Poison and prayers

After a bit of sleep on the train to Agra I woke up to stomach cramps. I was in the top berth, so moving wasn't easy and I decided to just go back to sleep, hoping it would dissipate. Before doing so I tried to remember what I had consumed that would cause a tummy ache. I had avoided snack stands for the last two days, ate healthy food, had no fruit juice that could be suspected of containing tab water. The water! All of a sudden I realized my negligence when I had purchased the two liters of water after leaving the restaurant last night: I membered having seen unlabeled bottles in the fridge of the dirty little corner store, and when I filled one into my bag-sized drinking bottle and handed it to the guy behind the counter for disposal (for once not crushing it as I always did), he removed the label with routine and threw the bottle onto a pile. How could I not have been suspicious that the seal of the bottle was reattached? I was prone to a completely crudely performed scam of tab water sold as mineral water! - And I had already drunken more than a liter of that stuff before going to the train station.

Still I didn't move, feeling weak and pinned down on the bed by the stomach ache. I managed to sleep some more until someone tapped my arm: It was the old lady from the berth below, telling me it was 6:30. She and her husband were ready to leave. I had a memory of an arrival time after 8:00, and the train was late, too. The couple must have been overanxious. I still didn't feel any better and decided to go to the toilet and see what happens. I had to poop, that much was for sure. But when I got up a bit (I was just below the ceiling) I got suddenly nausea and had to act quick.
So I puked into some folded bed sheets, nicely and quietly in order not to disturb any sleeping passengers. - Following through with my plan to go to the washroom I climbed down and put my shoes on, but when I went for the toilet the train stopped and mounting passengers with luggage came the other way. Finally I could push my way through, enter and lock the toilet, just to find I didn't feel all that sick anymore. I still had to poo, but was hesitant to do so for the matter that the train had stopped. Indian train stations already smelled bad enough I thought. I reflected for a moment, then opened the door again and asked what train station we were at. "Agra Fort." - Oh boy. A generous squirt of adrenaline pulled me right up and I rushed back to my berth, grabbed my jacket, hat and bag (that I had given to the elderly couple for custody but which were already gone at this point) and left the train. Immediately a cab driver approached me, and I followed him out of the crowded station and across the busy street to his motor rickshaw. That's when I realized that my left hand wasn't pulling a suitcase... It was still on the train! At top speed I ran all the way back, jumped on the train, pulled my suitcase from under the seat (while baffled eyes were watching for a second time) and went off again... Whew. Somehow the taxi driver managed to keep track of me in the course of all this, so we repeated the walk to the taxi once more.

Being happy to have gathered all my belongings in time before the train departure I rewarded the taxi driver somewhat generously for the short trip to the hotel. That was a mistake, because now he would insist in arranging a time for a sightseeing tour later the day. Finally I had him write down his number so he would leave me in peace.

The hotel room had a smoky smell to it, most of which adhered to the woolen bed covers. It was basically clean but cold, making it a bit hard to catch up with my sleep.

I woke up around 13:30 and found I had regained some power (I had started the antibiotic again before going to sleep). I put on some more clothes, shuffled to the open air hotel restaurant and ordered an apple-only fruit salad and a tea. The weather situation was somewhere between overcast and foggy, which was apparently nothing unusual for Agra. - I only picked a few slices of apple and took the rest of the dish back to my hotel room. Eventually I left the hotel and walked up the street towards the East gate of the Taj Mahal. No motorized vehicles were allowed within 500 meters of the monument, so only a few bikes, pedestrians and cattle moved about between the low buildings of souvenir shops and snack stands. All of a sudden I felt pretty sick again, but I had to take a decision: Pay 750 Rupees to go see the Taj with the chance of an eventual retreat or go straight back to the hotel now? - I got myself a ticket and entered through the gate.

I discovered the Taj is more than a white marble building, the mausoleum is part of a much greater composition aimed to amplify the beauty of the center piece and turn it into an enigma. At no point will you stand opposite of it, you're always within it, and being part of it it's impossible to comprehend it. - Entering through one of the gates, East, South and West, you're led onto a square with four tall trees. A generous space already. You're drawn towards the much bigger gate in the North, adorned with domes and blind windows. The red structure actually contains two gates in sequence for it measures around 20 meters in depth. And there you see it when you approach: The white mausoleum fills the entire gap! The large size of the gate through which you're looking and the great distance at which the mausoleum must be standing lets you guess its enormous scale. As you pass through the first gate you start seeing the shapes of the three white domes, then the "smaller" towers. Only after passing the second gate you finally see the edge of the base and the front towers as well. But now you also find the domes of the mausoleum echo from behind the trees in the park at your feet: The red mosques in the East and the West. But those buildings are almost entirely concealed from view, so again you don't see everything, set aside from the part you've already left behind you! Standing at the top of the stairs leading down to the park you find yourself leveled with the entrance of the mausoleum in the distance. At this point its reflection fits precisely the fountain that stretches across the center of the park. You go down the stairs and walk behind a line of pole shaped shrubs that line the water. Halfway there you want to rest on the platform in the middle of the garden. It's slightly elevated but still much lower than the mausoleum. Now the marble structure is huge, filling your view like a cinemascope screen when sitting in the front row, dwarfing the modestly waiting gate behind you. - You advance further, but now the mausoleum vanishes behind its base for there are no front steps up. You need to walk alongside to find a few red steps leading you onto the first platform, just between the mausoleum and the mosque in the West. (At this point you are either barefoot or wearing the shoe covers you received.) You walk back to the center, looking up at the minarets towering above you. There you find another small staircase, covered and running sideways. It's part of the second pedestal made of marble. Now you're up there. Here you can enjoy the view of the garden in the South, but you're much too close to the mausoleum to see it. All you can do now is enter and dive into the obscure sea of visitor voices on the inside. Only little light is admitted through the marble screens in the sides of the octagon shaped room, and after your eyes got accustomed to the darkness, you realize it's actually not all that big. It feels official but intimate. It's a dome inside a dome. - Again you don't see everything. Inside the octagon shaped and elaborately adorned marble shape in the center of the room lie two graves, the one for his wife Mumtaz Mahal in the middle, Shah Jahan's own - absurdly against all rules of symmetry - offset to the left side, on a pedestal.

I was happy to find that I didn't feel sick anymore, so I decided to keep strolling around until nightfall to see the light change, but also to allow myself to get hungry again. I offered people to take their picture in front of the monument, but all of a sudden strangers insisted in having their picture taken together with me.

On a pathway in the garden two cows are bridled in front of a cart, with their horns painted green. A gardener gives me a virtually non-verbal explanation. I understand the color is a code for the "profession" of the cows, in this case it's gardening. I start scratching the the front of one cow, and the other one approaches too for some TLC. Then the first one lowers her head so I could scratch her neck.

I left through the South gate and asked someone for a good restaurant, which lead me a few steps further to Joney's place. This place was tiny. It had only five tables, one of which was currently used by three teenager boys as a kitchen extension. Joney, a friendly roundish guy, cooked me some rice, along with a fresh lemon soda and a delicious banana lassi. I told him about my upset stomach, and he explained with great seriousness that he was Muslim, prayed five times a day, and would always include his customers in his prayers.

After the meal I got really sleepy, stumbled back to the hotel and went straight to bed. It wasn't late at all, but after all I had plans to see the Taj again in the morning. The doors would open at 6:00!