Udupi Inn Hotel Agra

... some things that I can’t fix, but you are trying to make it the best for us over here. But you are doing the best for us and I think it is getting really fun.

Charlie:

In all the pictures of the Taj it totally looks like it is just painted white, but if you actually go there and see it you can tell that it is completely marble with pictures made out of pretty precious jewels. It was really really big, I mean one small thing at ...

Another day in Delhi at the Good Palace (beginning to feel like a home away from home) was used mainly for relaxation, internet and farewells to the rest of our group. Our one proud achievement of the day was managing to locate the tourist booking office at New Delhi train station and organising the remainder of our train journeys in India. For anyone wishing to use this facility please note that if you arrive via the metro the office is in the main ...

... by now we are running on pure adrenalin fuelled by curried cauliflower when at last we get there - I had visions of the train we had sat looking at for 10 minutes just scooting off without us nooooooooo, but of course we are the Railway Children in this story and what you learn is that the timetables are just a rough guideline and so after running like the clappers finding our carriage and seat and collapsing with relief and exhaustion we then had 15 minutes to recover ...

... lot about India and their culture so was a really interesting 3 hours. Jaz showed us to the pre paid rick shaw counter so it was easy enough to get to the backpackers area called Taj Ganj.

We arrived in Taj Ganj about 6pm so the sun had already gone down, we checked into a hotel which we had heard was meant to be pretty good called Shanti Lodge. It's 5 mins from the Taj Mahal, has a great roof top restaurant and was only 4 pound a night. We went ...

... next to us are dirty and a bit dilapidated and we seemed to be an attraction by the people in the building. Also, we could see the Taj Mahal! It is about 5km to 7km away. Excellent! It felt almost as exciting as being close to the Sydney Opera House. We are almost as far away, just not in the southern hemisphere. We are also in the Taj area, not the Taz area.

As an aside, the temperature here is great! It is approximately 35C and sunny every ...

... the taj mahal the next day at sunrise. missing it tha morning had put me in a bad mood all day, and i was determined tha if it was going to cost me another 750 rupees, it would b worth it. i set my alarm for four o'clock in the morning, and went to sleep at about 8.
the next morning, my alarm rang, and i switched it off straight away. i had been awake since three o'clock. i got dressed quietly, emptied all my pockets of everything except 750 rupees in cash and briggs's camera ...

... man and his dog and Korean tour group member sticking their head in them. The first view we got was of the classic Taj Mahal seen in photographs with the monument in the distance on a raised marble platform at the Northern end of classical Mughal gardens, four small domes, a central bulbous dome and four decorative minarets at each corner of the platform. We spent a long time skylarking here, watching tourist behaviour, offering to take solo visitor's pictures on their cameras and ...

... unmissable connections. Either that or just never booking ahead. Better to have the time just to drift.

So just in summary. Agra was ****. **** getting to, **** being there and **** getting away from. Was for me anyway and this in my diary so thats how it will be recorded. By all means go and have a look. Just don't say I didn't warn you. I think Agra is a dirty, polluted, disease ridden mud oven. If you want to see the Taj, google it.

... night room over the phone but said they had none left when we got there so we would have to have a room for 550r, Nicola beat them down on the price to 500r for a basic double room. Had dinner consisting of crisps and water before we went to bed early hungry and tired as we knew we had a very early start. Woke up at five thirty and met our rickshaw driver outside who took us to the Taj Mahal. We paid our 750r (10 quid) entrance ...

... them for money, continuously, and when they casually mentioned this to the park attendant on the way out the children were found and hit, the attendant only stopping when Kylie and Danielle frantically cried out that it was fine, please don't hurt them! Wander through the backstreets again and get some ganga from a guy who goes through a complicated routine of dropping us at hotels to wait so as not to ...