Day 84 - Wednesday March 22 Agra, India

Agra photos

distance since FLL: 27,204 miles

Radisson's Tour description for Taj Mahal trip
========
Price $1995 pp
Duration: 1 Night.
Seated.


OVERLAND TOUR FOR WORLD CRUISE 2006 If you have not already pre-booked this Optional Shore Excursion, you may contact Radisson Seven Seas Reservations on 1 (800) 285-1835 to verify current status of this program. Limited space may be available and should be booked via reservations. You may also check with the Tour Manager upon embarkation to verify if this tour is still available. The following cancellation penalties apply, and cancellation charges will be billed to shipboard accounts.
90-75 Days 50% of per person cost 74-0 Days 100% of per person cost
Constructed by the great Mogul Emperor Shah Jehan in memory of his wife, the Taj Mahal is, perhaps, the most perfect architectural monument in the world. To the poet Tagore it was a "Tear on the Face of Eternity." We've included both a sunset and sunrise tour of the Taj, which takes on different hues with the day's changing light. You'll stay just 600 yards away in the Oberoi Amarvilas, enjoying an uninterrupted view from your room of this peerless "monument to eternal love." Elaborate gardens, terraced lawns and fountains, reflecting pools and pavilions complement the classic architecture of this deluxe hotel. Also included is your choice of a tour to one of the following highlights: Fort Agra, also built during Mogul Emperor Akbar's reign; Itmad-ud-Daulah, known as the "Baby Taj"; the deserted city of Fatehpur Sikri, nine square miles of palatial architecture built to reflect the glory of the Mogul Empire; or a shopping excursion to the Kohinoor Jewelry Museum featured by National Geographic, and the marble inlay stores.
Please note: Hotel space at the Oberoi Amarvilas is limited. If our space sells out at the Oberoi Amarvilas an alternative will be offered at the Mughal Sheraton hotel.
Program includes:
o Return charter flight on modern Boeing aircraft
o One night accommodation at the Amarvilas Hotel (or alternative hotel) with Taj Mahal view
o Buffet-style breakfast, lunch and dinner. House wine and local beer included
o All sightseeing and transfer as per itinerary
o Entrance fees and camera/video fees at all monuments
===============================

We were up just minutes before the wakeup call actually came in. Clay had showered the night before and was ready to go. He had a sore throat and cough though and was afraid that the virus from hell that has been making rounds of Voyager's population had rebounded on him. Debbie is just not a morning person anyway. She needed a hot shower and some time to get going. We were in the lobby by 5:30am. They were serving coffee in the bar there and she had a cup while enjoying the lovely breeze off the balcony. She called Clay out there to feel it and to show him that as the sky was beginning to lighten that the full Taj Mahal would be visible from here, though not from our room which was on the same level and probably not 200 feet away. Pretty soon we were outside and loading the minibuses. The courtyard out front is pretty in the dark with all its fountains but we expect it will be stunning in the daylight and can't wait to go and to get back.

We had a quiet ride to the Taj Mahal. There was not a lot of traffic out yet and it was mostly on foot. We passed a uniformed woman walking in the road and Debbie said it was the woman who frisked her yesterday afternoon. We arrived before the bulk of the hawkers had and the gates were still closed and locked. We would be the first ones in. While we waited, there was a broadcast call to pray and the dogs in the area went bonkers with howling. Eventually, they all just sat down in the road and stared at the walls of the compound. It was weird. There are some massive ancient-looking wooden doors in the walls. We noticed them yesterday while waiting in line, but are not sure if they are original or how old they are. There was a very small door in one of them. Debbie commented that no matter how small they people were when the thing was built, they would have had to duck to use that little door. While we waited the little door opened and a small dog stuck his head out. How funny is that. Eventually, a man squatted there and he looked out too. He gave some orders through the little door and eventually the gates opened and some men worked for a few minutes to assemble the bars that would separate the men and women and the curtained booths for frisking and then we were queued and segregated and through the entry procedure. Again, people brought bags and forbidden items and we went through all that again.

We walked through to the gatehouse and it was still mostly dark as we arrived inside. We stood there for a half hour or so as light began to silouhette and then shine on the Taj Mahal. Ourguide chose not to lead us this morning (though some of the others did) and told us to do as we wished now but to be back at the gatehouse by 7am. He advised us to just find a seat and spend the hour watching the light shine more and more brightly on the Taj Mahal, or the find a spot in the center of the garden or center platform and just sit and watch. Debbie asked him if it looked different inside the mausoleum in sunrise vs sunset natural lighting and he said no. We are not so sure about that now, but there was not much time and we would have had to do everything at a trot and not see the light changing the appearance of the Taj Mahal outside if we wanted to enter it. So, we did not enter.

