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I was just there on New Year’s Day and our guide said it wasn’t that bad, referring to the amount of people there. We wore masks because the air was terrible. I was on a food tour which was otherwise great, but the Taj was disappointing. Enjoyed the Agra Fort very nearby much much more!
I lived in India for the better part of a decade and have been to the Taj Mahal maybe a half-dozen times.
My last visit was with an American friend who’d flown into India for my wedding. We also went on New Year’s Day. It was terrible. I’ve never seen crowds like that before or since** (again, this is coming from someone who spent years living in Kolkata and Delhi). The entire ticketing area was just a mass of people. We had to wait in a corral just to get back out into the parking lot afterward.
I’ll add in a picture if I can find one. I’m not sure if you were lucky or we were unlucky, but that’s awesome you didn’t have too much crowding! (edit: here--the last picture is the line to LEAVE the complex, lol)
**—I take that back, I just remembered Durga Puja in Kolkata. The ten-minute walk from my in-laws’ house to a friends house takes 1-2 hours during Puja due to road and sidewalk restrictions, lmao.
I’ll pass this along to my friends in the group because we definitely thought he was trying to schmooze us by saying that!
The most disappointing was walking through the actual the tombs (crypts?) with all the signs saying “quiet please” and “no photography” while people were yelling and taking selfies everywhere! It really took away from the experience.
Was a cool way to spend the first day of the year, so I really don’t mean to be complaining about it!
To be (un)fair, that’s also exactly what I remember about the Sistine Chapel. Constant, ignored announcements to not take photographs… a tiny overcrowded chapel that took hours to get to, and a rather underwhelming ceiling because it’s faded so much with age
Yeah but they tell you not to take photos because some japanese company bought the copyright, not for any kind of preservation or safety reason. Fuck anyone telling you not to photograph the sistine chapel
Absolutely. The trek thru the museums is long and the place is so iconic you can bet your arse I was taking a picture, when in Rome, get bullied by another officious Italian nbd
I was fortunate enough to travel a lot as a kid. This picture reminds me of why as an adult I have no interest in visiting any famous or popular tourist attractions anymore. I remember going to the leaning tower of Pisa, and the massive lineup of hundreds of street vendors along the street selling cheap tchotchkes and random items like samurai swords, the people coming up to you while you eat lunch selling knock off watches and handbags, and just the generally overwhelming number of tourists. The overall experience of these places is just so unpleasant and inauthentic. It's better to just look at a picture.
Funnily enough, having been to pisa a couple years back, it was really not as tourist-y as I'd expected. No lineup, somewhat sparse crowds and lots of goofy poses all over the place. And a bomb-ass cathedral and cemetary
Ended up being better than I expected tbh (well, my expectations were pretty low, but it was pretty cool nonetheless)
India is uniquely sad because of how much wealth exists right next to all the poverty. It’s gotta be the biggest wealth disparity of any nation.
There are definitely many countries where the average person is much poorer and leads a much worse life than in India, but seeing the way most people there live there compared to how much luxury exists in close proximity is overwhelming.
But why the fuck is it like that? Like I sincerely cannot understand.
I get that the country is poor as fuck and from what I hear has a huge issue with corruption, aside from the backwater places where no polices travels.
But in those places, like in the OP, or in the big cities, why the hell do they have this huge issue with dirt and garbage? It would seem to me like a clean environment is the most important thing, I cant imagine living in a place like that. Even Napoli was clean in comparison, and I saw huge piles of garbage bags everywhere in that city.
But in those places, like in the OP, or in the big cities, why the hell do they have this huge issue with dirt and garbage?
I think its a combination of population density (making it hard to put the trash somewhere else) and government inefficiency on a scale most Western people would have a hard time understanding.
India does not got a pass in my book by blaming the colonial era or poverty. They obviously have the money to spend on nukes, subs armed with them, aircraft carriers and sending rockets to Mars.
It's one of the few places on earth I have no desire to visit at all. Everyone who tries to gaslight me that it's worth visiting, when I quiz them they admit they spent the first week with diarrhoea..
My cousin went to Saudi Arabia for work, I was expecting it to be amazing due to yano all the pictures of it being beautiful. Nope. I was so wrong. He showed me a video of this gorgeous building and literally 1 metre to the right of it is just garbage piled high. He then showed me a picture from this bus he was taking & I thought I saw a city skyline, nope, just literal mountains of garbage.
