It has been two years since I last traveled to India and with the upcoming release of a number of new versions and new products that I am responsible for, it was felt that it was a good time to make another visit to our development offices in Chandigarh.

Chandigarh is a surprising little city by Indian standards, with a population of just over a million people it is shoe horned into the far north of India straddling the states of Haryana and the Punjab.  The last time I visited I was there for a lightning visit but this visit I was planning to spend a little more time and perhaps even take in a little more than just the journey, the hotel and the office.

Because I was traveling with a colleague from Tampa, the two of us coordinated our flights in such a way that we would meet together in Paris and then travel onto Delhi.

My journey to Paris was relatively uneventful though I did have the surprising opportunity to meet with a former colleague who was traveling on the same plane from Seattle with a final destination of Madrid for a conference.  When I arrived at Charles de Gaulle I found my colleague and together we traveled the almost 9 hours and were met at the airport by a driver who took us to an airport near the hotel. The air outside the airport was suffocating, the smell reminded me of a wood-smoke fire, the kind that are used in areas where there is no electricity or any other means to cook food or heat  hot water. My colleague however, felt that the smell was more like the smell that emanates from the methane that combusts on a garbage dump. Having never spent much time near a garbage dump that was on fire I couldn’t argue but I stuck to my version. The ambient temperature was floating around 30’c and it was the middle of the night but the smoke hung in the air all night and when we left in the morning for our flight to Chandigarh  it still hung around.

At the airport our flight was unsurprisingly delayed. I say unsurprisingly, because the last time I waited for 6 hours for my slight and this after a planned 4 hour wait time between flights.  At least on this occasion I had managed to get a decent night’s sleep at the airport hotel. We were lucky that the newly revamped Delhi International airport Premier Lounge was available to use and spent our time surfing the internet, checking email, drinking coffee and reading the local newspapers until eventually our time to fly arrived. The short flight to Chandigarh on Air India was uneventful, in 50 minutes we had cleared the cloying Delhi atmosphere and arrived in the relatively clear skies of the Punjab. Again, changes since the last time I was in Chandigarh. The new airport building was now complete and although the  aeroplanes still park on the apron and you have to walk from the plane to the airport building but since the weather is not too hot and it wasn’t raining this isn’t a problem.

Our driver was there to collect us though it wasn’t clear how long he had been waiting since our plane was delayed. He took us straight to our hotel, the Hometel Sarovar; a chain hotel interestingly constructed right in the middle of the industrial zone of the city. Though there is nothing particularly wrong with the hotel itself, the location leaves a lot to be desired given the relative proximity to scrap metal merchants and a bunch of factories.  Looking down from my room on the top floor of the 8 storey hotel building I could see the collections and deliveries from the scrap metal merchants by truck, horse drawn and hand cart and in the dark of the evening the glow of the Oxy-Acetylene torches was replaced by the glow of lights in the workers’ accommodations. I had toyed with the idea of taking an early morning stroll down to the scrap metal merchants and taking some photographs of the colourful horse drawn carts and the trucks but in the end I decided against it. The hotel is surrounded by a high wall and has guards posted 24 hours a day at the front and rear exits and I would surely have been able to get in and out without any issues but I really didn’t feel particularly up to having to dodge the horse manure and the dustiness of the streets.

After three days of journeying to and from the office the weekend snuck up on us and we planned a journey to the Taj Mahal in Agra, a journey by road of some 300 miles. Initially we thought we might plan a trip to the Sikh golden temple in Amritsar but with even that journey being a 5hr+ journey we thought we may as well do something more significant. Our driver arrived at 4am for our departure and we started our journey to Delhi. At about 830am we stopped at a Dhaba, India’s equivalent to a roadhouse and had breakfast. Breakfast comprised pickled red onions, cheese stuffed paranthas, a kind of flat bread made of wheat and a typical hot sweet chai. My colleague had a chocolate lassi, a kind of milkshake which would later become a topic of much amusement to our little band of brothers. By midday we had cleared Delhi and were in Noida a new suburban development south east of Delhi. After stopping several times to ask for directions our driver appeared to have a plan and we were now starting to see Agra on the signboards however there was no way for us to get onto the highway in the direction that the signs pointed. For the next three hours we drove on a combination of semi tarred and completely dirt roads weaving under the highway and alongside farm lands and the Buddh International Grand Prix motor racing Circuit. Periodically we would stop and our driver would either question or gesticulate at fellow travelers or passers by.

Eventually we stopped and he engaged in a long conversation with two men and two children riding a motor cycle. We followed them on a number of dirt roads until we eventually came out onto a narrow tarred road that ran for probably half an hour alongside fields of grass, small independent brickworks and carefully piled buffalo manure pats until we found ourselves in the middle of a market street in the middle of nowhere. Eventually we cleared the town market and found ourselves on the open road again however the highway was nowhere in sight and now we were simply negotiating broken roads, buffalo wagons, hay trucks, trailer truck combinations laden with bricks and of course the motorcycles. Our original estimates were that we would get to Agra at around 1pm with that 4am departure but at this stage we really had no idea where we were and really had no idea how much further we had to go. We stopped a few more times to ask directions and eventually we found ourselves on a major road again. AT around sunset we cruised into Agra, 14 hours after we left.  We  had averaged an astonishing 20mph, slightly faster than if we had taken a Bajaj auto rickshaw, or tuk-tuk. Ironically, if we had taken one of those we might have gotten to Agra sooner.