Inside the gardens, there are entrepeneurs who will show you where you can get good camera shots. They start out just showing you a spot close to where you are, and then try to lead you to other spots. After a while, they want some money. Well, Clay had one lead him to 3 spots and gave hom a dollar for this two minutes of 'work'. Later, we were down by the middle viewing stand, and another man showed us some spots and actually took 3 or 4 pictures of us (less than 5 minutes of time). For this, he wanted $5 (after the fact) when we offered him $2. We ended up giving him $3. He was not happy about that, and started on the "first customers" spiel but he had been there as long as we had and had surely had other customers before us. Also, as we pointed out to him, you are asking for more than a $1 a minute and we don't even make that kind of money! After that, we had fun taking different shots of our own and photographing Bob.

We spent our time walking around the grounds, taking shots and just looking at things. The sun rose in the east so the outbuilding (not the mosque) to the east cast its shadow upon the eastern side of the Taj for a while. As the sun got higher in the sky, it lit up the Taj's marble, and made it gleaming white. On the back side of the Taj, we saw a band of 30-40 monkeys cross the courtyard. Along the way, there were some encounters with other tourists and this caused some agitation in the monkeys. They started hooting and chasing a man that got caught in their midst and he had to jump over a fence to a lower area to escape. He fell, but a grounds keeper came over as soon as he heard the noise and chased the monekys off the man (with some difficulty). We saw other passengers from our ship who were staying at the Sheraton, about 4 miles away. It was the first time we had seen them in Agra. We spent about an hour walking around the gardens taking in the Taj. It was a delightful way to begin the morning.

The ride back was uneventful, the vendors were a little less numerous and aggressive this morning and Clay did not buy any more T-shirts. We ate breakfast in the hotel at the Bellvue Restaurant, where they were serving both a cold buffet and hot dishes from a menu. The hot dishes included some Indian dishes. We ordered and shared two of them. Clay was gone to the buffet while the people came about the menus and ordering. Debbie quizzed a waitress about the Indian dishes at the bottom of the menu and then ordered steamed idlis and masala dosa, both came with some kind of spicy lentil soup, but we didn't get the name of it. Check the pictures out to see one of these dishes. We really enjoyed both of these dishes and we were so glad we got a chance to have something new. We were now really excited about lunch buffet later at the same restaurant. The food and service here are really excellent. At 8:30am, we loaded the big buses and went out for a morning tour. We went on a tour named the Agra Fort and Shopping, which combined parts of two of the original 4 tour options into a single tour. (We believe everyone in our hotel either took this same tour or just stayed at the hotel for the morning. All 3 of the buses had the same sign on it. The guides sort of eliminated the other 2 options when we tried to sign up for an option at the hospitality desk. We suppose that if one had made a stink about it and demanded either Itmad-ud-Daulah or Fatehpur Sikri that they would have taken you, but since we were leaning to the red fort anyway, we just let it go.) The red fort was where the Shah who built the Taj Mahal for his dead wife was locked up by his son (after being overthrown) for the last 8 years of his life. It was sort of a house arrest, and his surrounds were magnificent, and they overlooked the Taj Mahal so everyday he could gazed upon his wife's tomb. We spent about an hour or so walking around this very large complex of buildings and gardens inside this fort. Lots of marble, inlaid pieces, marble lattices, archways, etc. It was and is palacial in every sense of the word. The really amazing thing is that only 1/3 of the fort is open to the public. The rest is still in use by the Indian Army as a base. It has been continuously occupied by some army or another since the day it was constructed. It replaced an even earlier fort.

We then were driven to a 4-story building that sold local handcrafts, etc. They showed us how the marble inlay was done by hand, and gave us plenty of opportunity to purchase some pieces. But, they were just too expensive. They wanted 30-50 USDs for little boxes. Very similar boxes were being sold on the street for 10 rupees (about 25 cents). Now, the workmanship may have been a lot different, but you just had the feeling they you were being had in this place and not just getting 9 useless T-shirts for $20. They wanted big bucks for nice pieces they were selling. Their sales pressure was intense (about the same level as the street vendors). Debbie picked up a plate that was very similar to one she had admired in one of the hotel's boutiques. It was 3 times the price in this shop as the clearly inflated price at the hotel boutique and was of absolutely equal quality. It was a very unpleasant shopping experience even though it was interesting to see them demonstrate how they produce the marble inlaid pieces. Debbie pointed out that if we just wanted WOW factor with no intention of buying because it was far too much money to spend then we would rather have been taken to Kohinoor which was the original shopping excursion offered. We were there about an hour. That was 15 minutes longer than our scheduled time. We only left when a passenger went back inside and got the guide back to the bus. All three buses had people sitting in them wanting to leave. Enough people left one bus that demanding to leave this store that they were put into a couple of taxis and one of them came and told her husband she was going with them to a "jewelry store." We are not sure if they got to go to Kohinoor. It was the one low point for our guide who otherwise did an exceptional job.