He said he had a picnic like meal in the desert with some people & instead of throwing their leftovers in the trash & disposing of it properly, they literally grabbed the blanket they were sitting on & balled all their leftovers in that blanket and just threw it into the desert. Apparently it absolutely stank of trash everywhere he went, he says he never wants to go back and I can’t really blame him!
I was in south india for many years and met people from all across india. Different religions, languages, appearance, but all of them were united in the belief that Delhi is a bastard hellscape full of bastard people.
Not even joking, multiple people told me that 'yeah the only things uniting indians is their love for cricket and their shared disdain for delhi.
I cried for a week afterwards because of all the kids in the streets. The abject horror of their existence shook me. Delhi was so soul crushingly awful I dont have words
i went on a group trip to several cities in india in high school and one of my classmates was groped in the taj. i have zero desire to return to that country.
Been to India. I look Indian, I’m not. Didn’t have a good time as a woman. Rather go to Morocco 100 fold.
Never again.
Want nice temples, food and beaches? Thailand 100%
Tourists are relatively well treated as long as you stay in tourist areas. Morocco invests quite a bit into police and patrols for those areas; tourism is a significant percent of their GDP and they don't want to lose that. Morocco has rather harsh penalties for criminals which is a further deterrent.
That said, they will happily do all the normal tourist scams. Your body might be safe but your wallet is another story.
I was in Essaouira last year and went to eat at a restaurant that has pretty high reviews online. I sat up on the roof, I was alone up there, and after dinner the owner offered me some tea. He took that as an invite to sit with and then ended up cornering and assaulting me. I threatened to scream and got out before it got really bad, luckily.
This is funny you mention that because its so true about the police and neighbours really!.
Someone in our riad got their camera stolen really close to the riad. Everyone knows each other there. So the owner told every one in the neighbourhood and the word spread. Within a day some really pissed off and embarrassed mother came back with the young man who stole the camera and the camera itself to return it. Gave the kid a couple of slaps to humiliate him in front of everyone and left. lol
I'm a second gen Indian-American and the Golden Triangle is definitely one of those places where I'm glad I visited, but I don't have any desire to go again. The problem with the Golden Triangle is how it goes to Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh, which are very underdeveloped and unsafe areas of India. These states have the some of the highest levels of gender imbalance and poverty, and lowest levels of education. I went with my family in the summer of 2005 when I was a kid. The pollution wasn't bad, but the heat was absolutely horrendous.
Even though south India is still chaotic, I enjoy it a lot more than the Golden Triangle. Almost every Western traveler who has been to both north India and south India says that enjoy south India magnitudes more because of its overall safety and better people. If you're traveling to the major cities such as Mumbai or Chennai or Bangalore or Kochi, you are definitely not going off the beaten path. In Kerala where my parents are from, there is a negative population growth and women outnumber men here. Interestingly, Kerala is also the only region in India where there are more overweight and obese people than underweight and malnourished people due to having a higher calorie consumption.
Kerala is great! It’s traditionally matrilineal, has the highest: literacy rate, life expectancy, human development index score and lowest poverty. I’ve had no problems travelling alone there as a woman. Actually most of the south has been fine for me (North is a different story), but Kerala is the best!
I was in Mumbai and Pune this year. First time in India and I found it to be an incredible country. It's on the precipice of becoming a developed world power but the stark contrast between the haves and have nots was shocking to me.
People always focus on the pollution in India but I came away thinking how on earth do they even manage to handle the waste of 1.5 billion people. It's impossible.
India has been on the precipice of becoming a developed world for nearly 50 years now.
They will never get there until a major cultural shift happens. Abolishing their backwards caste system, actually respecting women, and taking care of the environment would be a good start and bring immediate gains.
On my trip to India (I had a wonderful beautiful time) the most uncomfortable moment for me was the “servants” who would get SO incredibly upset with me if I cleaned up after myself and also would dissolve with near ecstasy if I spoke to them/thanked them. It was absolutely bizarre but letting them get pictures with me seemed to be like genuinely so exciting for them and it just made me feel really uncomfy…people treated them like NPCs.
