Akhbar’s tomb in Sikandra
In the morning I said good bye to Emil and Lydia. My good friends pointed me toward this Kumbha Mela and it was a dream come true to come with them. We had a great time, it was an a great trip and we had a fantastic experience together. So I have to send all my thanks to them for this magic event we were part.
The driver was waiting and I left with the idea to get to a bank and change more money but after 30 minutes ride through Delhi, the bank from a big hotel did not change traveler checks so I gave up. Luckily I was not low on Rs. We started the drive to Gwalior, about 300 km from Delhi. The road is hailed as a “very good road” through Agra and another 100 km further to Gwalior. When you go on an Indian road you have to be very cautious about the statements because implications are multiple. First I heard from various sources that the road to Gwalior may take, 5 hours, 6, hours or 7-8 hours. I discarded the most optimistic and the most pessimistic and I ended up with the 6 hours. But we left at 7:00 am and arrived in Gwalior at 4:30 pm, it is true with a 45 minutes stop in Sikandra. The statement with the “very good road” is correct…. if the road were not have been in India. And this is not because of any technical problems. The road is build well with a large divider in the center, with some sort of barriers at the margins, not like an American highway but technically good. If you have a good road here it slightly helps but this only means that is more space to fill on the road from all directions, so the traffic is moving still slow, maybe a touch better than on the old roads. As I said it is hard to imagine the traffic in India and how these roads are. The traffic is going in all directions on our 2-lane-one-way in spite of the large and famous sign that says: “Please do not drive in the wrong direction”. Absolutely everything imaginable can exist on the road: cars moving in both directions, mopeds, tuk-tuks, ganesh, an older vehicle for people, cows, goats, pigs, dogs that literally sleep on the streets and the drivers are swerving between them to avoid killing them but they do not flinch, stopped trucks in the second lanes that are repaired on the spot with assistance from the side, parked vehicles for km on the first lane, huge loads on minuscule tractors, people, kids playing, occasional cooking, etc. The list remains opened and it will be completed latter with things that our limited western mind cannot imagine. As a result with all this flurry of activity the road is strangled and constantly you have to press the brakes to avoid something. Besides, the Indian people have a tendency to fill up spaces. If you are in the crowd the occasionally empty spaces in front of you will filled little by little till everything becomes a mass that moves and a whole. The result is that the pressure is tremendous in such crowds and I am not surprised about the occasional stampede with many death because when you are in such a crowd, and I was there more than once, you feel very uncomfortable thinking only about this pushing and shoving. Similar, they act similarly in traffic. If it exist a space in a traffic jam I bet anything that it will be filled in no time till everything becomes like a very packed sardine can and the traffic jam becomes even more difficult to solve, nobody being able to move. This is part of the aggressiveness you feel in India. It is not from the people who are in general extremely nice but from the crowds, the traffic, the dry and hot climate, the mosquitoes, ants, animals, beggars, etc. makes it to be a little more than a simple walk in the woods type of experience. The “very good road” have another issues. The trucks are hogging the second lane no matter if they travel fast, slow or stall. So all the passing are done on the first lane, the low speed lane. If it happen that a car/truck/bus driving on the second lane would make space to be passed on its lane, they will never change lane, and obviously nobody signals here, but they will just make enough space for you to squeeze with one wheel out of the pavement on its second lane and the moment you passed they will get back in position. It is exactly like somebody sitting in a doorway blocking the way and barely moving to let somebody else jump in. The traffic was moving slow and I was dozing in the heat of the car where the AC could not keep track with the 38C outside. I did not sleep long enough in the night and I kept going in short dreams and Agra was not closer. Till one moment when the driver woke me up telling that we reached Sikandra. That activated me and I decided to go for a walk in Akbar’s tomb that I visited 12 years ago. The place is beautiful and I felt that it have been renovated meanwhile. We stopped there for about 45 minutes and left around 1:15 pm to Gwalior. The”very good road” stops in Agra and you drive through the city, a hard experience in India, but it continues the moment you leave the city.
Gwalior Fort
Eventually without any other stories we arrived at 4:00 pm in Gwalior and around 4:30 pm at the entrance of its famous fort. I started to do my tour with an inspection of the famous Jain statues sculpted in the fort’ s base rock. They were destroyed by one of the kings but recently some of them have been renovated. Absolutely impressive, they represent Tirtankaras that stand like the famous Buddha from Bamyan destroyed by the Talibans. I continued the tour inside the fort, getting a ticket for the me and one for the camera, something new in India. Also the tripod is not allowed and If I have to use I have to be careful, not that anything is really enforced here. The fort is nice especially in the golden hour of the day. Ruined in most part, has several interesting palaces that were preserved. The main one, Man Singh Palace, has two underground floors used for bath and latter as a dungeon. I spend there all the hours till sunset and after that, meeting a local boy, I went also to visit the Gurudawa Sikh temple. The Sikhs were extremely friendly and happy that I came to visit their temple. They put a bandana on my head and made me walk through water basin to cleanse myself they gave me the green light to shoot anything I like, and I did not to disappoint them. After I shot inside the temple they invited me for prasad, so I ate with them on the floor, see how the women were making chapati and how they were cooking, etc. And they invited me again to visit them the next morning for a better light….. After the visit we drove inside the town and looked for a hotel. I chose Grand Regency that looked great in the lobby and even on the floors with wireless Internet but inside the room the bath, clean thou, was probably last redone when the Brits left…. They changed my room to be able get internet connection on my iPhone inside the room and it helped not to run to an Intenet cafe. But this was latter on when I returned because, now with the hotel booked, I went to the highly recommended sound and light show at the fort that proved a big flop. I don’t like these things but this was nothing special except a long history of the place that had its own merit. The drive into the city is another interesting story. It is not simply driving but just a way of being. First there are no lights to lit the very crowded streets. So the only thing that you see are the incoming cars’ lights in the dark. At one point you start seeing one light to the left of your car and another set of lights to the right and it looks that cars will move around you on both sides.The funny part is when the cow they tried to avoid just start coming out of the dark right in front of your car. In the city some roads were in construction,pavement was done as we drove on it and the entire traffic somehow was going there also, just where ever it was possible, on the new pavement, on the old one, on the sidewalk or the lack of it. But nobody even flinches. The drivers are experienced and this is the norm. I guess if they would drive on an American Highway they would get asleep…. I returned to the hotel, did my email on the iPhone and got a call from home in the room before going to sleep.
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