India for first-time visitors

After Orchha, we set out for the biggest tourist attraction of India: the Taj Mahal in Agra.

Foolishly, we thought we had learned enough Hindi/Urdu to navigate our way onto the train to Agra. By that point, we had learned "shukria" (thank you), "chelo chelo," (go away) and "nahin" (no).

So when our tour company sent a guide as well as a driver to put us on the train, we started feeling like we had more hangers-on than Britney Spears. Then we actually entered the confusing jumble of the station, and ended up clinging to our minder like helpless children. He patiently walked us to the platform and got us into our car.

Maybe we could have eventually figured out where to go, but I definitely liked having the help. In our case, we used a company called MacNair Travel. As a couple traveling alone in India, the tour company arranged a lot of hand-holding, but frankly we needed it. We were not college kids bumming our way down the road, and there are lots of things a Westerner, even a veteran traveler, probably shouldn't try in India — like driving. But more on that later.

The Taj Mahal is a Mughal emperor's monument of love to his favorite wife. For his trouble, he was imprisoned in a nearby fort by his son. Today, a major threat to the mausoleum is pollution, so you cannot drive close to it, and visitors must either walk, rickshaw, or take an electric car the final mile.

If you go India: For our trip, we stayed at the Taj chain of hotels, which are luxurious by any standard. We relied heavily on guides, drivers, and other helpers. Even if you don't want to be coddled, a guide is a wonderful resource in a country with thousands of years of religious, cultural, and ethnic history. A guidebook, even a stack of guidebooks, can't explain everything you're seeing. For our money, there was no greater guide in Varanasi (or the whole trip) than Ajay Singh, who can be reached at siddharthajay@rediffmail.com. As a general rule of thumb, labor in India is cheap, so a taxi, rickshaw, or service is often very affordable. Space, and high-end items however — like a fully-equipped, air conditioned hotel room — are often not. In our case, we paid about U.S. $2,800 (euro1,780) for a 10-day trip for two that included a boat tour of the Ganges, the temples at Sarnath, Khajuraho, and Orchha, hotels, breakfasts, guides, drivers and ground transportation. Airfare was additional.

Once there, you put on light disposable slippers to walk around the giant marble tomb. Early morning visits are the least crowded, but realistically, there's always a crowd.

Crowded does not begin to describe Delhi. The city's crazy traffic will astound American drivers — even those accustomed to maneuvering cars on L.A.'s freeways or in New York's rush hour. Lanes and lines here mean nothing. A "safe distance between vehicles" in Delhi can be measured with a thumb and forefinger.

And then there's the honking.

It took me a while to translate, but Indian horns are completely different from U.S. horns.

In New York City, for example, a horn blast usually means: "Yo! These cars aren't moving. I hate this. YO!"

Here's what a honk means in India: "Ah, hello. I'm about two inches from you, so if you jiggle the wheel even slightly we'll both edged up knocked into that rickshaw carrying a family of seven, the man pedaling 22 crates of live chickens, and a cow. Thanks much!"

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Because honking, in India, is more about saying where you are going than where you've stopped, one of the quietest places in Delhi is standstill traffic. Then, as soon as the rickshaws, wheelbarrows, trucks, and pedestrians start moving, the bleating begins again.

But for sheer pandemonium, nothing beats the Delhi airport. The sidewalk was a massive crush of hundreds, perhaps thousands of people and their luggage, pressing just to get into the building. Once inside, there are about five separate lines to work through, none of them marked, and none of them happy.

Leaving India, as it turned out, required another adjustment in cultural mores.

We slipped a worker a $10 bill to get bumped ahead in line. (Our hotel refused U.S. currency due to the decline in its value, but bribery is apparently still a dollar-friendly transaction in India.) A fellow-traveler told us to say we were flying business class (we weren't), and then slip the young man some money along the way. That flew us to the top of one line. But don't expect a greased palm to part the sea; it still took two hours to get to the gate, and we only just made our flight.

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