Oh we love the transport here, it’s so smooth and efficient…..oh, hang on, that’s a line from the Japan entry….we arrived in Agra at 5.30am on Tuesday after a 7 and a half hour ride on the “luxury sleeper bus”, which would be known as the “boneshaker awake all night” bus if India had a trading standards department.
Arriving so early turned out to be a real bonus though because it meant we were able to go the Taj Mahal when it opened at 6.30am, which meant that we beat the crowds and got there just as the sun was coming up and starting to burn off the mist that shrouded it.
We’d dropped our bags at our hotel, which is literally 15 seconds’ walk from the East Gate entrance to the Taj. From the gate, you walk towards a big arch and through the arch stretches the long garden and waterways that lead up to the Taj itself. It really is an amazing sight. Like everyone, we’d seen it in pictures and on TV many times before but it’s still incredible to see up close.
We walked through the garden bit and around and inside the Taj and took about 300 pictures (but we’ll just post the best ones!). Inside the Taj is actually quite small and there are just the tombs of the Shah and his wife (in whose honour he had it built). Though the building is still incredibly impressive with loads of handmade inlays and decoration.
After the Taj, we had some breakfast and walked to Agra Fort about 2 miles away. It was originally built around 1000 AD but has been in its present form since the 16th century when one of the Mughal rulers moved the Indian capital to Agra. It was still in use in the 19th century when the British took control. It’s all made of red sandstone and was very impressive.
Also impressive were the skills of the monkeys who live in and around it – we saw two of them waiting by the exit and then pouncing upon an Indian lady as she walked out carrying an apple and an orange. The monkeys were in an out in a flash and grabbed the fruit before running off to scoff it. Got to be careful round there, you never know who or what might be waiting to mug you. So not that different to Dalston really.
On Wednesday we got the bus to Fatehpur Sikri which is a 16th century abandoned fort and palace complex (there’s a lot of them round here!) 25 miles from Agra. A Moghul emperor had it built between 1569 and 1585, moved the capital there, and then had to abandon it after about 15 years because the water supply available to it couldn’t sustain the population who lived there. And we thought the millennium dome was a white elephant!
You may not be surprised to learn we had more travel “fun” on the way back. Buses back to Agra are meant to leave every half an hour till 7pm so we strolled to the bus stand at 4.30pm with plenty of time to spare. We waited till half 5 when a bus going somewhere else turned up and the driver said there’d be no more buses to Agra that day! Great! No further explanation was offered other than that we should get a rickshaw to “the bypass” 2 miles away and pick up another bus or taxi from there. We ended up sharing the back of a jeep taxi with a couple of other travellers and an Indian family and bounced and bumped our way back to Agra.
Today (Thursday) we’re having a quiet day because we’ve seen everything there is to see in Agra and then we’re catching a train to Delhi this evening. We’ve got 4 nights there before we head north east to Corbett National Park for a week. We’ve booked a couple of safaris and are hoping to see a tiger or two, in amongst all the other wildlife.
After that, we’ll go back to Delhi before flying to Kochi in the far south west to hit the beaches of Kerala in time for Christmas. We checked out the trains first but they take 50 to 55 hours from Delhi to Kochi and are only a little bit cheaper than flying. It’s 1500 miles from Delhi which is about the same as London to Moscow! Think we’ll let the plane take the strain this time…
Quick Bridget Jones-style health up date:
Sarah is down to one or two cigarettes per day in her plan to give up before she hits the big 3-0! This may be being helped by the fact we haven’t touched alcohol for 10 days now….Pushkar was completely dry and alcohol isn’t very easy to get in Agra either. We’re ashamed to say this may be the longest we’ve not drank booze since we were 16…ahem…..er…..we mean 18…of course. We’ve also not eaten meat since Japan either. Not cos we’re big wimps scared of catching anything, but because Pushkar was meat free for religious reasons and Agra has very little meat also. So we’re now non-drinking vegetarians. We’ve a feeling this may not last long once we hit Delhi….
Take care everyone. And thanks again for all the great comments.
Love from Sarah and Phil x x
P.S. don’t know if we mentioned but Phil’s beard went before we left Japan. He was getting sick of all the ladies chasing him down the street everywhere we went. Either that or because it made his face itch. One of the two anyway.
