Agra & the Taj...

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We left Delhi by public bus and endured 6hrs of bad roads and dusty air before arriving in Agra that night. We took a rickshaw to Taj Ganj, an area only about 2 minutes from the Taj Mahal itself and had no trouble finding a decent hotel, with an impressive view of the Taj from it's rooftop terrace.

Agra, we had been warned, is not a town worth sticking around in and we soon realised that the standard of the food was enough to drive anyone away! But we were lucky to find one nice, family owned, restaurant with a fairy-lit terrace and pretty much ate all our meals there. (Unfortunately for Sarah, we didnt eat ALL our meals there and now, 4 days later, she's sick with the infamous Delhi Belly!).

Our first night, we realised that the city is swarming with monkeys and they are a real nuisance to the people who live there. We watched a troop of about 40 of them descend on the rooftop opposite our hotel and tear the place apart until the owner of the property chased them off with a stick! One big male monkey attacked him though, but luckily ran off when another person came running at them! It was actually pretty funny, despite the minor casualty...

The city also has very shallow open sewers, so i dread to think what the city must be like when the monsoons come. To be honest, the area we were staying in was actually very nice and very cheap and there were very few touts but but i can also see the city's lack of appeal. Had it not been for the ghost town of Fetaphur Sikri 40kms away, we wouldn't have bothered staying as long as we did.

On day #2 we took a bus to the ghost town an hour away and we were amazed at what greeted us there (besides about 1000 beggars and touts all demanding money, pens, chocolate and toffees).
The city was built during the Moghul period by a maharaja, following the death of his wife, in her honour. But unfortunately, due to serious water shortages in the region, the city was abandoned soon after it was errected. The ruins contain a working mosque and a really well preserved palace, not to mention countless houses, forts, temples, stables and courtyards all standing in a really picturesque area over-looking a valley. All the package tourists head straight for the palace, so it was great to have the rest of the complex all to ourselves for the day. The most impressive structure i thought, was a tower built in memory of the maharajas favourite elephant, that had elephant tusks sticking out of it in all directions from bottom to top.

While there, we encountered a little boy of about 8yrs old who told us that his business was doing stunts for money...and that he would dive into a reservoir set about 40ft into the ground and filled with mud, for $1... When we declined the offer he asked if we would like to challange him in poker- his other business!!!

Day #3 we visited the Taj Mahal and words wont really do that justice. Ill upload photos soon and those will speak for themselves. It was so exciting to finally be stood looking at an icon we have all seen so many times in photos and on tv. I realised there that i am actually in India! Again, we got asked by a lot of people for photos of us and handshakes and received more invitations to people's homes. There was a brilliant atmosphere in the place and you could see that everybody (domestic and foreign tourists alike) were amazed to be there. It was just so romantic to see the thought and work and effort that Shah Jahan put into the mausoleum and the complex in the memory of the woman he loved.
Dec said he will do something similar for me.......................

So now we have seen the Taj. Now we are in India for real. Yeay!

The following morning we left, again by bus, bound for Bharatpur and the Keoladeo Ghana Bird Sanctuary.

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Photos

taj mahal - 2
us at taj

taj mahal
us at taj

Fetaphur Sikri
The elephant tower

Fetaphur Sikri
The mosque