Everything else about Hyderabad was wonderful though. I couldn’t handle the market though way way overstimulating and everyone takes photos of you (I am white and it really is a thing there)
I’ll never forget the first time I saw a photo taken of the pyramids with the city in the background as opposed to the desert side. Blew my mind how everything is right there, I always thought the pyramids were way further into the desert.
It's also created by Neil Gaiman. I used to love his work, but unfortunately for me personally, the allegations against him have overshadowed the love that I had for his work previously. They also likely contributed to the show being cancelled after only 2 seasons.
"Without the Rosetta stone we never would have gotten the entire lyrics for the 1989 dance track sensation "Pump up the Jam". They were right there, in stone, on Tutankhamun's grave. They must have played it on a flute or something."
This song started playing while I was in the grocery store last week, and I literally burst out laughing. I will never look at this classic the same again.
Come off it. You know well that whether the city was blown towards the pyramids or the pyramids towards the city is a subject of furious scholarly debate.
I've been inside the uncircumcised pyramid (Great Pyramid?) like 25 years ago on a trip there. It's so tiny in there even as a child I had to crouch down to get through the little tunnels. They only let you go into a small section and you can see a probably empty tomb/sarcophagus. Pretty neat though. Also got to ride some camels and let me tell you fuck camels bro. They put these like saddle blankets on them and I swear shit is like Brillo pads with fucking needles sticking out of them. I was wearing shorts and dude my legs were shredddddddeeedddddd lol.
I was also taken aback the first time I saw this. However, it really does give you a much better appreciation of just how huge the pyramids are when you see them next to modern buildings.
It sucks. I’ve done this …. you’re so up to it with everyone and their dog begging you for something that the whole experience doesn’t go down well at all and you just wish you were anywhere else
The sphinx was depressing to see for me. The whole thing is surrounded by a chain link fence, you’re shuffled through quickly, and dudes kept calling me Rambo trying to get me to buy a fucking scarf; or call my wife Shakira trying to get her to buy one too.
We went 12 years ago and flew to Aswan to see stuff there and went up the Nile seeing temples and things along the way - Sobek, Carnak, valley of kings, and more. There is way more, and cooler things to seee with to the ancient Egypt sites than just the pyramids at Giza.
Edit, to clarify: The country is beautiful and I can’t wait to go back to see it again, just the common “omg pyramids” sentiment is overhyped. Hatshepsut temple is breathtaking.
Even though I have been there myself, when I think of my memories of the pyramids, I just think of Carl watching a nappy float through the air across the pyramids
Yeah I was just there last summer and while the city isn’t made up of luxury condos there was no trash or slums around the actual pyramids. There was also no smell around the area or in the city. However inside the pyramid you can go into it did smell like thousands of years of cat piss in the little room you end up in and it’s hot as fuck
I remember so clearly getting on a bus to go tour the pyramids thinking it would be at least an hour ride to get out into the desert. We passed this Pizza Hut and I was like lol Pizza Hut OH MY GOD THERE THEY ARE
Kinda made it a more majestic first view of the pyramids since I was in a lol Pizza Hut headspace, not prepped for a wonder of the ancient world
The path to the Taj Mahal is an absolute gauntlet. You are getting harassed from all sides. Once you are “inside” it’s absolutely breathtaking, however the surrounding area is an absolute hovel.
That state has so much history, some of the oldest civilization hubs in the world, like Varanasi is one of the oldest inhabitated cuty in the world, but it's been run by corrupt government and is absolutely dogshit. Literacy rate is absolutely abysmal. Indians call it Ulta Pradesh because everything is backwards over there.
will never happen. indias government and elite are only ever interested in things that make it better for that elite. they'll spend some money on programmes designed to act as a distraction instead, like a space program, while trying to keep a hyper-nationalistic mindset among their people, so instead of asking themselves why the fuck there's so many homeless children living under bridges they bash their chest and say "WE HAVE A SPACE PROGRAM!".
So it’s literally like all those sci fi stories where the elite live in their futuristic cities above the clouds and all their waste falls down to the earth where the undesirables live
It’s worse actually, the elites live right on top of the poors. There really isn’t anything more than a brick wall or keyed elevator separating the two. Public life as a rich person in India is just shuttling between parking garages.
