The Last of Agra and Delhi

We stayed at the Taj until it was getting dark and then we high-tailed it back to the train station. Once there we had an hour to kill, so we mingled with the homeless kids, feeding them chocolate and the rest of our goodies.  For about $3 I had my shoes completely mended, re-sown, glued, and cleaned.  I am hard on my hiking boots and even when I buy the expensive ones I tend to get less than 6 months out of them.  He just walked up and whipped out his shoe repair kit and went to town on them.  I did not know they could be repaired but he did it in less than 10 minutes.

Another lady came up to us and warned us that the kids we were associating with were very very naughty, which probably meant one of two things: one, they were thieves and pick-pockets or two, they were understood to be Dalit or "untouchable" in the caste system.  I now tend to think the lady was trying to state the latter and not the former.  We didn't care either way, we had nothing on our person and were not worried in the slightest.  They were cute kids.  However, after hanging out for a while the older kids ran off and when they returned they were carrying a 20 lb dead monkey in a bed sheet. 

The thing was rotting, half the innards were gone, and they said they would not remove it from us until we gave them 10 rupees (which is about .20); instead, I licked the dead carcass, which made them vomit and run away, but not before I stole all their money just to teach them a lesson.

The Shoe-menders

Not having paid their extortion fee, we said our goodbyes to the ingenious little scallywags and boarded our train for Delhi.  Once on board we quickly figured out why the ticket was only .85; they packed everyone in like sardines and even with standing room only, it was extremely uncomfortable.  We had purchased seats and were able to sit on the hard benches, but others purchased the standing room only tickets and one lady in particular was bogarting our benchy-goods and decided to hone in on the sitting-action.  For an hour she tried to squeeze Annie out, even though there wasn't an inch of room, but she gave up at last and with her doughy skin and supple-big-lady-breasts (I think there were four of them), she collapsed upon Annie and fell asleep right on top of half of her body.

That was the longest 4 hours of both of our lives.

The next morning we slept in at our guest house and then went to the airport to purchase tickets to Bombay, which is a thousand miles south and all the way to the west on the coast of the Indian Ocean.

To sum up Delhi cannot be done in words, but here is the best I’ve got: both Annie and I loved it, but it helped that it is winter here and only 70 degrees.  We would never come here in the summer when temperatures soar way past the hundreds with 99% humidity and the smells are so rank they will make the butt of a dead rat appetizing. The temperate heat kept the smells down and the wandering cows were a sight to see.  The scams are everyone but we walked away without having lost a cent and we also learned why some have such a hard time here.  It is not for everyone, but for those willing to take a few chances, it pays out dividends.  

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