Tourists vs. Agra. The city no one can prepare you for
“A dump.”
That was one friend's verdict on visiting Agra.
She has travelled to India three times and otherwise had lots of useful travel advice for me.
It's immediately clear after stepping down from my short train ride from Delhi that Agra's splendid past is colliding with the almost unbearable strain of India's vast population and uneven development.
Observing the tangle of rickshaws, trash, dust, touts, and sagging awnings, it looks as if the former capital of imperial glory is staging its own decline and fall.
Why visit Agra?
And it was glorious.
Founded by Sikandar Lodi of the Afghan Lodi dynasty (1451–1526), and reaching its economic and political zenith under the Mughal dynasty (1526–1857), Agra became synonymous with the culture of the Indian subcontinent.
The Taj Mahal, Agra Fort, Akbar’s tomb, and countless other architectural marvels stand here.
Their domes and arches stand as enduring legacies of the Islamic dynasties that shaped Agra’s skyline and India’s medieval history.
Agra is India's post card.
Yet for all its architectural and cultural significance, it's one of the most difficult places in India to actually move around.
Off the train into classic Agra scams
I’m visiting Agra with my friend, Cameron, and as soon as we step off our train, we’re set upon by touts and hawkers.
The tourist economy here thrives on the ingenious and devious ways people have devised to part visitors from their cash.
The most common scams in Agra include:
- Touts posing as fake Uber and Ola drivers
- Touts “sniping” fares by watching you make a booking, then swooping in before the real driver arrives
- Taxi and rickshaw wallahs claiming your hotel is closed or “bad,” then taking you to a commission‑paying alternative
- Detours to handicraft shops where tat is sold at exorbitant prices, profits split between vendor and driver
- Fake tour‑guide scams
- Fake ticket scams
And that’s without mentioning the food scams (we cut our losses and fasted for the day).
Our odds of avoiding all the scams are slim indeed.
We’re both giants at 6’3”, and I have long red hair—revered in Hindu culture and associated with power and purity, although I’m more known for being dissolute and coarse.
We’re followed and hounded as we walk to the pickup point for an Uber Cameron has booked, while he takes the brunt of the dozen or so touts swarming us.
They all talk over one another in an incomprehensible babble; like a scene from a film that builds up to the main character snapping and having a mental breakdown.
A car pulls up, ostensibly our Uber, but we get strong "snipe scam vibes" from it.
We’ve been off the train for scarcely a few minutes, but already our working memories are overloaded, and the simple task of booking an Uber becomes too much.
So we admit defeat wearily and take the advice of another friend who told us that when the throng of hawkers reaches critical mass, your only option is to, “pick one and go.”
The rickshaw lottery
Poor choice!
Our combined weight is more than the Tuk Tuk we’re bundled into, which happens to be piloted by scammerdeva and commissionkali.
They seem determined to squeeze as many rupees from us as they can—by taking us on long detours.
At least we are so tightly wedged in, there is no chance of our luggage being stolen.
The driver focuses on the road while his blind partner reels off the usual patter and bluster of the archetypal Indian scammer.
He is determined to extract the name of our hotel, despite us telling him—repeatedly—to take us directly to V‑Mart and that we don’t have a hotel booking.
Dissatisfied, he insists on taking us instead to the Taj Mahal.
Context: Cameron and I are on a schedule and must buy some fetching kurtas (a kind of stylish tunic common in South Asia) to wear at the Hindu wedding we’re travelling to tonight.
We’ll visit the Taj Mahal after we’ve bought them, if we have time before our train to Ramnagar later this evening.
The rickshaw wallah has a very selective vocabulary, despite understanding English perfectly.
Exempt from his understanding are the phrases “V‑Mart,” “no hotel,” “we don’t have time,” and “we’re going to a wedding.”
To log our detours and keep us on the correct route, Cameron has Google Maps open and points out several wrong turns.
The driver is certainly not taking us to V-Mart, which is in the other direction.
Cameron explains our plan yet again, but hearing it repeated with alternating politeness and frustration becomes wearisome.
Speaking up for the first time, I uncharacteristically raise my voice and interject, saying flatly that we don’t have time for any bloody detour and that we need to go to V-Mart.
It seems to do the trick.
In a funny twist, the driver asks for Cameron’s phone so he can use it as a satnav.
Handing it over while flying through traffic is a risky move, but we’re out of good options.
Bait and switch
After a moment’s silence, the chief scammer starts speaking to the driver in a resigned tone, and we catch the English word “wedding” among the rapid Hindi.
Going for broke, he then asks Cameron who he thinks has the moral upper hand in the Israel–Palestine conflict, while the driver takes a wrong turn at a junction.
This seems like very dangerous conversational territory in any cab in any part of the world.
But Cameron, channelling his teacher mode, delivers a balanced response with breathtaking coolness while still pointing out where the driver needs to go.
The "no change" scam
We eventually arrive at V‑Mart.
The driver had pre‑arranged a fare of 200 rupees.
We’re prepared and on form as usual, and only have our 500‑rupee notes from the airport, having travelled straight to Agra from the airport in Delhi.
Prepared and on‑form also, the scammer announces that he doesn’t have any change.
Thinking fast, Cameron strikes up a deal: they’ll wait while we buy our kurtas, and then take us to the Taj Mahal—all for an even 500 rupees.
Frustrated, as anyone would be after facing today's challenges on no sleep, Cameron stalks off.
I tell the driver and his partner that we’ll give them their fare when we return with our kurtas.
They drive off the moment I clamber out.
One–nil to us, I suppose.
Not that it feels great, knowing they need the money far more than we do.
Still, that doesn’t mean anyone should accept being willingly fleeced.
Trying to buy a kurta while visiting Agra
We enjoy the novelty of being left alone at V‑Mart, and both somehow manage to find kurtas to fit our 100‑kilogram frames.
