A fairy tale in a nightmare!


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Asia » India » Uttar Pradesh » Agra
November 22nd 2010
Published: November 25th 2010
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The North

Yes, the north!! Different for sure! Our flight went really smooth, but Delhi.. No words could descripe this city! With all the stories we've heard we decided to wait at the airport and then go straight to the New Delhi train station. Good desicion cause everywhere they tried to rip us off!
Arriving at the train station they tried to tell us that our train was delayed for about 9 hours! And that we should buy a new ticket for a train from Old Delhi.. Us not taking this, they said we should wait in in the waiting room on the other side of the station!
Probably reading this it sounds like so "obvious", but being there and 5 really confinshing indians telling you all the same story you start doubting!
Luckely we didn't bite! We told them politely to "shove it up their arse" and went to the correct platform.. And there it was "our beautiful train straight to Agra"!!

Agra

Of course we arrived, as usual, in the dark.. But this time we had prebooked our stay for the night! Completly exhausted we had a nice refreshing, riddicioulus expensive beer on the roof top! Never order a beer without asking how much it actualy is! 190 rupees for a beer!! Are they nuts! (normal 70 rupees)

The next morning our alarm went of at 5 o'clock to get to the Taj Mahal before the sunrise... Hmmmm sunrise not really.. It had been raining and is was really smoggy!
After being ripped off by so many Indians we don't believe anything anymore what comes out of their mouths! So a lovely old Indian man tells us that we are going the wrong way to buy our tickets for the Taj and we straight get grumpy and told him off.. But him being really determend trying to help us he finally convinced us to ask a guard of a "20 star hotel" where to get our tickets! And you can guess it! The old man told the truth.
Guilt took over and we took his funny bycicle rickshaw to the ticket place and back to the Taj Mahal!! Thanked him about a thousand times and went into the Taj Mahal!

After being put in a "female" and "male" line we waited another half an hour before the east gate opened.
"WOW" walking through the gates it was like nothing that we can discribe. It just blew our minds away.
The Taj Mahal in the early morning without the millions of people pushing around it is just breath taking!
The Taj Mahal was built by Shah Jahan as a memorial for his 2nd wife, Mumtaz Mahal, who died giving birth to their 14th child in 1631. They say that the death of his wife made him so sad that his hair turned grey overnight. They start building the Taj that same year and was finished in 1653. But apperantly the main building was build in 8 years!
We wandered around the Taj for about 3 hours... Taking more then 400 pictures (yes to much), getting harashed by locals wanting to have a picture with you and the Taj, we decided it's been enough and we went back to the hotel to have breakfast and chill out!

The 2nd day in Agra we got kicked out of our hostel, cause some how they overbooked and we where back in the streets! Josh "MY HERO" found us a even better and cheaper place for our last night in this hectic, poluted, chaotic crazy city!
After not really wanting to go out on the streets again we dragged ourselves to Agra Fort... A good decision cause it's an amazing fort.
The fort's been transformed from a military purpose, to a palace, to a prison and probably many more! It's ear-shaped and has colossal double walls that rise over 20m in height and measure 2.5km in circumference.
If you walk through the fort it feels like a huge maze, because of the many buildings forming a city within a city.
We just strolled around got lost found our path again or we ended up where we just started! But it's beautifull. You walk from the red sandstone to the white marble! And normally on a clear day you can see the Taj Mahal from most of the spots in the fort!! We could fagely see it.. But the smog was to big!

Big cities aren't our cup of tea. So we decided to keep going! Up north to the state of Punjab to Amritsar. It only took us again an 17 hour train ride!

Amritsar

Amritsar is home to Sikhism's most sacred place, the amazing Golden Temple! The Golden dome in the middle of a holy pool is gilded with 750kg of pure gold. The temple draws millions of people from all over the world each year.
Here we met up with Charles and Tracey, a australian/english couple, who we've been crossing paths with since Hampi!
We walked around the holy pool, seeing people dipping into the most contaminated water ever, we decided to give the big food court a chance. Guru-Ka-Langar is the free community dinning hall. The massive kitchens make vegetarian meals for an estimated 60,000 to 80,000 people a day! You all sit on the floor in big lines facing each other. Man come by to fill up your plate with curries, rice and chapati's. We all tried it except for the water!! Wisely we decided not to drink it.

The next day we went to the Pakistan boarder to see a really funny closing ceremony. The Pakistani and Indian millitary meet at the boarder to join eachother in a 30 minute hilarous pure theatrical show!
The flag-lowering, closing of the boarder ceremmony is a mix of orderly colonial-style pomp, comical goose-stepping and, considering the two countries rocky relationship, amazing demonstration of harmony!
We could go throught the VIP section with our passports.. but still ended up between all the indians singing dancing and clapping around!
After the flags are lowered the border is closed for the night. .And this goes every day like this!

Both sick we made our way up to Mcleod Ganj... The home of the Dalai Lama.














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25th November 2010

Oh my gosh, I loved Agra Fort so much! Taj was incredible in real life too. I honestly thought I would go: oh yeah that's the Taj Mahal. But no. It's 'OH MY GOD... THAT IS THE TAJ MAHAL!' Ps. How different is the North to the South... jesus!
14th December 2010

pakket
Hallo allebei Ik heb het pakketje ontvangen De inhoud is agenda-----boekje van de Dalai Lama-----camera met toebehoren Dit ter controle Klopt het allemaal???? veel liefs van mij

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