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Published: August 25th 2006
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India- Agra
Me at Taj Mahal The flight was via Singapore. We got to the airport, fine, checked in. fine, was there 2 hours early, fine and then went to board the plane and we had missed our flight by 10 mins. Still to this day I do not know how we did it. We didn't even have a hangover! Really really stupid. So to cut a preety long story short we had to get the next flight to Singapore and have a 23 hour stopover. We couldn't afford a hotel in our budget so we stayed in the airport. It really wasn't that bad as we watched two films in the free cinema and paid for use of a business class lounge. It still dragged a bit though.
At last at about 1am we landed into Delhi and by god that was a shock. I have been told by many a people to brace myself for India. Well nothing can prepare you.
A few things I noticed.
1. Most places are poverty stricken and really its so sad. People are just sleeping rough on the streets everywhere.
2. People (even if they have a house) just do number 1's and 2's on the street
Agra
Taj Mahal so, like, in most places all you can smell is piss and shit (i'm a bit crude i know)
3. As most people are Hindi, cows are sacred so no word of a lie there are everywhere sleeping in the middle of the road, taking a stroll in the park. Madness. Oh yeah and the elephants and Camels wondering about.
4. Where there are loads of cows there is gonna be loads of cow pat!
5. I was actually surprised by the food it was really good. What was not good was the Delhi belly which I had for the whole of the trip and have still got. Really daunting when on a 7 hour coach journey.
6. The tour. I really think Rach and I had had enough of being told what to do getting up to an alarm every morning and basically doing thing that we didn't really want to. We had just finished a 3 week tour of China. To be honest the group were a bit boring really aprt from Kuldeep, Paul, Michael, Lewis and Amy and Faith.
7. Indians invented every thing. This really wasn't an horrible fact just funny. We were told that the
Chandelo
Local village women delivering water supplies Jet engine was invented by an Indian mand. Viagra is named after the city Agra, Shampoo os and Indian word and so on. It was true brilliance.
Listen to me being all down about it. Really most of the country is amazing I personally just didn't like the cities as there are too many people and everyone is so poor.
The highlights of the trip were, seeing the Taj Mahal (even though I didn't really see what is so amazing about it), blowing most the budget on hippie clothes in Pushkar, getting blessed by a priest in Pushkar whilst a monsoon rain was pouring down on us. I would recommend anyone to go to this city it is so chilled out and cool, how can I put it getting a little light headed because we were drinking special Bhang Lassis Pushkar and Jaisalmer (wont go into too much detail of whats in them all legal in that part of India), staying in a heritage hotel in a small desert village called Chandelo. The best part was doing a camel safari for 3 hours and then having to sleep in the desert in a tent with no one else around.
Chandelo
Local school boys playing The tents were so hot, our tour leader Kuldeep said to bring our beds out side and sleep under the start. So we did and goodness, it was fantastic. I have never seen so many starts in my life it was truly amazing. The only thing was though when we woke up one of the guys said that wild dogs were walking round our beds in the night when we had a look, yes footprints everywhere. Oh yes and the size of the bats. They come out around dusk and they are bigger than seagulls, huge.
Our trip did end on a good note though. After a 7 hour coach and train journey we had to spend a night in the crappiest hotel ever. Me, Rach and the boys were so fed up we went and did the untinkable whilst travelling. We checked into a 5* hotel. The Grand Intercontinental in New Delhi. Im telling you it was a world away from what was on the hotels door step! We had such a relaxing two days. I shall never forget it as long as I live.
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