princesses about 80 feet high and mounted on top of the temple bios ing. People had come from miles around to pay homage. Pretty wild.
     Then it was on to Agra. However as we neared Agra,the the traffic backed up and it appeared our direction of travel was completely closed. People were turning around and coming back and then crossing at the median and continued in the same direction against traffic coming naturally in that direction. Vinod did the same and eventually our four traffic heading into Agra overwhelmed the traffic heading put of Agra and it became a total gridlock with the exception of the motorcycles and scooters which navigated any way they could. 
     Vinod found a side road and we turned in with the hope of bypassing the jam. Everybody else was doing the same thing. The side road jammed up also. Everybody was chill about the situation.
     Eventually the traffic freed up a bit until we got to a railroad crossing where guards had fortunately stopped the traffic from getting gridlocked on the tracks in the way of the approaching train. After the train we headed on into Agra. I had not realized that Agra is a city of 2,000,000 people but it quickly became apparent that it is as we wound through the traffic to our hotel.
     Our hotel in Agra was the ITC Mughal which is second only to the Oberoi Amarvilas as far as hotels in Agra. I got a great deal on the room by booking it several months in advance. It was a three person room and had a perfect bed for Troy.
     We had dinner and went to bed in preparation for going to the Taj Mahal at 5:00a.m. The next morning. We got to watch the Indy NASCAR race live at midnight before going to bed. Pretty cool.