For reasons never explained, I’m not allowed to buy the kurta I try on. Two clerks natter conspiratorially, place it back on its hanger, and hand me a similar one wrapped in plastic.
Perhaps it was a “display only” item.
Cameron, meanwhile, gets to keep his fetching turquoise number without issue.
It remains an open mystery.
We’ve been struggling to spend the 500‑rupee notes—the lowest denomination the airport ATM would give us.
At the till, we ask if we can get change for one and are laughed at.
All we want is enough small notes to pay fares and tip properly.
Fortunately, Cameron and I aren’t shy and are perfectly happy to rely on intimidating‑big‑foreigner rights.
We each grab the cheapest carton of juice we can find and pay separately with the cleanest 500‑rupee notes in our wallets.
Brows crinkle, but the transaction goes ahead.
We’re not being cussed because we enjoy it.
We’ve already given away several 500‑rupee notes where a far smaller tip would have sufficed. They mean comparatively little to us.
We simply don’t have smaller denominations, and without them we can’t pay our fair way—the entire circular problem.
But we're doing okay so far in Agra:
- Kurta: Check
- Small change: Check
- Sanity: Check, I guess
To stop being stared at, try a disguise
With an afternoon to spare before catching our overnight train to Ramnagar, we take an Uber to the Taj Mahal.
The driver drops us short, forcing us to run the gauntlet of touts lining the boulevard to India’s most famous monument.
The boulevard is wide, tree‑lined, and gorgeous in the afternoon sun.
Monkeys assault piles of fruit while vendors hawk their wares.
After 2pm, anyone in India can enter for free, and a huge column of revellers, tourists, and devotees is trudging toward the gates.
Many of the visitors are pious Muslims, and mine and Cameron’s presence among them elicits four primary emotional responses: amusement, awe, ridicule, and disdain.
A recounting of every stare would be long and extraordinarily dull.
Suffice to say, I’m already so tired of being stared at in Agra that I cover my head with my sweater and bend my knees to appear less tall.
It doesn't work.
Maddening bag rules at the Taj Mahal
We buy entry tickets for the Taj Mahal (around £15 each) to beat the crowds assembling for free entry later on.
Only after buying them do we learn about the infuriating bag rules visitors are expected to obey.
There is a bag drop, but it won’t accept large bags or flight bags.
Only small bags are allowed inside the grounds.
We’ve already been accosted by street vendors offering to “look after” our rucksacks in their shops.
We initially scoffed at this idea, but it is rapidly becoming our only chance of seeing the monument we’ve detoured so laboriously to glimpse.
To see if we can exert those intimidating‑big‑foreigner rights I mentioned earlier, we force ourselves to the front of the queue.
No, we cannot.
Don't rely on signs to tell you what's allowed in
Flattery also fails. I’m invited beyond the security barrier to read a sign, written in perfectly plain English, stating that large bags cannot be taken inside.
Placing this sign before the barrier—perhaps at the ticket office—would be a great help to any visitor.
Printing the dimensions of acceptable bags would also be beneficial.
But doing either would dent the local economy of fridge‑magnet and marble sellers.
Cameron and I have a spirited debate about leaving our bags with a random shopkeeper.
He’s up for it; I’m not.
We’re here to attend a wedding, and as attractive as the Taj Mahal might be, our real priority is catching the train to Ramnagar tonight.
(Don't) leave your bags with a stranger
In the end—swayed by the fact that even one of the military guards suggested it—we leave our bags with a marble vendor.
We’d already scouted his shop earlier, and he’s delighted at our change of heart.
He places our bags next to the till.
In our heads, we’re already costing up our decision and setting aside a mental budget for overpriced marble souvenirs.
We’re not entirely incautious: we repack our bags to ensure passports, phones, money, and a few valuables are on our person.
If we do get robbed, the rest of the trip will be difficult.
But it’s a mutual decision, and we’re old enough friends not to hold it against each other.
Chin up. It's a Wonder of the World
Carrying only our day bags, stuffed with essentials, we head back to the queue—only to be denied entry at yet another checkpoint.
This one is much more elaborate, akin to airport security.
There’s a CT scanner for bags and a metal detector for visitors, manned by armed guards.
One guard takes issue with Cameron’s day bag—a regular‑sized thing that even Ryanair would allow for free.
Despite our pleas, he tells Cameron he’ll have to leave it with a street vendor if he wants to enter the grounds.
That would mean ramming ourselves back through the now‑massive throng of visitors and leaving his most valuable possessions with a complete stranger, advice that certainly isn’t in my Lonely Planet guide.
We’re getting grumpy now.
No building is worth this much hassle, surely?
I’d love to watch a travel documentary in which the presenter, panting and fed up, has to gush about the virtues of what they’re looking at after enduring all this.
In a cynical moment, I conclude that all documentaries about visiting “difficult” countries are so contrived as to be basically a pack of indecent lies.
You can bribe your way to an easier time
After some exasperated and unsuccessful pitching, we make a last‑ditch attempt to see if Cameron’s day bag is of that hallowed size permissible for the bag drop.
It isn’t.
So we resort to bribing the bag clerk with baksheesh.
Worryingly, my own day bag, containing all my valuables, passed the security check earlier and has been sitting in a heap of other bags on the far side of the scanner for a considerable length of time.
A sort of loose honesty policy is in play for the baggage reclaim: you retrieve your bag by describing it and pointing until the guard’s hand settles on the correct one.
And with that, we pool what remains of our composure, tranquillity, and receptiveness, and join the procession of eager visitors to take in one of the wonders of the world.
Personally, I would update my friend’s executive summary:
Agra: a place that’s extraordinary to read about and excruciating to actually visit.