Agra

Bad news…. My camera broke. While I didn’t lose all my pictures because they are saved on my ISM card, I can’t access them because the camera won’t turn on. So unfortunately, I wont be able to share my pictures from Agra, the Taj Mahal, Jaipur, and Goa. Such a shame I know! I’m honestly depressed about it, however, when I meet up with Heather in a week and a half, she will have her camera so all hope will be restored once I get to Thailand.

           We woke up at 5am so we could hit the road by 6 to go to Agra, the home of the Taj Mahal. However, Sadhir was late and didn’t arrive until 6:30, putting us in a bad mood. But we loaded up the car and attempted to sleep on the way. But if you know anything about driving in India, you know that it’s impossible to sleep with the mass amounts of swerving, honking, and breaking. We made much better time heading back south so it only took us 6 hours to reach Delhi again as opposed to 8. Sadhir had to make a stop so we could get our train tickets from Agra (which he should have done before) but whatever. We then continued our way down to Agra but there was definitely so more holiday traffic since it was officially Independence Day! We missed the festivities cause it took us so bloody long to get down there but we also missed the majority of the traffic, however the opposite side of the road was ridiculous.

This is a good time to talk about how popular we are in India. Yes, we look different from everyone else so we were expecting to get stared at, but we had no idea the extent people we going to get a glimpse of the western girls. Traffic in particular makes a great excuse to stare. We got many looks on the road. One guy even got in a fender bender because he was staring at us! LMFAO!

We reach the city of Agra after 12 hours on the road. Oh but wait… we got a flat tire as son as we get off the man highway. Great... so Sadhir changes it in within 15 min while the sun goes down. But to those of you who are unaware, sunrise and sunset are the prime times for the mosquitoes to start swarming. Awesome…

We get to Nirvana hostel and we are straight up exhausted. Luckily they serve free dinner so we chow down, shower, email, and talk to this really cute girl, Paola, also staying at the hostel from Equator. She’s traveling by herself for 2 months in India while she on break from teaching English in Thailand. She’s super cool and gives me plenty of advise about Thailand since that’s my next destination.

Despite being completely worn out, we decide to get up early, like super early (5am) so we can see the Taj Mahal at sunrise. We get up and pack our stuff to load back onto Sadhir’s car. We head to the Taj but it’s really cloudy and sprinkling so it was kind of a waste to get up that early because you couldn’t even see the sunrise. Regardless, we got some really cool pics, spent at least 2 hours wandering around the grounds. It was really spectacular sight but I have to be honest, the one temple in Delhi completely blows the Taj Mahal out of the water. The Taj is really just a big tourist trap. It costs almost $20 for foreigners just to go inside. What a rip off.

While Michelle was busy with her audio tour, Jamie and I took a seat in a prime spot before the Taj. In a matter of 30 minutes, we had 3 people ask to tae pictures of us. This is a completely bazaar concept to us but we oblige when they ask. Its when they deviously snap photos of us that gets my pissed off. And trust me… this happened often. But we enjoy the scenery, as we can’t believe we made it to the Taj.

View of the Taj Mahal from the Agra Fort

            Afterwards, we went to an Indian restaurant for breakfast before going to the Agra fort. This is a world heritage site and has amazing views of the Taj and the whole city. We even ended up running into Paola so we were able to enjoy the site with her.

Inside the Agra Fort

The Newlon seesters!

            We wanted to go to Akbar’s tomb but the traffic was so horrific and it was on the other side of town, that we decided to just skip it. We ended up going to the train station early and hanging out before our 5:30 train to Jaipur.

We sat in the ladies first class lounge, which basically meant that there were only a few seats with some air conditioning and a table. Not exactly “first class” but trust me, it was better then sitting in the fly infested area of the trains food court. Sick… oh and this was a fabulous time to start experiencing my first case of Delhi belly. Perfect.

Our train was an hour late, yay, but it was a surprisingly easy process. We found our platform and our car and our seats with ease. I thought it was going to be a little more disorganized but I was wrong. First class is filled with Indian families and travelers just like us so we were in good company. Definitely worth $20. The seats weren’t exactly comfortable but Michelle was lucky enough to sleep. Jamie and I were not as lucky cause we had a guy next to us that smelled like he was bathing in garbage for the past month. This made our 6 hours travel to Jaipur miserable. But Check out what we do in our spare time at the train station to keep the mood light. Haha!