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Published: October 13th 2010
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Road to the Taj Mahal
To keep the Taj sparkling white no cars past this point. After work on Friday we jumped on a plane and headed out to see the Taj Mahal and the surrounding area known as The Golden Triangle (Delhi - Agra - Jaipur). We got into Delhi around 1am due to bad weather and a delayed flight, took a car obviously stolen from a nearby junkyard from the airport to the hotel and argued with the hotel desk clerk for about half an hour over our reservations and payment for the airport pickup (the hotel had a bar attached called ‘Thugs’ and still managed to charge an exorbitant amount of money). We started to walk out the door and find somewhere else to stay (like the floor of the train station at this point) when management finally backed off and gave us the keys to our room. Similar to the massage I experienced in Kerala, this place was also recommended to us by a secondee co-worker. I have since decided that recommendations are to be avoided at all costs. By the time we got to bed it was time to get back up and catch the 6am train to Agra. I can't say we bounced right up in the morning but the adrenaline
Taj Mahal
Smile please:) rush associated with being in a new city definitely helped.
Agra is the home to India's beautiful Taj Mahal. It's brilliant white and so symmetrical that a builder in this day and age with similar ideas may run the risk of being institutionalized. In any event, it definitely works for the Taj. The craftsmanship both outside and in is really something to see. Not much else to say other than I'm glad I made the trip to see it. Sounds a bit insufficient for one of the new wonders of the world and maybe it’s because I was going on no sleep that I didn't feel any sort of connection or reverence for this place. Maybe it’s just because I’m not Indian. I did have an appreciation for how beautiful it was and would recommend a trip to Agra to anyone visiting India. By the way, I’ll gladly give recommendations just will not be taking them anymore.
We really liked the train from Delhi to Agra but decided to book a private car to take us on to Jaipur to have the freedom to stop whenever we saw something of interest. Driving (or riding) in India is such
Taj Mahal
Mausoleum in Agra built in the 1600s by emperor Shah Jahan for his 3rd wife who died giving birth to their 14th child. OCD Symetrical. Absolutely stunning. an ‘exhilarating’ experience that I considered slipping the driver a little extra to drive slowly and keep the swerving into oncoming traffic to an absolute minimum. As soon as I saw the car however, I realized that parting with any additional rupees was completely unnecessary. We ended up in a vintage Ambassador from 1958 that was so big and heavy it could have taken out an entire herd of elephants, not to mention it didn’t even seem capable of going over 45mph. Other than our driver’s racking cough that made me think he could keel over dead at any given moment, it was a fairly stress free 5 hour drive that we spent catching up on the sleep we had missed the night before. We were only awakened twice; once during a minor car accident and second, when a barricade came crashing down on the hood of our car as we tried to roll through a toll booth (I think the brakes may have gone out for a spell); all in all, a relatively uneventful ride by Indian driving standards.
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