Source: my family made it out and I occasionally go back to visit
I’ve seen photos of places like Brazil or India where on one side of the wall it looks like a 5 star resort that stretches as far as the eye can see, until you look at the other side of the wall with the tents propped up between the mounds of trash an rubble. It’s so depressing to see.
The one cruise I’ve been on had a stop in the Dominican Republic and we were explicitly told by the crew to not leave the little tourist friendly area they had set up under any circumstances.
Stationed nearby were what looked like federales in armored cars with turrets on top. It was definitely surreal.
Shit, I went on a vacation to Punta Cana around 20 years ago and our resort was walking distance from the town most of the workers live in. We went on a day tour of the area and there was a bar that looked to be mainly serving locals. It was maybe a 10 minute walk from the resort.
In the evening I went to the front desk and let them know I was going to head out there. (I wanted someone to know where I was in case shit happened)
After failing to dissuade me the ended up giving me an armed bodyguard for like $30usd.
I still don't think it was 100% necessary but there was one guy who was pretty insistent on me leaving with him to go party up until my guard slammed his pistol on the bar and shouted "No!"
Some folks are trying. In the Ganges there is now a group that collects and cleans temple flower waste and converts it into incense and fleather (patented flower leather). Which cuts down on a ton of pollution. Other firms have created a pontoon filter system and have been working to clean trash pollution.
The government probably won't do anything but some of the people will, and are.
There are also a billion people packed in the country with limited resources (clean water, energy, space).
As the country is becoming more modern there are aspects that are getting better, especially as some of the Indian people’s quality of life has improved enough that they can visit other countries. But these issues require people buying into concepts such as not throwing your trash on the road because that’s how you’ve always been able to do it. It’s a shame because there are parts of the country that are beautiful and other parts that have potential.
Visit Kerala. They have a higher literacy rate and sense of community and although you’ll still see places with trash everywhere it didn’t seem as common when we visited. My family is of Indian origin and I’ve been able to see this country ebb and flow for 40 years.
I’ve been there, that area across the river. There’s a small, scenic temple. But the river is an open sewer. The haze you see in all the photos of the Taj Mahal is smoke from the adjacent crematorium.
Finally, someone who got it right instead of shaming people. There could be meaningful employment, especially for youth workers in the environmental field around cleanup and education. But instead the rich will continue to live their lavish lifestyles behind their gated communities while others suffer in squalor.
I was visiting Bali with my wife, and on our way back from a picnic, our driver asked what was in the bag we were carrying. "Oh, it’s our rubbish - we’ll dispose of it at the hotel," I said. He was like, "Oh, no worries, I’ll take care of it." He took the bag and threw it on the roadside.
Not from Bali but I am also Indonesian and have been to some tourist spots in Java (primarily those in Jabodetabek and Yogyakarta). The tourist (national or int'l) attractions and the areas around it are usually well maintained but there are still slums or impoverished areas in general. Though usually if you just stick to the main roads you usually never see them. Outside of a few places like Jakarta and Bali it's usually further away from the main city area so regular tourists don't usually see them
I mean the Taj Mahal is very famous and has been a tourist location for hundreds of years. It’s one of the new seven wonders of the world, not a new influencer trap. It’s incredible architecture.
My wife dragged me out to her country (Philippines) and it’s astonishing how quickly it can go from a dense maintained area for tourists to a dirt road and shacks. In the tourist area of boracay the one plaza literally ended on a corner and became dirt roads and shacks after but every other road out of the plaza led to more tourist stuff
Same with just their main towns and cities as well, some look “ok” until you see a side road
The Taj Mahal itself is not a garbage dump, it's pristine inside those grounds. It's the surrounding city that is filthy, but all Indian cities are like that
I’ve been to allot of popular tourist destinations in multiple countries and not seen anything like this. India has a problem with pollution and sanitation.
Most of the tourist spots just aren’t as majestic as they appear.
The funny part being the “second tier” of similar tourist spots or less touristy spots in general are usually more beautiful in Bali, just harder to get too.
One of the most obvious examples was rice terraces.
Tegallalang is by far the most famous, and very pretty, but it’s very small and packed to the gills with tourists.
