October 31, 2008 – Agra???

Taj Mahal Failure...

69 of us left the ship at 7:30 for the airport for a charter flight to Agra and to visit the Taj Mahal on an overnight excursion. It took about an hour to get to Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport and we saw quite a lot of the city on the way. The section near the port was heavy with British architectural influence with an ornate railway station. Later areas varied from overcrowded apartment buildings & shops to slum areas. We even saw cows in the streets, one chained to a bike rack and eating straw. We were bussed from the terminal to the plane and took off around 10:00am for the 2 hour flight to Agra.

We circled the Agra airport for about 40 minutes waiting for a fog to lift. With fuel low we diverted to New Delhi’s Indira Gahndi International Airport, refueled the plane and sat on the tarmac for 2 hours waiting for the fog to lift. At 3:00 we deplaned, walked from the arrival terminal to the departure terminal and had an Indian buffet lunch in an upstairs restaurant and waited for the fog in Agra to lift. At 4:00 the decision was made to return to the ship because the Agra airport is a military field and closes at 5:00, a bus trip would have taken 5 1/2 hours and there was no guarantee that the fog would lift the next day. Since our original flight was a charter and wasn’t chartered to go from New Delhi to Mumbai we were put on a commercial flight. Fortunately the flight didn’t have many passengers they were able to delay it by 45 minutes and get all of us on it. By the time we landed, got to the terminal and collected our luggage it was dark. The drive through the city at night was quite interesting and the streets were teeming with people, shops and street stalls were selling everything and there was a madhouse of traffic. The occasional white lane lines on the streets are only suggestions because 3 lanes held 5 rows of cars, trucks, motorcycles and tuk tuks. This is a holiday period and stores & houses are decorated with lights and flower strings.

We made it back to the ship at 9:00pm where the Compass Rose restaurant was kept open for us. Those of us who went to the Halloween party went dressed as "Cruise Ship Passengers." We were quite tired when we went to bed at 11:00.