Bumper Rickshaws

One thing that has surprised me over the last 7 months is that I had never once been in a rickshaw accident. Yes, I ran into the back of one on my bicycle, but I'm talking about being in one when something exciting happens.

I remember hearing about two trainees in Chandigarh that were in an unfortunate accident in Agra. Their auto rickshaw rolled and one of the girls injured her arm pretty bad.

Agra was where I found myself today. I wanted to go back to the Taj Mahal because my pictures weren't so good from the first time. Normally you wouldn't go back to this monument because of the Rs. 750 ($22 CDN) price tag, but I have a residential permit and can get in for Rs. 20.

I was worried that the residential permit wasn't going to work, on account of other trainees trying and failing. Well, it worked for me again but, ironically, it had rained the night before and that had created a dense fog around the structure in the early morning hours. I showed up at 7:30 only to realize that pictures were going to be tough. So I waited, took some pictures irregardless of the light and just hoped they turned out okay.

Now to the point....

My train back to Delhi left at 10:10 AM (turned out to be 11 AM), so I had to get in an auto rickshaw to go to the train station. There was this one section of the road that was under construction, so that meant only one rickshaw could fit. Not surprisingly, my driver tried to pass the other driver during this narrow section. Then, some dimwit decided to jump out in front of the rickshaw we were passing. This forced the auto to jerk right and subsequently bump into us. My rickshaw was on two wheels for a sec, but quickly returned to three.

With disaster narrowly avoided, all I could do was wonder what the hell the guy jumping out into the middle of the road was doing. To make fitting end to the rickshaw journey, a guy on a bicycle ran into us just as we pulled up to the station.

One more full day left in India....