The end of kings' trail

I don't know which day is today, nor exactly which part of the subcontinent I'm exactly in: I have just entered in Bihar, after leaving Jaipur, Agra, Khajuraho and Varanasi. My intention was to make an entry after every other city, but the last days have been really hectic: sometimes you only sleep in trains, and some others there is so many emotion to absorb, that finding a quiet place to write and the energy to do so becomes a challenge. Thanks to the ones who have written me about this blog, it's great to hear you enjoy the stories as much as I do writing them.

This entry relates the end of the trip thorough Rajastan and the visit to Agra, the city of the Taj Mahal.

Jaipur was my last stop in Rajastan, and I was actually pretty tired to go to museums, palaces and other attractions, so I decided to stay outside the city center and enjoy the tranquility of a family hostel. Apart from a brief tourist tour, I entered Jaipurs bazaars. They are famous because it's the place where all the merchants from Rajastan get together, and it is certainly an experience to walk in a labyrinth full of colorful silks and garments for the house and for women, just as if one was in the city of Aladdin.

India is the kind of place where, if you are open, anybody can teach you a lesson. In Jaipur I had an agitated conversation with a rickshaw driver, that let me thinking for a while: he pointed out how defensive I was, and how hard will it be enjoy the trip if one shields oneself out of any contact. The truth is, that in comparison with South America or Europe, I have found really really difficult to trust on the friendship offered by Indians in the streets, as I have not had one encounter with them that do not involve a story involving money in one or other way. Despite the reasons of my closeness, this rickshaw driver has wisdom in his words, and makes me focus on the importance of all the interactions here in order to find a balance between the naiveness and experience.

I went for a massage (they cost nothing, and after nights in between trains, it's the best thing to do) and I met Kenneth. This small guy could be confused with Nepalese rather than Indian, and his origins are from the northeastern part of the India. Kenneth (who prefer his American pseudonym rather than his Indian one) is the first Christian Indian that I met on the road.  Perhaps not exactly a Christian church, he and his group work for an American pastor in one of the most depressed areas, in the Manipuri region. Before being a masseur, Kenneth was devoted to performing religious services, but his family depends on him and a life in the church does not give enough to feed a family. It seems that different variants of Protestantism have been getting momentum in northeastern India, mainly by charity missions from the United States. It was super fun to hear him singing Christian hip hop!

I quickly move from Jaipur to Agra, with a fast train that takes only six hours to arrive. Agra seems to be almost a must-do stop for tourists in India, and it seems that the whole population lives out of the tourist inflow. Despite this, the infrastructure is spartan to say the least, and only the monuments are worth to see in a city that has a big misery belt. Here you get all possible tourist traps from the moment you go down the station: from the tuk tuk driver who offers you a 'tour' (3 stops and a visit to one of his friends' shops) seven times more expensive than the normal price, to the guide apprentice who sticks to you in the Taj Mahal to friendly take a picture of you to charge you afterwards. Even the 'hotel' is a shack unworthy of all those lovely tripadvisor reviews. These places are to be alert, but tiredness weights my body and I decided to play a losing game, that all in all costs very little after all.

As for the monuments, the Taj is indeed majestic, and one can't but reflect a little bit on this place. It's symmetry is astounding (and the mathematically-inclined would agree with me that symmetry = beauty), the materials pure and deeply curated, but despite the general believe of the Taj as a love temple, this is probably the biggest mausoleum in the world. The emperor built it when his wife died giving birth to his fifteenth (yes, 15th) child! In my westernized view, she was not treated as a woman, but as a baby machine :-) Anyway, it is the mourning of the departure that is commemorated here, and remind us how hard can be when the jouney of our partner takes a different path than ours. I get conflicted here, as despite the beauty of the gesture, it makes me think how futile such demonstration is: if death is part of our path, an attachment to the past will only make our present heavier to accept.

That closes for today, hope you enjoy the reading, and wait fir the adventures in Varanasi and Khajuraho...

Andrés