First off I would like to stress that nothing that anyone could ever have told me and nothing I could have ever read could have prepared me for what India is really like. It is hard to believe that this is truely the way people live here.
So we left Delhi and headed towards Agra for our first of what will be many train rides. As the train slows, the hundreds of people start cramming themselves into any cart they can find ignoring any prearranged seat tickets. We spent that four hour train ride standing smashed up against dozens of Indians who couldnt believe that we went the cheap way to ride second class, many of them warning us before we boarded that this was no place for foreiners.
Arriving in Agra we bought our train ticket for the following night to head to Varanasi which turned out to be a nightmare. Anyway, we got to our hotel in downtown Agra and had lunch at one of the many rooftop restaurants with an unbelievable view of the Taj Mahal only two blocks away. The next day we got an early start to get into the Taj Mahal which was an amzing thing to see. we spent a couple hours there and then visited the Agra Red Fort which is supposed to be the greatest of Red Forts in all of India...not that great. We spent the rest of the day in a complete nightmare. Basically the train station is the biggest s$*t show of a scam that anyone could imagine. Us, along with a dozen other tourist ended up not getting on the train and only get a percentage of our money back for our tickets.
After 6 hours at the station we bit the bullet, got some of our money back and left with four new stressed out friends to a hotel and to start the search for a way out of Agra. Us, along with two people for Australia, and two from the UK will finally arrive in Varanasi tomorow and hopoefully end our nightmares in the big cities. Anyway, sorry i suck at writing...later.
