Agra

After a hair raising bus ride through the mountains from Pushkar to Ajmer, we finally arrived in 1 piece to catch the train to Agra.  We thought all was going according to plan as we were sitting in the tourist office, chatting with the staff and playing Uno.  The head of staff advised us which platform we needed to be on and we said our good byes and left for the train.  The train arrived at platform 3 but we just had a sixth sense that it did not feel right!  There was a train on platform 2 which was about to leave, and we asked about 10 different people which train for Agra, and got about 10 different answers, or they did not speak english!!  Panicking we were on the train on platform 3 as advised and were just like 'what shall we do?'  I saw a guard walk by and left Nicola with the stuff and ran off and caught him and he advised me to get on the train on platform 2!!!! Arghhhhh!!  I ran back and debated with Nicola what to do!!!  We just did not know, but the trains were both about to leave so we made the decision to go for platform 2!  We threw our backpacks back on and pushed through everyone and legged it off the train just as the other train was pulling away……we jumped onto it through the first door we came to, backpacks and all as it was trundling out the station!!!  How we made it up the step with all that weight at speed we do not know, but the adrenalin was pumping!!  We pushed our way through until we found our seats a few carriages down, to the disappointment of the locals who had made themselves comfortable in them.  The guard eventually came and confirmed we were on the right train!!  Thank God because who knows where we would have ended up, seven hours in the wrong direction probably!!!  Always an adventure!!!

Arriving in Jaipur a family boarded the train and sat with us, they did not really speak much english but they were very hospitable and shared their meals and snacks with us.  The women kept looking at us and laughing, mainly at Nicola's socks and our boots, we could imagine how masculine we must have looked to them in our trousers, T shirts and boots, and that was nothing, when we got our backpacks out from under the seats they were really impressed!!  Mainly at the fact we could actually carry them and were analysing all the straps etc.

Seven hours later we arrived in Agra where our pick up was waiting to take us to the hotel in his auto rickshaw.  We were so happy to see him and just wanted to get to our room and get showered and changed.  He found another couple to take to the hotel, so we ended up six of us in total all squashed up in his little rickshaw.  Along the way lo and behold the rickshaw comes to a standstill, probably due to over loading was our guess, but hey what do we know!  Eventually they got it running again just to conk out again a few hundred metres further down the road!!  We sat here for a while in the stifling heat all squashed in like sardines, now we really needed a shower!!!  He managed to start it again and we were off to our hotel.  The hotel, well if you could call it that was pretty grim, and expensive, we got the price down to 500rs (about £7) and demanded free toilet roll as they had cold water showers only, and wifi not working, and room crap!  Best view of the Taj Mahal though, but it was dark so we could not see it!  We negotiated a price with the taxi to pick us up a 5.45am the next morning and went to bed.

We were up bright and early for our day sightseeing at Agra.  We started at sunrise to see the Taj Mahal as this is one of the best times to see it, and we were not disappointed!  It was beautiful!  We got some great pictures and carried on to Agra fort.  Again this was interesting and there was a nice view of the Taj from here too.  It was also the place where Shah Jahan, who had the Taj Mahal built as a memorial for his wife, who died giving birth to their 14th child, was impisoned by his son for the last eight years of his life, before also being taken by boat to the Taj Mahal, and being laid to rest with his late wife Mumtaz Mahal.

We then reluctantly agreed to visit a few shops, where we would be shown how rugs were made (John Lewis being one of their customers), and marble ornaments and furniture, as well as silver jewellery, some of which was debatable whether it was authentic!  We sat down with one of the shop keepers and had a long talk with him about many things, family, politics, religion, lifestyles etc also the fact that the taxi driver gets a commission from the shop owners whether we buy or not which is not fair as we already told him we were not buying anything.  We felt bad and did not go to anymore shops, although this caused quite a heated discussion between us and our driver, but we stood our ground!  We had a fantastic Thali for lunch recommended to us by the shopkeeper, who by the way also dressed Nicola in a sari while we were there too for pictures :)

Again the driver was not impressed as he wanted to take us elsewhere where he would get commission, but again we were adamant and instructed him it was there or nowhere!  Exhausting!!!  After lunch we went back to the hotel for a couple of hours to chill out before heading to the Baby Taj at it is known, followed by Chini-ka-rauza (Tomb of Afzal Khan, a poet) and then to end the day we journeyed to Mehtab Bagh (gardens) to watch the sunset view of the Taj Mahal from across the river.  What an amazing day!!!

At Breakfast the following day we met Leah who was from the New Forest.  She was travelling alone and wanted to go to Fatehpur Sikri, an ancient city, mainly more temples and mosques.  We had been debating this too and agreed to share a ride as it was an hour away in a rickshaw.

I think we were all templed and mosqued out by now and we had a wander around for a bit and grabbed lunch and headed back.  We met up for dinner before we left as we were allowing plenty of time to get to the station as there was a festival starting in the town and traffic was getting chaotic.  It was a shame because it looked like it was going to be a good night.  We wove our way out of town and arrived at the station in plenty of time and boarded the train for varanassi which was an overnight sleeper where our journey would take about 13 hours.  We thought we would travel with the locals and save money in 2nd class and it was not the best nights sleep, the window was open all night because we did not know they closed and every time a train passed us we woke up with heart palpitations scared out of our minds as it was so noisy and a massive rush of air would come in and wake us up!!  When morning came we could see the window closed, bit late then!!!  Never mind, lesson learnt!!