Agra

We left New Delhi train station on the 11.25am train and 2.5hrs later arrived in Agra. On board we purchased lunch as one of the carriages is a kitchen so we had a massive meal that we both could not finish for only £1 each. We went in class 2ac which basically means you get a bed with sheets, blankets and pillow each in a cabin divided into 2 bunks so you have 2 top bunks and 2 bottom bunks. Luckily we only had to share with a young girl who slept for nearly the whole journey so Kathy played monkey by taking the top bunk swinging up and down the ladder. It was just like being kids again!

Kathy took the top bunk as she was smaller.

 Again we were besieged at the train station with loads of rickshaw drivers fighting for our custom so we ignored them all and found this driver who must have been in his 90's with no teeth so we went with him as he did not hassle us thus gave us a fair price to the hotel.
  The hotel Mumtaz Mahal was nice and had a roof top restaurant which had a great view of the Taj Mahal while we ate breakfast which was nice as there were rhesus macaques swinging about around us, families of pigs running up and down the road, cows munching on the trees and eagles grabbing thermals to go hunting.   Next morning we got up at 5am and queued up for a ticket to get in. Usual 2 tiered pricing system . Indians= 60p , Foreigners=£12.50. Then we jumped onto an electric bus as there is a 500 metre pollution exclusion zone around the Taj Mahal due to the damage exhaust fumes are doing to the marble, staining it so badly that they use a mixture of milk and cow dung to clean it every night!

Giant hand crushes Taj in pricing outrage.

The queue was about 20 minutes long as it does not open until sunrise but as soon as we entered the sun rose above the tree line to light the marble up which makes it translucent in appearance so when you take photos it looks like a mirage in the distance. I know everybody goes on about how fabulous it is etc, etc, but even hardened travellers like Kath and myself could not help to be impressed with the size and presentation of the structure. It was sublime as we sat and watched it glisten in the low morning sun. We ventured inside to see the false tombs and some exquisite marble carving but it was more impressive from the outside. After 3 hours we finally become fed up of looking at it and  returned to the hotel which was only a couple of hundred metres away to have breakfast and view it from the roof again. In the afternoon we ventured out to nowhere in particular but the heat of the day and rickshaw drivers ground us down in just 2 hours so we caved in and got a rickshaw back to the hotel.

That's the money shot Princess Di.

  Next day after a lazy start Kathy says she wanted to chill (well it was 36c outside our air con room) and watch a movie on T.V. so I caught a rickshaw to the Red Fort on my own. Usual pricing farce again. Indian 21p Foreigner £6.

It was red and fort like in structure.

The fort was quite impressive and a lot better than the fort at Delhi since it contained many a palace and was massive. There was plenty of people there as well which surprised me but only a handful of Europeans. There were signs everywhere saying don't sit or walk on the grass/gardens and everywhere you walked Indian families were having picnics on the grass! It's a funny world. Even security could not be bothered to move them on. Agra was a dusty,polluted place to stay so next day the hotel let us check out late so we caught a train to our next destination Jaipur.