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Published: August 18th 2012
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A car picked us up from our hotel at 6am and we set off for Agra! We thought it'd take between 3-4 hours depending on traffic... but that was before the flat tyre. So we were stuck at the side of the road for a good half an hour at least. Eventually we set off and the traffic was already starting to build up. We weren't bothered about stopping for breakfast on the way but our driver wanted to stop anyway. It was pretty obvious that he got commission for taking us to this well over priced food court/emporium, and i think he actually got a free meal out of it as well!
After a 5 hour drive we finally reached Agra. It was utter chaos - everywhere. The streets were packed with people walking or selling things, Rickshaws, motorbikes, buses, taxi's - the lot! The driver parked up and insisted that we took a tour guide (who conveniently turned up as soon as we were parked) which we refused. We walked up to the West entry gate to the Taj Mahal and took a long walk past some Camels which were being used as transport to the ticket office
- they were in a sorry state, poor things. We paid for our tickets (which were around 8 Pounds each for a foreigner, but 60p for an Indian) and went through security. Like in most tourist places there were two queues, one for men the other for women. Despite walking through the correct queue, the security guard gave Graeme a strange look and shouted "WOMAN??" and pointed him over to the womens queue. After reassuring him that he was in fact a male the security guard shouted to the rest of the guards, and they all laughed. Graeme's face throughout the whole thing was hilarious.
Once we walked through the main entrance we saw the Taj from a distance at first through an arch shaped gate. We were worried that the Taj might have been over hyped and so might be disappointing. But it looked amazing. We had a few photos taken in front of it and suprisingly got to the front of a pretty small queue for the Diana seat and had a photo taken there - despite Graeme's reluctance to strike the Diana pose!
We walked around gardens and the inside of the building, which didn't
take long. I think we spent just over an hour there all in all. THis time also included at least 5 whole families asking for "One snap, please!". One photo turned into 10 per family. But it was all good fun.
After leaving the grounds we headed back to our car, it had just started to spit with rain as we were walking towards the car and as soon as we got in the car the heavy rain started. It was coming down hard so we decided not to visit Agra Fort as planned as it's all outdoors. The driver tried and tried to persuade us to "take a look at my friend's shop until the rain stops", we politely declined, again and again. Instead we asked him to take us to see the mini Taj Mahal only around 3km away. The guy blatantly didn't know what we were talking about as he took us to what looked like another shop, pointed at it and said "Look, the mini Taj!". After a while of explaining what we wanted, he found the place and even though it was still raining a little bit we enjoyed walking around.
After getting
back to the car, we headed back to Delhi. Another tyre had a puncture. So after another long wait at the side of the road we were finally on our way. We stopped for food at one of our driver's friend's 'restaurants' (shack on the side of the motorway). By the time we made it through the evening traffic in Delhi it had been a 6 hour journey. We were really tired and hungry so once we were back in Delhi we went for our first Mcdonald's in India. It was amazing. We tried the Maharaja burger which is like a Big Mac but with chicken.
We were so past full it was unbelievable. We decided to walk it off and take a nice relaxing walk back to our hotel. But we got a bit lost. So we took a cycle Rickshaw back.
We slept like babies that night!
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