AGRA
I booked by telephone the Sheela Hotel, cheap and located in the Taj Ganj area. Fair to say that my patience is put to test, when reaching it. A lot of people try to take me elsewhere. Hotel prices here are all inflated, like it happens in all hyper touristic cities. My room costs 950 rupees, a rip off, considering that I do not have even hot water. However, the hotel is surrounded by a lush garden. In the late afternoon I take a rickshaw to go to Sadar Bazar, the city is an open sewer. Return to Taj Ganj at 20. The district is full of restaurants, from whose terraces in some cases there are stunning views of the Taj Mahal domes illuminated by the moon. There are also many souvenir shops, outrageously expensive. You can not take two steps peacefully that you are constantly besieged with rickshaws, currency exchange, precious stones, restaurants, tuk tuk, postcards sellers. What the fuck!! On the positive side, I have to admit that there is no sweltering heat I expected.
The next morning, at 5.45 I am at the east entrance, no one before me. This allows me to photograph the monument without too many people in between
The Taj Mahal, with its marble lace, is magnificent in the dawn pink light, and splendid are its gardens full of singing birds, curious squirrels, and fragrant frangipani trees. In any case, at 10, when I leave, even the package tours buses from Delhi have not yet arrived, so it’s still possible to breathe a relative quiet.
Since my train is at 13.45, I walk in the neighborhood, going southwards. After a few meters, souvenir shops give place to workshops, and much less troublesome.
A tuk tuk takes me to the station under a pouring rain, in the early afternoon. It is time of exit from the schools. There are dozens of cycle-rickshaw waiting for the wealthy families scions. I see some men, with their weakling physiques, panting pedaling with 6 or 7 kids in uniform crammed into the trailer. A child is not very heavy, but certainly seven still represent a considerable burden. I think at the eyes of the workers who smashed stones on the Jammu and Kashmir roads, at the beginning of my journey.
Being poor is not a nice situation in any place of the world, but in India it seems even worse ..
I return to Delhi’s airport, eager for a shower, and instead those at the international airport are all clogged and impassable.
Filthy sweaty, in Helsinki, after a month, I finally have the pleasure to pee in a clean Western toilet, in a perfect minimalist Scandinavian style restroom, whose cleaning verges on sterilization.
Turin greets me with clear skies and sunshine, like Leh, the heat is more or less the same, the mountains around not really. The jacket, which was always tied over the backpack in the many times that I did not wear it, then used as a pillow and as a blanket on the buses, is in a such poor conditions that when I take it to the laundry the owner looks at it puzzled as if she wanted to say “where the hell have you been??.” The backpack cover is even worse, and despite the energetic brush in hot water with plentiful soap, will no longer be as clean as before leaving.
This trip is like a watershed. Since then, I often observe the asphalt of the streets, it seems so clean that I feel like taking off my shoes and walk barefoot.
It already happened several times to me to dream of being in India, then perhaps it is true that, once inside, there are no doors to get out