🇮🇳 Agra - Taj Mahal and Tuk Tuk Antics

Delhi belly speedrun

I got an early train from Delhi to Agra - the home of the Taj Mahal. Having not had breakfast, I was pleased to hear that I booked a nice train which provides breakfast on board, despite the journey only taking two hours. After Googling whether the food is safe, I dug in.

After getting to Agra, a tuk-tuk driver said that he’d drive me to the Taj Mahal for 100 rupees, which was a reasonable price. After the mess the night before with getting back from Hamayun’s tomb, I agreed, hoping it would have saved me some trouble. This was unlike me, always opting for Uber or local ride-hailing app alternatives that provide some accountability for the drivers and transparent pricing. As it turns out, this decision would haunt me for the rest of the day.

On the way to the Taj Mahal, the driver mentioned that I could hire him for the whole day for 1200 rupees. I wasn’t interested as I really didn’t want someone hanging over me like this, but with some time, he lowered his price to 600 rupees, which I could pay at the end of the day. This was a good price, even compared to tuk-tuking everywhere via Uber, so I thought I’d go for it for the convenience. I was also curious about the experience of renting a tuk-tuk driver for the day, which I’ve seen accounts of online.

While trying to convince me, the driver showed me some reviews from Polish people that he’s driven around before. The reviews were pretty old and mentioned the tuk-tuk driver by name being a guide (I asked him about this, and he said he’s not a guide), so something wasn’t quite adding up, but I didn’t think much of it - maybe he felt that he got enough reviews to seem trustworthy and stopped asking. Also, that’s one thing I started doing - telling people that I’m coming from Poland and not from the UK. The locals seem to treat me a little differently then, and seem less pushy with trying to sell me things I don’t want. I’ve also resorted to saying I’m a graduate and not a software engineer for similar reasons, as software engineering is viewed as a pretty prestigious job here.

After passing some kids riding dogs and stray animals eating rubbish on the side of the road, we eventually arrived at the Taj Mahal. I’ve seen a lot of stuff online about arriving early to the Taj Mahal, which turned out to not be necessary. I arrived at around 11 AM, and there was barely a queue.

I’ve mostly been going through the motions of seeing mausoleums and temples (to be honest, I’ll probably get bored with them soon), but I was genuinely impressed by the Taj Mahal. Having seen it in photos all my life and it effectively becoming synonymous with India itself, it was surreal seeing it in the flesh.

Many of the locals also wanted photos with me here, so I decided to start taking photos with them too.

After leaving the Taj Mahal, the tuk-tuk driver took me to a spot for lunch. I asked if he eats there, and he said that he doesn’t, and that he takes “people like me” there. Curious. The driver seemed to leave to go somewhere after every time he dropped me off, so I could just leave if it was particularly bad.

The restaurant seemingly only had tourists in it, so something felt off. I was presented with a menu, beautifully embellished in Comic Sans, with everything being triple the price of the places I’ve eaten at before. Given that the place was fairly busy, I thought I’d stay, with low hopes of the food being slightly better than at previous places I’ve eaten at. While waiting for my food, I checked the restaurant’s Google Maps reviews - a glowing 4.3 with hundreds of reviews. I dug deeper. There were around 13 reviews from the same morning, all rating the restaurant 5 stars with no text, coming from accounts with Indian-sounding names. Checking the reviewer’s profiles, they gave many similar 5-star reviews recently on other businesses in the area. I’m assuming that there’s a pretty elaborate scheme by the restaurant owners to get the place to rank high in search results and to overcharge tourists. Oh well. The food turned out to be bad, and the waiter was pretty pushy with getting me to buy extras; it was all making sense. I assume the tuk-tuk driver got some good commission for taking me here.

After lunch, I went to Agra Fort - the residence of emperors in the 16th century, before the capital was changed to Delhi. On the way to the fort, the driver commented on my rings, asking where I got them from and how much they cost. He then started suggesting going to some jewellery market after the fort, which I can only assume he’s also getting a cut from taking tourists to. I’ve never seen my jewellery as a sign of wealth, but I was impressed to find that he managed to find a way to try and squeeze money out of a Polish graduate.

The fort was cool, with lots of smaller features to explore. I might have started getting a little jaded by the fort and temples here, though, as it reminded me a lot of the Red Fort in Delhi.

After being done with the fort, I asked the driver to take me back to the station despite my train being a few hours away. There were some other historical sights in the city, but my stomach was starting to feel a little off and I wasn’t too motivated. The driver continued to push with the jewellery markets and got a little annoyed when I started being firmer with him, but it worked. I paid him the previously agreed amount and left, a weight being lifted off me.

At the station, Delhi belly started to hit me. I thought I was going quite well, but 6 days into the travels, I think my stomach must have been at its limit. Unluckily, the Agra train station toilet might be one of the worst ever. I got quite used to this sight over the next few hours (don’t ask me about the brown stains on all the walls):

The lord gives his toughest battles to his strongest soldiers, or something like that.

In the interims of my bum-clenching masterclass, I had some of the best interactions with locals so far. People were genuinely curious about where I was from, were excited to show me things to do in India, and overall made me feel very welcome. One guy bought some chai for me out of nowhere, and various people came up with their first question being whether I’m a YouTuber which I found quite funny (YouTube seems to be a big deal for young people here). I didn’t think one of my highlights of India would come from being stuck in a train station for 5 hours.

While waiting for the train, I gave ordering food to my carriage a shot via one of the local delivery apps. As I did so, I encountered some peculiarly named resturants:

Traditional gender roles seem to still be in full force here.

The sleeper train to Jaipur was smooth, with one of the locals making it his mission to update me on any schedule changes despite the extent of his English being “bro, bro”, knowing I was having trouble finding information about the train. The train was the most packed I’ve ever seen, without an inch of the floor being free from someone sleeping on it. I went to the toilet once and was away for 2 minutes max, and yet someone crawled into my bed in that time - luckily the bro bro guy had my back and helped out.

Having spoken to the locals a few days later, they found it impressive that I managed to hack a sleeper train in India. I didn’t think it was that bad, but hey, when in Rome.