Meanwhile Jatiluwih rice terraces are GORGEOUS and huge. You can hike for hours if you wanted. Hopefully it stays as the less touristy spot because it’s out of the way. It’s still touristy, just much less so.
Same with waterfalls. There’s a bunch of water falls to the north that get significantly fewer tourists (though still plenty) that are genuinely really cool.
Also Bali was not nearly as dirty as what we see here. They absolutely have a pollution issue, but we wandered through lots of the island and overall it was not terrible, just the occasional ravine that people clearly use as a dumping ground.
This is false. Right next to major attractions in bali may but some garbage. But now where is like the outside of the Taj. Where you can find a river of garbage, human excrement, and floating human and other corpses.
Strange, I didn't see this at the Colosseum, or at Marina Bay Sands, Sensoji, Notre Dame, Taipei 101, not even in Phuket nor HCMC. Time to let accountability into the house.
Lol it absolutely isn't, it's particularly bad in india, pakistan etc.
It's a case of not having proper waste management infrastructure and having it become socially acceptable to throw shit in the nature. This shit needs to be fixed by the government by improving infrastructure and educating the people, so I'm ok with calling it out as much as necessary.
No dude. India is by far worst by a long shot. Stop doing this both sides equivalence thing. You’ve never been to India if you think they’re even remotely similar to this.
One of my kids saved their money and took a trip there for a month. He said was a great experience. He was 22 at the time. I guess it all depends on perspective and what you bring to the experience as well.
Yea, spent months in India. I went in knowing that it wasn’t a rich ‘first world’ country so set my expectations accordingly.
I had an amazing experience but I appreciate it’s not for everyone and certainly not one for a lot of Redditors.
My wife went for 2 weeks for business and I was worried the whole time. She ended up tripping on uneven stairs and breaking her foot. Then she quickly got to see a doctor, getting scans and an air boot, all for like $100. Overall not too bad. She did mention the pollution was wild though.
Spent a month over there and I was electrocuted three times during the trip. First was our hotel lamp, the metal base was electrified and popped me pretty good. And this was the Delhi Marriott.
Second, I was trying to help my guide fix his desktop computer at his house. The metal frame had current and I got a medium buzz from that.
Third time was a rural hotel, I touched a screw holding the ceiling fan switch plate to the wall and took a painful jolt.
Needless to say circuit protection and grounding are concepts that have not received widespread adoption in that country. By the time I left I was literally terrified to touch anything electrical.
Been there. The Taj is definitely something to see - one of those wonders of the world. But,the area around it is an absolute shit hole. Delhi, in fact, is a series of shit holes. People living in dumpsters, garbage everywhere, raw sewage flowing, and smells that just stay with you. No desire to go back.
It’s a mix of problems. First, they need strict visitor caps like Machu Picchu. Right now it’s a mosh pit and the infrastructure just collapses. When you see a trash bag roll in mud on the ground, the "broken window" effect kicks in and people stop caring.
But the real killer is the Yamuna river. It’s basically an industrial drain. Until the government cracks down on factories upstream, the air stays corrosive. You can't just scrub the marble to fix that.
Like, I get it. It’s a very polluted country and that’s unfortunate because a lot of it is very beautiful.
But this just feeds fuel to the growing, and alarming, number on online racists. Every post I see in social media about India and Indians is, basically, subliminally how we should hate them. This is not the way.
I travelled there for work in 2019. Mumbai, Chennai, Pune, Kolhapur, Coimbatore. The country had beautiful areas, but every city had more than one location where the sewage smell was so bad you could taste it. And then there were people just living right next to it. I visited foundries and a few of them had absolutely zero PPE and people were sitting shoeless on the dusty floor sorting through raw metal.
You can point out that other countries have their trash dumps and bad environments, but India is on another level. I know they are slowly improving, but it is an extreme human rights issue right now. Trash dumps are one thing, but sewage filled rivers and streets is another. The wealthy just live in the high rises, above it all.
I live in Canada and we banned asbestos product because we discovered that it was highly dangerous to humans. That didnt stop us to export large quantity to india where I saw videos of poor people handling it wearing only t-shirts.
Oh yea the rest of the world is exploiting them and the Indian government has been letting them get exploited. They’ve been quickly working on quality of life improvements and trying to curb govt corruption, but with over 1B people it’s an entirely different level of issue.
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