After like the 6th or 7th foto, i decided to take advantage from it and just give them my camera, so i would also get a group picture like the one below :)
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| me, random indian people and the Taj Mahal |
After visiting the chamber with the grave inside i came to the backside of Taj Mahal, which looks like this.
Behind the Taj Mahal there is this beautiful river. Wonderful scenery!
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| behind the Taj Mahal |
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| river behind the Taj Mahal |
After visiting the taj Mahal , i first had lunch, and then went over to the "Fortress of Agra".
I first didn"t really know what to expect from it , but after entering the fortress i was really surprised.
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| the Fortress of Agra |
I was surprised because i didn"t expect to get this wonderful view on the Taj Mahal from the top of the Fortress.
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| Taj Mahal as seen from the fortress of Agra |
This is really a huge fortress and definitely worth to be seen. It looked very nice inside too.
Maybe i will upload some more pictures from the inside view later.
I really had to laugh when i saw that they have a "This is is Sparta!" whole in this fortress! Hahaha :D
(Actually i'm not sure what the meaning of this hole is... i'll have to research it.)
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| this is sparta! :) |
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| inside of the fortress (only small part of it) |
Delhi 9.08.-13.08 & my perception of india until now
I have saved this chapter for a while because i was not sure in first place what exactly to write.
I have been in India now for almost a week, but it took me a while to understand this world which seems so different from mine. Also, until now i have only seen this city. So this city certainly is not representive for the whole country. This country is so huge, and my friend who i am staying with currently, told me that there are so many different cultures and habits all over the country, that everytime you come to a new place you will be really surprised.
So this is now my try to shortly describe how i perceive india.
When you walk through the streets, or drive through the streets it happens a lot that you see wild animals on the road. Sometimes you see wild cows or pigs walking around. At almost every cross road you can see wild dogs who are sleeping on the middle of the street. If you"re lucky you can sometimes see some monkeys like in the picture down below. Reason for that is that people simply accept those animals, and don't just hunt them down, like they would probably do it at home. Animals are treated very nice here in india, and if you would hit one of them with your car accidently some people might get really mad with you. Especially if you hit a cow. As you have heard cows are holy animals here, so be careful when driving your car.
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| wild cows standing between houses, in the middle of the city |
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| monkeys on the road in new delhi |
The next thing which i quickly noticed, as soon as i arrived:
Oh my god, there are so many people!! Everything here just seems very crowded. Like lets say you come to the metro station, like i did yesterday evening, i had to line up in this queue which you see in the photo below. Because everything is so crowded it can happen that you have to wait at some places for a very long time.
Also there are security people at every corner of the street. That queue i had to wait at, actually was a security check, where they scan all your luggage, like you would usually have them at airports.
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| waiting for security check in the metro |
If you drive on the road people drive very chaotic. It seems like there aren't any traffic rules. Everyone just drives around as they like. On the road you see thousands of these yello/green auto rikshas, like in the next picture. There are also of course these cycle riksha's which are a bit cheaper, but also slowlier. Maybe i'll upload a picture of that if i can get a nice shot.
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| auto rikshas on the road |
At places like the metro station you sometimes have these parking areas where hundreds of riksha drivers are waiting to pick possible passengers up from the station and bring them to a certain destination.
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| auto rikshas in the lower half of the photo, and riksha parking area in the background |
As my friend says : in this country for money you get people to do almost everything. Just because there are so many people and obviously there aren't enough jobs for everyone. Also a huge problem i guess, is that many people don't have free access to education, like people get it at home. Some people i suppose are very smart and have great potential, but because they grow up in a poor family, they might end up as a riksha driver, and then have to try to make the best out of it. There are people in this country who are incredibly poor, but also people who are very well educated and have a lot of money. Because everything is so cheap, this makes "rich" people dramatically rich compared to people with less money. For example some people who have a bit more money can afford the luxury to live with their own servants, who cook and clean for them etc. But i guess in some way this okay, because at least by that, people with less education have a job, and a way to make money.
I guess in general it just took me a while to get used to how people lived here. So the last days i simply tried to explore the city a bit, and "get used to" india, and of course did some site seeing. In the evening i sometimes went out with my friend. Like two days ago we had dinner in some nice pub. There we ordered this lovely looking food which is (from top of image to buttom image) : brocolli, tofu, ? and spinach.
Yesterday i went to do some site seeing in the city. First i went to some place called "humayun's tomb". When i got to the entrance door, it was what people nowadays would call "cuteness overload" ,
because there was some school class with many little indian kids making a trip to see this world heritage site.
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| indian school class waiting infront of humayun's tomb entrance door |
As i entered this site, to the right there was first some other mausuleum with a bunch of dead guys burried inside.
If you don't turn right, but just walk straight trough the main door, from far away you can see the actual humayun's tomb from far away. Some guide told me and i could also read this on the signs and in my lonely planet, that the Taj Mahal's architectual design, which i showed before was orignally inspired by this tomb.
After walking around exploring the tomb, i asked a girl from france to take a photo of me. This was quite funny, because while she took the photo i put my water bottle somewhere on a wall. And when i returned 2 minutes later the water bottle was gone. I assumed someone had taken it. So i asked some security officer, asuming he might have removed it, because he thought it was trash. But then he led me to some indian guy who was holding my water bottle. It was completely empty. Can you belive this? Within 3 mintues someone had taken my (at this time almost completely filled) water bottle and completely emptied it. Some people here are obviously so poor that they cannot even afford buying a bottle of drinking water. The indian guy apologized and i was not mad with him, because the water had been a bit warm anyways. So i simply bought a new cooled bottle for some cents.
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| me with humayun's tomb in the background |
After visiting humayun's tomb i went to some other world heritage site called Qutub Minar. On the bus i met a friendly girl from Canada, who told me that she had been traveling in india for 6 weeks now. We explored this ancient place together and as you see in the second picture from here got some picture taken together. Some areas where so huge, that it was impossible to get everything on a regular photo, so i took this panorama shot:
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| me and the canadian girl |
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| Tower on the left, Mosque on the right |
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