Agra

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On to Agra!

We left at eight in the morning which seemed far to early based on our previous half-nine wakeup time. The drive there took much longer than the train would have - maybe five hours. There were a couple of tea stops and Mr Dutt treated us to masala chai at the first - very nice. The second was a much more touristy rest stop which was a restaurant-cum-souvenir shop and looked very pricey, it had nice toilets though.

Before we went into Agra's centre we visited Akbar's Mausoleum. This a tomb with a very ornate red sandstone main gate and gardens inside. In the centre of the gardens lay the main tomb which was constructed from white marble and had loads of cupolas on top. The gardens were very green and we saw lots of deer inside. There were supposed to be peacocks and monkeys as well but we didn't see any. The camera broke down here, the Indian power seems to have broken all my rechargeable batteries, it's that or the heat anyway.

Mr Dutt took us to a hotel outside the Old City which was quite well recommended in our book but was a bit over our new minimalist budget, we decided to stay there anyway as it was just for the one night. The problem was that it seemed quite secure against mosquitoes but of course we got horribly bitten by the one very hungry mosquito that got in! Thank god for malaria protection. There were a lot of Indians staying who all seemed to have come from the same wedding or something so there was a lot of noise.

We also saw the Baby Taj Mahal in the afternoon which was nice - all the same features as the other tombs but much smaller. Kathy wanted a piccy of herself with a monkey but as soon as she got close the monkey started chasing her! In the evening we went across the river from where you can see the Taj Mahal at sunset. This was not as spectacular as we were hoping because the sun set very quickly and the Taj didn't appear to change colour at all. However the reflection of the Taj in the river was very pretty and it was amazing how near we got without paying anything. There were also a few camels loitering about!

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