Agra was more enjoyable, although we were beseiged by small children selling everything from water to Taj Mahal snow globes! We stayed in the Maya Guest house which was really lovely, relaxed and had an ecellent restaurant. As you can imagine we were both pretty road weary after the long drive so we decided to put on our glad rags and pose for pictures in front of the Taj as all the Indian families do. I wanted to take a photo of white teddy at the Taj too but security wouldn't let him in! He had to wait for us in the locker room, sorry James but he is safe and well and I will upload another photo soon.
We put in a lot of long driving days in India to try and get back on schedule for our pre-arranged China tour guide and we thought we were ging to manage it. Our only other stop in India was Varanasi where we took an early morning cruise along the Ganges. Actually "cruise" gives the wrong impression.....we were rowed along the Ganges in a leaky wooden boat in the early morning drizzle and mist. It was still fascinating to see the "ghats", the stepped areas along the river where the locals were out in force washing themselves and their clothes, praying and even burning their dead. We were told that when a person is burnt the ashes are then scattered in the river. If the person has died of leprosy or small pox it is considered a curse for bad karma in a previous life and they cannot receive the blessing of being burnt. Instead rocks are tied to the body and it is dropped in the centre of the river - except sometimes the rocks come loose and the body floats up! Oddly, and I didn't quite understand this one, a snake bite victim is tied to a log and floated downstream.
Burning Ghat on the Ganges
The traffic has been a complete nightmare in India! The streets are filled with Tuk Tuks, rickshaws, bikes, motorbikes, cars and lorries and they all go where they want. There don't seem to be any rules of the road. It's not uncommon to be driving down a nice bit of dual carriageway and find traffic coming at you from the opposite direction! Sometimes this is because the traffic on the opposite carriageway has been diverted without any warning to those on the other side. Sometimes it seems they must be drunk or on drugs. You certainly have to keep your wits about you, especially in the cities. At railway crossings the traffic doesn't queue but pushes forward as much as possible on both sides of the road with bikes and rickshaws filling every available space. Then; when the barriers open you're facing the same situation on the opposite side of the crossing and have to fight your way through the traffic. It was at one of these crossings that Pedro's sump guard bent again and was dragging the ground so we had to stop, and block this free for all of traffic! I got out and started taking the sump guard off which was pretty difficult with a 5 deep crowd pressing around trying to see what I was doing. I found that the hardest thin in India, when ever we stopped the car would be mobbed with people pressing in from all sides, for the most part just blankly staring. There was never any malice, it was just a little difficult to cope with at times. Some of the guys did offer to help with the sump guard when they saw what I was doing though and it was soon bent back into shape and back on the car. The problem is that Pedro's rear suspension has suffered first on the rough roads in Pakistan and then on the bumpy Indian roads. He really needs new shock absorbers which we will find in Kathmandu.
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