Claire : Tuesday (18 Dec)

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After an interesting night's sleep in a large double bed (between Alice and Hanna talking non-stop in their sleep), we all woke feeling slightly bewildered and deafened by the evening's noises! Non stop horns blaring and dogs barking, street wallahs setting up for the day and men clearing their throats..... The sensory delights of India. Breakfast was taken on the top of the hotel with views down to the street below. The eye level view was fascinating with all of Delhi waking up, mainly on the roof tops. We felt somewhat voyeuristic watching the men washing and carrying out their daily ablutions, not all of them on the roof!



10.00am we were met by our lovely driver, Vijay, who loaded up our bags as we were 'hurried' into the car to avoid the increasing hassle that was mounting. The drive from Delhi to Agra was long and hair-raising. At one point we were going round the round-about the wrong way with several tuk-tuks also going the wrong way so a major traffic jam but with all cars facing the wrong way. Our driver only swore twice with the children too distracted to notice. Several cows added to the confusion...



En-route to Agra we stopped at the birth place of Krishna. Our driver left us at the end of a pedrestrianised road, with the warning words, don't talk to anybody and don't buy anything? We got to the temple after a short walk and had to join two separate lines, one for women and one for men. Jerry and Joe went through quickly, whilst Alice, Hanna and I got caught up in a row between two men who were arguing about where we should take our shoes off! We asked an army guard, "Do we need to take our shoes off here?” He responded with the Indian non-committal response of nodding his head both ways. Alice said out loud, "Was that a yes or a no?” to which I had a slight sense of humour failure!



We finally got into the temple after queuing with 30 or so elderly ladies who were pushing us out of the way, presumably because we had no real need to be there in their eyes. After being frisked by a female army officer, we entered the temple to the sound of a Hindu chorus and were met by hundreds of pilgrims dancing in a form of outside auditorium. We sat down to avoid drawing attention to ourselves! It felt like being in an evangelical church combined with a rock concert ... We didn't stay too long and hastily walked back to the car and headed for Agra, the home of the Taj Mahal.



We arrived at our 'home stay' guest house at 7pm; relieved to be out of the car and away from the noise, well, less noise!



The owner of the home stay were a lovely couple. The man had lived in the shadows of the Taj Mahal as a child as his father owned a restaurant at the gate of the Taj, 60 years earlier. He told us amazing stories of how he had access to the Taj when nobody else were in there, having parties at night as a teenager. Having visited the Taj, at 7am and sunset, the magic is difficult to describe. It appears unreal, truly like a mirage.

We ate at the home stay and slept heavily as we had a 6am alarm call for a 6.30 pick up to see the Taj at sunrise.

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