Hotel Ashish Palace Agra

... building to visit. Finally we drove to the opposite side of the river to the city and watched the sunset over The Taj Mahal. This was the highlight of the day, a magnificent sight. The building seemed very busy from across the river with people walking around the grounds, like a swarm of ants. We decided to get up early the next day to try and avoid the crouds.

Got up at 6 next morning and were one of the first into The Taj complex. We wandered around taking ...

... and we saw several mothers and daughters shopping for wedding saris. There was barely enough room for our small rickshaw to pass the hand-pulled carts coming in the other direction. Several minutes later we were back on busy street near the metro station.

Our next stop was a fast food joint Kerry knew about from a previous visit. It served a kind of India burrito - flat bread wrapped around a fried egg and a choice of stuffing; veg chicken ...

... we get to the gate of the Taj and I have to make a point to say that one of the most absurd and non-nonsensical things happened there. I carry with me a stuffed walrus that Katie gave me so I can place it in funny situations and take pictures of it. I was excited as the Taj Mahal would make a great spot to take pictures of my stuffed animal. While going security, the guards took out the walrus (whose name is Wally Jr. by the way) and started ...

... and we usually travel 2nd class air conditioned sleeper. However we ended up with standard 3rd class sleeper and i was worried - with very good reason as it turns out
the train was a 15hr journey overnight from Agra to Gorakhpur, it arrived and we found our carriage. It was packed, people were hanging out the door, sitting in the aisle, toilet, and we are supposed to have a bunk each but people were sat 3 or 4 to a bunk - ticketless!!!!
I nearly turned and ...

... in bag and off we went.
There is some impressive stuff here and we saw the place where Gandhi
was assasinated, and now rests and we retraced his last few steps
before his assasination. Gandhi actually made some very good
observations and comments and if anyof you want to know more then we
have loads of photos to share....



Where there are some
impresive old buildings and the upmarket place in New Delhi, old Delhi
is a more crowded ...

... when i ordered food, and brought me a plate of mutton that was just about edible.
the manager sorted out our train tickets to delhi for a reasonable fee, and i set out to find an internet cafe, discovering a small shop with one computer in the back room, and commenced my himalayas blog. briggs stayed in the hotel room for most of the time, presumably trying to block out the noise from the nearby main road.
the night ended i fairly boring fashion; eventually i got bored of ...

... and although I couldn’t understand him at the best of times, I think he said she was killed in an accident!! What the hell???

We took a cyclo to the Taj gate and it was so strange… it wasn’t what I expected at all when we arrived… there were no line-ups… no long lines of Western (or Asian) tourists… and it was very understated… nothing like arriving at the Terracotta Warriors’ grand entrance! Anyway ...

... but it is still well over 90 degrees. The fort is located on the Yamuna River, as is the Taj Majal. You can see the Taj thru the haze from the walls of the fort. The fort was built by Emperor Akbar between 156 and 1573. The enormous complex of red sandstone forms part of a crescent along the river. Around the structure there are 2 moats-one that was filled with water and crocodiles and the other which was dry and held tigers ...

... took me about 30 seconds to convince Alex we should go given how hot it was! Off we traipsed to the most expensive 5 star bar in town in our flip flops to find a rickshaw to haggle with. The hotel certainly was amazing and we even managed to sneak in and use their business centre while Alex did that I tried on an emerald and diamond ring worth about a billion pounds - fun times ;0)

... the light change on the marble and the moon come out while the mist rose over the river. You could easily sit there forever and sit look at it. It is a truly beautiful building.


We didn't see much of Agra itself but from what we saw we didn't miss much.

Another train journey back to Delhi. We ate some samosas on the train. There is no shortage of food on the train. We didn't ...