We got back to the hotel at around 11:20am and had until 12:45pm to checkout and eat our buffet lunch. When we arrived back at the hotel, we got our first good look at the exterior in daylight. It was really beautiful. We entered the courtyard to find a man sitting on a fancy blanket and pillow in the center of it playing a flute. It was just an awesome experience. We walked around the outside of the courtyard to listen to the water and the flute-playing and shot some video of it for the sounds. Too bad we cannot post video! We left our bag in front of our door for pickup, went to reception and checked out, and then went to lunch. The hotel staff and tour staff took careof our bag and we got it back when we got back to the ship. Lunch was not as wonderful and amazing as dinner or breakfast, but it was still very good. A woman seated at the table next to us asked if they cooked the bread in a tandoori oven and the answer was yes. She asked, You have one in the kitchen? The answer was again, yes. She asked if she could go back to the kitchen and see it and the waiter told her, sure, come on. She got up. Debbie looked at Clay and said, She is not even taking a camera. Clay had his camera in his pants pocket. He jumped up and followed the woman and asked to come too. The cook was surprised, but recovered nicely and after showing how to do it, he let the woman make her own piece of naan.
The Agra Airport did have a couple of curio shops in the waiting area, so the group shopped some while we waited. Debbie got an elephant outfit and Clay finally got a big enough T-shirt (for almost what he paid for 9 t-shirts from the street vendor), but this one fits and did not smell like a toxic waste dump. We boarded the plane on time around 2pm. The boarding passes were handed out at the hotel, and this time they were done by hand. And all the seats were assigned sequentially. This made the plane packed at the front with no empty seats, but empty at the back. Once onboard, everyone shifted their seats around so we were not packed together. The flight back was uneventful except we were able to see the Taj Mahal from the air when we took off. Not sure why we did not see it when we landed. The same routine this time as on the way to Agra. They served lunch! Almost no one took the lunches because we were all still stuffed from overeating the wonderful and delicious food at the Oberoi Amarvilas. We were supposed to land at 4pm but we were a little late. Not sure why but we did circle the airport for a while before we landed. We were on the buses and headed back to the ship around 5:15pm. The ship had an all-aboard time of 5:30pm set to sail at 6pm. Well, at 6pm, we were still on the bus stuck in some notable traffic. We finally got back around 6:30pm or so. They must have been holding the ship just for our group because we were sailing about 5 minutes after we walked into the cabin.

We took a different route back from the airport and did not see the mile after mile of sidewalk shanties. Instead, we saw much more upscale parts of the city. We went through several areas where the guide said that apartments were selling to $500-$1000 USD per square foot for modest apartments. We also went by the Queen's Necklace (road by the harbour) and saw the Haji Ali Mosque and the Chowpatty Beach. It was certainly a more pleasant ride back as far as the scenery than the ride to the airport. But it took about 30 minutes longer, maybe due to traffic. The bus this time was truly awful, much worse than the first one we took. The seats were child-sized and we had to share a row. Clay sat by the window to take pictures and Debbie rode the whole time hanging halfway off the seat with a metal ridge cutting into one butt cheek. She was just about paralyzed by the time we got off. The ship's staff was waiting out in front of the terminal building in force to help us back onto the ship so we could depart quickly.

We were exhausted and chose to eat in LaVeranda which is again serving its Pasta y Basta menu. We did not even change clothes. It was a Country Club Casual night and LaVeranda is always casual. Debbie had angel hair pasta with sundried tomato pesto and grilled chicken which has been one of her favorite meals onboard. She ate it 2 nights in a row the first time it appeared. Clay had lamb, and thought it was very tasty. Early to bed. Since the time changed back by another half-hour, it was even earlier! We were very happy to be in a mosquito-free room with our very comfortable bed after a very, very long day.

We were pleased with this excursion. At RSSC's prices, we think that it can be very difficult to deliver value. Expectations are relative to prices and both are very high. So, when things go badly or are not as promised, we are disappointed again in relation to the money spent, the advertising promises and our expectations. The let downs are not little, they are relative to everything else involved and are large. But, this excursion delivered to our satisfaction we are very pleased to report.

The itinerary for this excursion is posted as the last three pictures.

Agra photos