Delhi and Agra

Morning and welcome to our shiny and spanking new blog.

South America was just like soooo last year that we felt we needed a fresh blog for our new travels. This season's in thing is India - I hear it's a quiet little place with a pleasant cool climate and barely a spot of dust in sight.

Okay, enough silliness, we left Bexleyheath on a warm afternoon and headed to the airport. The flight was passable, the dinner curry of course (which was yummy) and we got to watch Slumdog Millionaire. For those who haven't seen it, we both thought it was pretty good, not essential cinema viewing, but a lovely dvd night in type of film. We arrived at Delhi airport expecting it to be packed, ruthless and confusing, but it turned out to be empty and remarkably simple. Within no time we were at our hotel and snoozing our jetlag away.

Delhi is a truly crazy city, it is busy at every turn with people, animals, cars, bikes and tuk-tuks fighting and beeping for every available bit of space. The dust and fumes combine with the heat to make an atmosphere that is pretty uncomfortable during the day, although a little easier at night. We were grateful that we had pre-booked from England a hotel with air-con and a tour of the city with an air-con car. There are several sights to visit in Delhi, which we whizzed around on our tour. The Red Fort is an enormous walled fort with some lovely marble buildings and pretty gardens. Having seen many better forts since, it feels like it was merely a warm up, but was certainly worth a visit. The other sights included a Bahian Temple, which was great mainly as it was cool (temperature) and breezy inside and India Gate, which is an Arc-de-Triumphe style war memorial.

The following day we pottered around Paharganj, the backpackers home in Delhi, and topped up some essential travelling supplies, before getting an early night in anticipation of an early bus the next morning.


It felt bad getting up at 5:30am while it seemed like midnight in jetlag terms, but it felt good to be on the road and properly getting our trip underway. Our destination: Agra - home of the Taj Mahal.

Slightly disappointingly, Agra is as crazy, busy and noisy as Delhi. Although a tenth of the size, with a mere 1.3 million population, it is full of people eager to sell to - and take advantage of - unsuspecting tourists. Unlike Delhi however, Agra has the sights to make the hassle worth putting up with.

After relaxing for the afternoon, we headed for dinner at a rooftop restaurant overlooking the Taj. It is unlit at night, but even eating next to its silhouette felt pretty special and it did save the real view for the following morning. Waking at 5:30 again, we met the tuk-tuk driver we had hired for the day and headed for the Taj. For those who have visions of the Taj Mahal being a temple out on its own in the middle of the desert: it's not a temple and it's not on its own. It sits in the middle of big old Agra. The appearance of solitude comes from the photos you see of it. It is built upon a raised marble platform which means when viewed from the ground its backdrop is nothing but sky. Wandering through the gardens and ponds to see it from every angle while the sun rose over it was an amazing experience. On our travels, many 'attractions' have been built up out of all context and end up disappointing a little. The Taj Mahal was not one of these, the sunrise was spectacular and the early start ensured there were very few other tourists. As I said, the Taj is not a temple, it is a tomb, built by Emperor Shah Jahan as a memorial to his wife who died in childbirth; it took 22 years and 20,000 workers to build...

Crikey I've banged on a bit there, I'll be quick with the rest of Agra! After the Taj we went to Agra Fort, this was pretty cool too and certainly kicked the ass of Delhi Fort. A smaller mausoleum, commonly called the Baby Taj was also beautiful and while being a tenth of the size, the decorative work and architecture was very impressive. Our tuk-tuk driver, SK, was being a star and taking us to hidden free viewpoints of the Taj and other great things we'd never have seen without him, but unfotunately he spoiled our apprecation of him by insisting we went to several shops on the way home. These shops were rather hard sell and wanted clearly extortionate prices. SK clearly got commission and it was all round pressure to buy. We made a small gesture in buying a top for Chrissie, but still wished we hadn't. We were never in any trouble, but it was an unwanted and uncomfortable experience.

Afterwards we went for pizza to comfort ourselves, but unfortunately this was curried and a little weird, so we settled for another early night in preparation for yet another early start the next day - up at 6:30 for the bus to Jaipur - the pink city.

All in all a good if busy start. India seems a great place to travel, we just need to steel ourselves to the hassles a little more.

Love

Chrissie and Matt
x x x

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