agra

What kind of trip is India if you don’t stop and see the taj mahal? Since all the new friends we have met on our journey thus far said agra as a town sucked, we decided to make it just a day trip and not spend the night (and save the mulas). Our train got to the station a good 3 hours late which was a bummer, cause I wanted to see agra fort as well as the taj. This really cool Belgium couple we had met in Jaisalmer and had dinner with in Jaipur suggested us going to this hotel they stayed at to keep our things there. We started hearing horror stories as well about how some hotel restaurants in agra had been known to give people bad food or bad water so they would get sick and stay a night in their hotel! We were told this hotel was a thumbs up so we went and paid a half day price and made our way to the taj. In all honestly, photos do not do the taj mahal justice. It is the most beautiful building I have ever seen in my life. We ended up staying til sunset (our train was to leave at 1130 that night) and soaked it all in. it was hard to leave. As soon as we left the gates back onto the street, however, we were mobbed with people trying to sell things. At one point I had 4 guys around me trying to sell me garbage. It wasn’t hard to leave that. The other great thing about Agra was that we had met this hippie couple from Argentina who was also leaving on our night train to Varanasi . We planned to meet up in the city, went and booked some more reservations, ate some good (non-poisonous) grub then heading for the station for train 2 of the day.