When we  arrived at the gates of the hotel Howard Sarovar Portico we told our driver we would see him the next morning at 10am. With the 14hour marathon, we thought we might take the Sunday with a little more leisure. At the reception we were told that our hotel booking done online with booking.com never was received by the hotel and that as a consequence they had nothing available for us. The slippery hotel manager Mr Surma told us that he had no record of our booking despite the fact that I had a email confirmation from booking.com and subsequently received confirmation that they had even faxed the hotel. Anyhow, we accepted our lot, what could we do? Middle of the night, foreign land etc. Mr Surma then proceeded to tell us how he had made arrangements with a ‘superior’ hotel down the road from the Portico and then walked us out of the hotel down the street to the Taj Inn.

At a lower rate per night of only Rs. 3,000 (+/- $60US) per person the alternative digs seemed ok. First appearances can be deceiving though and although my room appeared to be clean my colleagues room was not very appealing to him.

I sent a text message to our driver’s handler telling of our hotel change and later that evening our driver found us and suggested that on Sunday we should actually make an earlier start than 10am he recommended coming to get us at 530am as he had been told that the crowds at the Taj Mahal itself were likely to be large. We conceded, since the Taj Inn didn’t have a swimming pool, had a poorly appointed restaurant and had no amenities to speak of. Our rooms after-all were very basic, equipped with a flushing toilet, handbasin and shower en suite but also equipped with a bucket and jug because there was no bath and the shower was very rudimentary. We also were secreted in the basement of the hotel and therefore had no windows either.

The next morning I was up bright and early, rather excited to see one of the original 7 wonders of the world. Checking out proved to be a challenge, the reception had completely shut down and the lobby was strewn with bundled up dozing porters and  the concierge was nowhere in sight. I woke one of the porters and he tried to check me out but was then challenged by my presentation of a credit card for payment. The concierge was awakened and came down and performed the transaction. Our driver arrived with a companion, an ‘official’ guide it appears. He would be our minder as we navigated the tourist trap that is Agra. On the short journey from the Inn to the Taj Mahal our guide talked about Agra, the history of Agra and the Persian Moghuls that ruled from Agra and Delhi.  He seemed very knowledgeable and well spoken and though no specific ‘rate’ was discussed it was implied that an amount would pass to his hands at the parting of our ways.  The whole thing must have been a bit of a relief to our driver who had exhausted his English vocabulary about 5 hours into our journey the preceding day.

About a mile from the Taj Mahal we parked in a parking lot set aside specifically for cars and autobus and our guide demanded RS. 1,500 to get us our entry tickets. In the ticketing hall there were many tourists from all over the world and oiur guide very deftly jumped the entire queue and secured three tickets. Two at Rs. 750 ea for High Value foreign visitors and a Rs. 20 for local Indian visitors.  We then lined up to get onto golf cart stretch limousines that took us down to the actual gates to the Taj Mahal where we lined up again with hundreds of people who were already there for the opening of the mausoleum at  630am. After clearing an X-Ray machine and metal detector and getting a thorough frisking we were in  what our guide referred to as the ‘Four’ Court. Even without sight of the taj Mahal itself this imposing yard of red sandstone building is impressive with a large and imposing gate house inlaid with marble and onyx Arabic lettering.  As you emerge from the dark gatehouse  the Taj Mahal comes into full view and it is impressive. The gardens, not so much, they were possibly more impressive in the time of British colonial rule and of course in the time of the Moghuls but the mausoleum itself is awesome, imposing, pristine.  The gardens have a mixture of shrubs, herbaceous hedges, ancient trees and lawns, the fountains weren’t working but there were black striped Indian palm squirrels, bright green parrots   and a variety of other birds.

Amazingly, you are able to don shoe coverings or go barefoot and walk on the mezzanine and into the mausoleum, there’s no touching of the inner chamber allowed or photography in the inner chamber but in the end that is of little consequence. The two tombs in the inner chamber are ornamental and apparently the actual sarcophagi are in a lower catacomb which the public are not able to see. Our guide again stepped in with some interesting dialog about the various structures and the main structure itself all of which is either refuted or substantiated by content on the internet. At any rate it was all rather interesting and perhaps more so because it transpired that non of the construction was undertaken by native Indians but was in fact all deisgned and built by imported masons from Persia; many of whom stayed after the 22 year construction period in the hopes that the dream of a mirror onyx Taj Mahal on the opposing banks of the Yamuna river would materialize. Of course it never did. The Mughal Emperor Shahjahan was overthrown by his usurping sons and never saw his dream of even the commencement of construction of the second mausoleum. Had it happened it would undoubtedly have been even more impressive. Much to the consternation of our guide, we showed little interest in seeing the stone masons of Agra at work in their workshops making inlaid tables emulating the craftsmanship of the Persians and I sensed he was equally disappointed that we didn’t fancy a trip to the Agra market or the fort. We were tapped and quite happy to start on a journey back to Chandigarh, a journey I might add, that took only 11 hours but which took a different route but was equally sprinkled with colourful adventures with traffic, road construction works, pot holes as big as swimming pools and Dhaba road food.

I hope you found this at least a mildly entertaining narrative. It certainly doesn’t do the destination any justice. I am so glad that I spent time traveling to the Taj Mahal and if I ever get to go again might make some different choices regarding transportation; the trip though was worth it, adventure and all!