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Besides the Taj Mahal and avoiding touts there isnt a whole lot to do in Agra. The Taj is beautiful (photos to come), but there isnt much else.
We arrived in Agra after a 4 hour train ride which proceeded without incident. The numbers on the seats were printed on the back which caused some confusion among the passengers about who was sitting in which seat, but it was quickly settled and we arrived in Agra. As in Jaipur there were loads of people trying to get us to get in their autorickshaw at the station, but we waited for a good deal and took it. We stayed at the Hotel Sheela, which turned out to be a quite nice tropical hotel with decent rooms. After getting settled we had lunch at our hotel, nothing special. The food was pretty bland, which has been a characteristic of most of the food in Agra. After our lunch we went out to Akbar's Tomb, which had peaceful grounds. This elderly guy followed us around and tried to be our guide, but we didnt really want one, so we tried to get him to leave.
After Akbar's tomb we went to the
Taj Mahal. No trip to India would be complete without it, and it did not disappoint. We took a guide at the front gate, and his original price was 375 rupees, and I talked him down to 50 rupees. In the end I gave him 100, but the fun is in the challenge. We were harassed by photo wallahs at the Taj and we eventually succumbed to one of them and allowed him to take some photos. He took a whole bunch of photos, some of which are funny, some good, some wrong. Overall they were pretty good and we were able to get the photos for a pretty cheap price. They sold us the negatives for 50 rupees, so we can make more prints in America.
After the Taj we were steered by our guide to a "government" shop. As I found out much later, marble boxes for sale there are 5 times more expensive for basically the same product there. Our friendly guide was getting a nice cut from my stupidity. The tell you not to do that in the guide book too... oh well, it wasnt a lot of dollars.
We had dinner at a
roof-top restaurant and watched the Taj with the sunset. Quite nice, though the food was again "eh".
The next day Nabil and I decided to scratch our previously ambitious itinerary and laze around for the day. Both of us, though we didn't want to say it, were tired. We had been travelling hard for 5 days straight and we needed a break. We checked out of our hotel and chilled out at Yash restaurant for a while. Yash has the best lemon-honey tea, which basically consists of lemon juice, hot water, and a lot of honey. So good. Yash was by far the best food we had in Agra.
For lunch we went to Pizza Hut and were happy to have some comfort food. It hit the spot.
After lunch we went on the quest for the loaf. We had brought peanut butter with us to India, but we had nothing to put it on. So... we embarked on what should have been a simple errand. We wandered all over Agra, looking for a simple loaf of sliced white bread. Our rickshaw wallah claimed to be 12 years old, though he probably was closer to 15, and
said he had no friends and no family. Probably bull, but we felt bad for him nonetheless and bought him a bottle of water while we enjoyed the AC of Pizza Hut. In the quest for the holy loaf we finally succeeded and found a nice packet of bread and squeeze packets of jam.
Our train to Jalgaon left at 1:30 in the morning, so we went to dinner at a (common theme in India) empty restaurant and headed out to the train station. The station in Agra is quite nice and had a 24-hour restaurant. We sat for 4 hours there - I read Kim and Nabil read another book - and we waited. Our 19-hour train was only 15 minutes late, pretty good
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Spotswood
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Ah, and the equivalent train to Chicago is often 2-4 hours late!