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Published: September 25th 2006
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Taj Mahal
The Taj Mahal Up at a bleary eyed 5am to catch the Shatabdi Express out of New Delhi station. Managed to find the right platform, coach and jump on a moving train! Train is excellent and quick and have been fed well with tea, biscuits, spicy potato rosti and peas. Journey only takes 2 hrs and is very comfortable indeed - highly recommended.
Agra is much calmer than Delhi but still very hectic! Many touts descended on us as we left the train - in the end we just had to pick one at random to take us to the hotel. Stayed at the Howard Park Plaza which was very luxurious, clean and very deserving of the extra dollar per night more than the hotel in Delhi.
The road outside the hotel was really crazy - you get descended upon as soon as you step through the gate. Even a simple task to buy a razor ended up in a rickshaw ride, a sob story from the rider and then a visit to a jewellry store (don't ask!)
Visited Agra Fort (very similar to the Red Fort in Delhi, but better preserved) and then onto the Taj Mahal. Both were very
For Heena
Picture from Beckie For Heena beautiful and allow you to escape the mania of the touts for a while.
The queue into the Taj was very long and crazy - you are mobbed by touts offering to get you in without queuing- saying that the queue will take 2 hrs (took 15 mins!) and that it looks like it may rain! With our by now finely honed bargaining skills, we managed to get them arguing against each other and the price dropped from 500 to 50 Rupees. For a reason unknown to us, we were not allowed to take in our magnetic backgammon game - they thought it may have been a dangerous weapon maybe - the airlines have a lot to learn.
The 2nd day in Agra we overslept - panic!!! The room was so dark and we were so tired that we just flaked out completely! Had a traditional Southern Indian breakfast of Idli (fluffy rice flour dumplings with veg curry and coconut chutney) before heading off to Fatephur Sikri with a friendly tuk-tuk driver (and his mate!) that we had met the day before. The city is deserted and very beautiful - the adjacent mosque was mobbed by touts and
Paul in a Tuk Tuk
What more to say?.... beggars (probably because it was free to get into!). We managed to dispatch most of the touts except for a small boy who was much harder to shake off. He finally got the message when we told him to sshh and gave him a pen!
Friendly tuk-tuk driver showed his true colours on the way home when the hard sell came and he took us to a government run hill top cottage industry shopping centre. The stuff was beautiful and well made, but with Beck in charge of the purse strings they did not stand a chance! It's a real shame as the tuk-tuk guy had been genuinely nice and taken us to some good places - his bad reaction to us not wanting to buy anything reminded us that he was after some cash after all.
Had a leisurely dinner, whiling away some hours until the planned departure of our train to Varanassi at 9.15pm. At 8.05pm we thought to check the train departure times on our tickets as there had recently been a new timetable put into place - the planned departure time printed on the tickets was 8.07pm - second mega panic of the day! Grabbed our bags and tuk-tuk driver and jammed ourselves and all our bags into the tuk-tuk, and sped off (well as fast as a tuk-tuk can speed off!) towards the train station in a bit of a stress. Much panic and confusion later, we found out that the original information was correct and the train actually left at 9.15pm as it had done for the past 25 yrs!
The train was an epic adventure of 16 hrs (meant to be 12!?) - we were booked into a 2 tier A/C sleeper, which can only be described as 2 seats big enough to sleep in - placed in a corridor with a curtain to pull across to hide you from the other passangers. Both went to sleep hugging our rucksacks and didn't really get much sleep!
Woke up a little dazed and confused, but in plenty of time for our 9.30am arrival - unfortunately we spent the next 4 hrs going to Timbuktu and back through really small towns. From now on South West trains can do no wrong! There did not seem to be any real reason for the delay - we did stop once or twice to get a cow off the tracks - it was just late. All part of the Incredible India experience.
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Pen
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no more curry breakfasts!!!!
And I thought i was a pickle eating chinese for breakfast on a hangover- can't believe you have to eat curry for bfast!!! You sound like you are having an amazing adventure. Look after one another, and i hope a ring was bought at the jewellry store!!!!???!!!!! Love you both very much Take care love us 3 xoxoxoxoxoxoxo