It's a Wonderful Life

We had a complete nightmare getting out of Kathmandu. There had been a lot of minor striking whilst we were in Nepal but of course they picked the day we were due to fly out to have the mother of all strikes. I'd intended to buy my brothers' girlfriends presents in the morning. No can do - all shops were shut. Our hotel also informed us that we may not be able to get to the airport - no taxis, cars or motorbikes are running due to the strike. Any car found on the road is being burnt. Oh goody! The guys told us we could walk, which I felt dubious about given the heaviness of my bag and the 35 degree Kathmandu heat, but we headed out into the street nonetheless, with a crappy RG map in tow.

Thankfully, there were a couple of cycle rickshaws in the street. We had to hire two - one for us and one for our bags. Of course they totally took advantage of the situation, overcharging us wildly. I felt like some sort of lazy colonialists making two guys ship us to the airport and we got a few stares en route. It was really nice in Kathmandu with no traffic or fumes, and it was quite charming having people just wandering through the middle of the road. Unfortunately a cycle rickshaw is not the most practical means of transport and Elliott had to get out and push us up the hills!

Finally at the airport, the nightmare day continues as our flight gets delayed by five hours. So we spend the day in the fairly crappy airport, getting into Delhi around 9pm. From there we'd planned to go to Agra that night. We carried on with that plan but as a result of the late arrival we got to Agra at 2.30 in the morning.

We had hired a driver and he met us at the airport and took us on. We stopped for food in a dhaba (roadside restaurant) where we had paneer masala and daal with butter roti (very traditional Indian food but not like what you get in English Indian restaurants). During this meal, he had lots of whisky and described himself as quite drunk. Oh, reassuring! He was also tired. And apparently most people who drive at night are also drunk! We were going insanely fast through Agra so I was glad to arrive at the hotel in one piece.

We headed straight to bed as we were getting up for sunrise in just over two hours.

Got up at 5, barely felt alive. We walked to the Taj - our hotel was really close, which was great. We got into the complex later than I'd hoped (*cough*Elliott*cough*) but fortunately there weren't too many people still so I got a lot of shots with no one in.

The Taj is an amazing building. It was really beautiful from every angle. As you walk through the mosque and fake mosque either side of it, you catch glimpses of it through the archways and each time it continued to impress me!

After looking around for a few hours, we had breakfast at the hotel.

The second stop of the day was at Sikandra to see Akbar's mausoleum. This was a really beautiful building and incredibly untouristy. There were some sort of deer with wiggly antlers grazing around the complex and it gave the place a very untouched feel.

We headed to the so-called Baby Taj next. This was obviously not as visually impressive as its namesake, but it was still a beautiful piece of architecture with fine detail as always on the carving. It also had a nice situation right on the Yamuna River.

We had lunch, which for me was murg masala and lassi.

Last stop of the day was at Agra Fort. We'd been told much of this was closed and it wasn't worth visiting. This was incredibly untrue. There were a million different sections, all of them distinctive and beautiful in different ways. It also had a nice distance view of the Taj.

I was surprised at how easy it had been to see the sites in one day and would recommend doing this to anyone, as Agra is NOT a nice city! But all of the things we saw were really amazing and worth visiting.

I ended up falling asleep at half five and didn't wake up until seven the next morning. Busy day!

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