Travels to Agra – Susan

At home when we were discussing the trip, I was not keen on taking the train.  Through our friend Hayley, we connected with her friend Renee, who had recently visited India.  Renee introduced us to Emma Horn, a British tour operator in Delhi, who runs a company called Himalayan River Runners.

Alan and Emma had set up our daily schedule via email.  Emma turned out to be the perfect peace maker to our different thoughts about our travel arrangements.  With her input, Alan began to understand the benefits of guides and drivers in such a foreign land and I relaxed about taking the train.  Himalayan has provided all the wonderful guides and a driver.  They brought over all the paperwork upon arrival to the hotel and a rep called to review the arrangements.

On Tuesday, we checked out of the lovely Imperial Hotel.  A guide and driver picked us up at 5:30am for the 6:15 train.  I was surprised at first that a guide had been dispatched with the driver.  Once we approached the train station, I began to understand.  There were hundreds of people everywhere lining the street, cars honking and people milling or just squatting in all directions.  The guide explained that people come the day before they plan to travel and queue up with the hopes of buying a ticket.  We were told not to engage with anyone, as people would try to scam us out of our tickets.

The guide literally went through the simple security system with us and took us onto the train and delivered us to our reserved seats.  I don’t believe we would have been able to navigate the scene on our own, or at least in the desired time frame.  The train was scheduled for a 6:15 departure and pulled out of the station at 6:00am with everyone in their seats!  We were thankful we were in the seats, having thought they would leave the station at the scheduled time!

I laughed to myself having a look around at the train car. The seats and atmosphere reminded me of a dated Greyhound bus.   The train had been described as a first class, air conditioned car that would be serving breakfast.  In my mind’s eye, I was remembering a first class breakfast train ride sister Sal and I had taken with our parents between Paris and Amsterdam with beautiful white table cloth, elegant service and eggs cooked to order.  Well, it was air conditioned and breakfast was served, but it was closer to the Greyhound approach!

The train made one stop in Madras.  I realized my limited knowledge of India comes from many cherished novels.  Madras was the hometown of the adopted parents of twin brothers, Marion and Shiva in the wonderful book, Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese.  As we pulled into the small, undeveloped town, I tried to imagine the characters here before they made their way to Ethiopia, where the novel starts.  I had been thinking about the name Shiva from the book, the day before when we were touring the Hindu temple in Delhi.  I had forgotten the book’s character, Shiva was named for one of the most important Hindu Gods.

The train announcer let us know that Agra was coming up and we would have 5 minutes to depart the train.  We got ready promptly, as we now know they mean business on this train!

The train station was once again full of seas of people, again many squatting.  The signs were confusing and we wondered how to find the promised guide and driver.  Omver, the Delhi driver had driven down to Agra the night before to ready for our 8am arrival and we would have a new guide.  The driver must have told the guide what we looked like, because as we stood trying to figure out how to leave the station, a local guy picked us out.  As Veneet had said on the first day, most Indians are not used to seeing white people, so we stand out!

Once again, we were happily seated in the white air conditioned sedan with our trusted driver, on the way to the hotel.  The guide was nice, although his English was not that great.  Turns out his only job had been to ensure our delivery from the train to the hotel.

I was happy the train ride was behind us and we would be driving back to Delhi tomorrow!