Agra - The home of the Taj Mahal

The journey from New Delhi train station to Agra Cantt station started very early. At 5 o'clock I was already up and at 5:20 I was completely showered, packed and ready to go. Expecting to see less people at the street at that time it was just a wrong supposition. The main street in front of the station was alive again but with no traffic light. Because of the time early that morning, it was showing only the amber/yellowish light blinking making the traffic as heavy as always.

I had to look for my platform number somewhere in the boards where Agra was not showing. Asking for directions to the people who work at the station was useful but it’s not easy to spot them as they wear no clear uniform or have no clear ID. A very kind man helped me and directed me to platform number 1. There I had to find out how to look for my coach number and seat number. On the ticket I had coach 6 but no seat number. I had to follow the coach numbers until I found the entrance door of the coach. There they have printed in papers the list of passengers with their seat numbers. But, a little strange thing caught my attention. My seat number (35) was assigned to two persons. Will I have to fight to stay in the train as I didn’t want to stay any longer in Delhi?

I found my seat, it was empty and I put my backpack on the long shelf that goes along the coach above all seats. I was just wishing that nobody else would come to ask for the seat. I asked a very nice lady next to me (who was planning to do a long distance PhD at the university of Leiden in Holland) what the situation with the seats was. She told me not to worry. Sometimes they people who have cancelled a ticket might appear on the list but as far as I had the ticket, there would be no problem.

The train departed, no Mr. X came to tell me I was sitting on the same sit he had reserved. 2 hours is the distance that this train makes to arrive to Agra Cantt (a station on the west side of the town 2 km. away from where the Taj Area where everything happens).

Knowing already from the PhD lady how much I was going to be charged to my hostel, I came out of the train and walked to the exit. I walked a bit further away to get a taxi without much hustle. I got in a rickshaw (tuc tuc) with an old nice Muslim man who was telling me the stories when he returned a purse one of his clients left on her rickshaw. How he was on the news and how he was called a hero. He also showed the cuts of the real newspaper that he had well kept in the glove compartment of his rickshaw.

The hostel where I stayed was the “Pyrinees”. It was quite alright but with a permanent internet problem during the three days I stayed in Agra. So I had to look for restaurants where they offered internet. My experience so far is that the internet here is very slow compared to Peru or the Netherlands (or other countries where I have been).  Better slow internet than no internet. Writing this I am discovering how dependent I have become of it. Shame on me (?)

Agra is a relatively small city for Indian standards (1.7 million people). It feels less complicated and crowded than Delhi with its 16.7 million inhabitants. You see more cows on the way and you feel less harassed by people who might want something from you. The main attraction is the Taj Mahal, the superb palace that started to be built with the building holding the queen’s grave in its insides and finished after a couple of hundred years with the edification of a Mosque (actually two to make it symmetrical as this whole complex, but one was only used. The one facing Mecca). 

There are more things to visit in Agra, such as the Agra fort, tombs, a mosque and parks. but the Taj Mahal is the one that attracts the most visitors and it has it all deserved.

I wanted to check for myself how wonderful the Taj Mahal was, so I rented a rickshaw for 400 rupees who can take me around first to an ATM machine, then to lunch, after that pass by the Agra Fort, then to the park behind the river for a closer look of the back side of the Taj Mahal and finally to the Taj Mahal  and coming back to pick me up in two hours.

Entering the Taj Mahal with the help of a local guide who worked on tip-bases, the view of this imposing building left me without breath. This white mausoleum erects in front of you at the end of a beautiful garden. If you draw an imaginary line that cuts it in the middle, you will see how symmetric everything is.  From left to right, right to left, it’s like having a mirror cutting it through.

The tomb inside the mausoleum is not as impressive as what the Taj Mahal is. But worth trying to get inside and see it for yourself.

That night I said good bye to my two new traveller Dutch friends Bas and Lisa who were planning to travel a couple of weeks in India. They were also heading to my next destination: Allahabad.

Next day I decided to go to the Agra Fort, which first was intended to have military purposes, later on a Sultan decided to inhabit it and make it his palace. The fort has inside several palaces and a Mosque. It is not a popular destination as the Taj Mahal, but it is worth to pay a visit.


With my hired rickshaw driver, he would take me everywhere in Agra. Discovering at a quite pace different kinds of foods and from a more trustful situation I was quite enjoying Agra much more than Delhi.