Only Air China offers direct flight from Beijing to New Delhi, from 8:40pm to 1:40am (7 hours 30 minutes flight time). The returning non-stop flight is from 3:10am to 11:25am (5 hours 45 minutes). I am not sure why the flight time has almost 2 hours difference between back and forth India is 2 and half hours behind China, both countries use single time zones. I purchased business class tickets for my mom and me, so we can lie down and sleep. She is in her mid 60s, and I just came back Beijing from Toronto 2 days ago (13 hours flight and 13 hours time difference). I find paying 3 times of an economic class ticket is totally worth the money.
However, buying the business class ticket actually caused us a small problem. When we landed in New Delhi airport (above picture is the washroom design in the airport), we needed to pass the Indian customs. Maybe because multiple international flights arrived at similar time, there are people mountain people sea at the customs place, and the closed line says “First/Business Class”, so we lined up there. When we finally reached the counter, the officer told us we need to line up again for the “e-Visa” lines. It turned out the “e-Visa” line collects all e-Visa holders finger prints, so that is why even though we took the business class, but the officer can not let us pass the customs at the “First/Business Class” line, since he does not have a scanner for finger prints. The finger print collection process is very time consuming. People’s fingers are dry and the scanner can not detect the finger prints until the hand sanitizer is applied on people’s hand. We finally left the airport at 5am, exhausted. It has been 3 hours after landing…
After a short sleep and good full-filling breakfast, we checked out the hotel at 11:15am, and headed to Agra, where the world famous beautiful Taj Mahal is located. We planned to see the Taj Mahal from the river bank before sun set at 5:23pm today. The distance between New Delhi and Agra is 203km and according to Google, it will take 4 hours drive, but it actually took us about 5 hours. Both New Delhi and Agra have very bad air pollution. The air is colored in red, and the smell is hard to describe, but it is strong, I would suggest you wear a disposable mask and change to a new one every day. India is the birth place of democracy. As a result, rules are not that important for Indian people. On the road, no one follows the lanes, and animals are definitely allowed on the road. Inside the cities, because of the dense population and messy condition, there are traffic jams everywhere. It is very common to see motorcycles in India, I guess this is because motorcycle is way easier than a 4 wheels vehicle to move around in traffics. One thing we are amazed by brave India people is, the riders of a motorcycle is normally more than 3…
Quote from Wikipedia: “The Taj Mahal (meaning Crown of the Palace) is an ivory-white marble mausoleum on the south bank of the Yamuna river in the Indian city of Agra. It was commissioned in 1632 by the Mughal emperor, Shah Jahan (reigned from 1628 to 1658), to house the tomb of his favorite wife, Mumtaz Mahal.” There are 2 ways to visit Taj Mahal: Get inside the Taj Mahal in early morning when the door opens to avoid the crowd (which we will do tomorrow morning), and look at Taj Mahal from the Yamuna river bank during sunset time. The river bank place is called Mehtab Bagh. The entrance fee for foreigners are 200 INR each, and 15 INR for Indian people. When you enter a tourist site in India, most of the time your bag will be searched: to get rid of the food which is not allowed, or to count how many cellphone/cameras you have and make sure you paid for them. For Taj Mahal, cellphone and cameras are free of charge, but food is not allowed.
The Mehtab Bagh place looks like a small park, with a lot of green bushes and many birds flying around. Mostly Indians are vegetarians, not like Chinese who wants to eat anything you can think of. As a result, India is heaven for animals. During our trip, we saw a lot of animals in India, such as street cows, dogs, monkeys, peacocks, and of course, cockroaches too. J I was quite afraid to bring any cock roaches back to Canada, so I was very cautious in the hotels by zipping my luggage right away after I took out the stuff that I needed. Most of the hotels are okay, except 2 places, Agra and Bodhgaya. I spot a tiny cockroach in the Agra hotel room, and for the hotel in Bodhgaya, the bathroom equipment is either old or in a weird position. Try to choose newer hotels in India if you can.
Once inside Mehtab Bagh, just walk toward Taj Mahal, then you will see a short brick wall, which you can either walk on it or sit on it. When the above photo was taken, I was quit afraid that my underwear can be seen from certain angle, and indeed 2 European guys were looking at me from that direction… I was complaining to my mom (who was my photographer) about the situation, and she said: “Don’t worry, this is for art, and they are not part of your life.” As I remembered, when I was a teenager, if I wear a top which has a big opening around the neck, and if my bra straps are shown, my mom will be very upset about me. I asked her why she changed so much, she said the time has changed, it has been almost couple decades… but why I feel this is because I am already married and became a mom myself, so she doesn’t need to protect my reputation as a unmarried girl…
Tourist can not go beyond the brick wall when in Mehtab Bagh, there are security guards with AK47 on the other side. Since winter is the dry season, the river is very narrow and shallow. To take a photo with reflection of Taj Mahal is impossible from the wall. The picture above is from internet.
Due to bad air quality, we barely can see the sun. All the photos needed a lot of color adjustments… Mom even replaced the sky as you can see in the picture above… My Indian friend asked me when did I take the picture? Because they know it is impossible to see the Milky Way above Taj Mahal. :P Before the sun was fully set, the staff works in Mehtab Bagh started to ask all the tourists to leave, I guess this is for safety reason to let everyone leave before dark.
As I heard from the internet, night entry inside Taj Mahal is allowed on the full moon night, two days before it and two days after it. Tickets need to be booked one day in advance. The day we arrived at Yamuna river bank beside Taj Mahal is a full moon day, but since we can not even see the sun, we didn’t bother to wait for the moon. The above picture is from internet.
