For purely personal reasons, I have spent the last two weekends in Agra, where I normally OD on the street food, having lost count of the number of times I have seen the Taj. I wish I could spend as much time at Fatehpur Sikri, which I find so much more engrossing than Shah Jahan’s monumental legacy, but I now love to spend my disposable time at Sadar Bazar and its famous bylane, informally known as the Chatori Gali, and my more recent discovery, Nayi Ki Mandi, the Mughlai food street.
On my last two back-toback visits to Agra, necessitated by an extended family yajna, I had very little time for such edible diversions, but I discovered a thing or two about Agra as it emerges out of the shadow of Covid-19. I met my old friend, Rajat Sethi, General Manager of the ITC Mughal, one of Agra’s two oldest surviving five-star addresses, and I was expecting to find him downcast about the state of his business because of the sharp drop in international tourist arrivals, which seems to be here to stay as a result of the return of the pandemic in the United States and Europe. But he appeared to have no time to regret this substantial loss of business.
One of the heartening fallouts of the extended lockdown has been the rekindling of the desire of Middle Delhi to spend weekends in neighbouring destinations—for just a change of scenery. On long weekends, especially, no one seems to be keen on staying at home. For many of these urban escapees, a long weekend in the past meant an opportunity to head in the direction of Dubai or Bangkok, but now, with people still chary of flying, destinations such as Agra have opened up as weekend hotspots—and how!
With destination weddings in Thailand or Malaysia also ruled out because of the widespread reluctance to fly, Agra has regained its popularity among Delhiites as the go-to place to seal marriages. And with the upper limit for the number of guests allowed at such social occasions being raised from 50 to 200, hotel managers such as Sethi are breathing easy, especially because the period from November to January has 22 auspicious wedding dates. A number of families are also booking hotels for “post-wedding parties” to compensate for their inability to invite all their near and dear ones during the lockdown.
The good news is that Agra hotels have regained their weekend business, and their weekday numbers are also expected to pick up, riding on the back of the impending wedding season. And just in case you pack up your bags and head for Agra without a marriage to worry about, do something different this time—visit the churches (the oldest being the Akbar Church, whose history dates back to 1600, and which still survives in the shadow of the grander St Peter’s Church), and the old English cemetery, or visit the city’s old temples, such as the Mankameshwar in the vicinity of Agra Fort, which, as legend has it, was built by Lord Shiva so that the child Krishna could see him from Mathura. There’s so much to do in Agra, but if you would like to just chill, take your must-read book along and keep reading it only to come out of your reverie for a meal washed down with copious quantities of beer!