Rahi Gulistan Tourist Complex Agra

... visit was amazing today - we went to our fixer Ali's house & his wife made indian breakfast for us which we ate on his rooftop - best breakfast of the trip so far.

To complete the day of checking out big buildings, we went to the Agra Fort or Red Fort. We didn't have a guide so just wandered around on our own which was nice actually. It was very big...we got lost...there were nice views of the Taj Mahal across the river.

... The only **** part was that we were at the front of the carriage by the door so every time someone got on the train, or went to the toilet the door right at the foot of my bed banged. Managed to get about 6 hours sleep surprisingly. We only had one night at the palatial place (supposed to be 2) and we had top move to another place to stay in AC tents, like a hotel room with tent walls, was ok but no where near as nice as room ...

... at least once per rickshaw ride, and at much greater proximity.

No, the really good bit was the motorcycle with pillion (neither passenger wearing helmets, of course) which somehow in passing our bus, managed to **** off our driver. In retaliation, our driver revved his engine repeatedly, lurching us into a proximity that goes beyond tailgating and into Eddie Furlong in Terminator 2 territory. The passenger, sitting side-saddle and looking ...

... Leaving the complex around 9.30am we headed back to near our hotel and had some breakfast at a good tiny café called Joneys where the staff are eager to smile and show us their visitors book with all the great comments, deserved, as the food was good for us too. It was steamy and hot so we rested for 2 hours ( snoozed really) under the ceiling fan running full pelt when the power didn’t cut out( Agra has loads of power cuts of varying lengths of time during day and night ...

... personal; i dyti, harmonia familjare dhe vlerat njerėzore janė mė tė rėndėsishme se sa ndjenjat individuale. Por ėshtė edhe mė domethėnėse bindja qė njė familje ngrihet nė bazė tė raportit mes prindėrve dhe fėmijėve e te lidhjet vėllazėrore, mė tepėr se te marrėdhėnia mes burrit dhe gruas, e cila lartėsohet nė shoqėrinė moderne perėndimore. Sipas mentalitetit tradicional indian, qendra e familjes nuk ėshtė ēifti. Kontrasti mes kėtyre dy ideve tė jetės familjare shpjegon popullaritetin e ...

... veered off the track quite sharply and stretched its trunk out to a large vine that climbed thirty feet up a tree. after a few sharp tugs, it had dislodged the vine and was ready to move on. i'm still not totally sure why t did that, but it might have stopped in the middle of what it wanted to do, because the man at the front was hitting it rather ******* the head with an iron bar, and shouting at it, presumably telling it to stop.
a little further on, we saw another rhino ...

Left at 6:30 on the bus which took about 6 - 7 hours to reach Agra. Although there is always something going on around you, the Plains are a flat and bland compared to the Mountains and foothills. Its hot and humid, and although there has not been a lot of rainfall this year, everything is green and tropical.

There seems to be a competition here to see how many people you can fit on/in a ...

... they were posing for me one at a time. Really creepy actually (and photos deleted shortly after).

Anyways....time passed and our train still wasn't there.....eventually another kid came up to us and asked where we were going, we told him, and he says "THATS YOUR TRAIN!!!!!!!!" (the train that was quickly pulling out from the OTHER platform. (so in our defense, it was at the WRONG platform!).
We had pretty much accepted that we would be ...

... a prepaid rickshaw from the station (after all the warning we'd been given about the scams and general negative air that abounded toward tourists in Agra, we weren't taking any chances) to our guesthouse. A typical Indian operation- a decent room constructed of nice materials that had just fallen to grottiness from incessant ********** (or lack of) cleaning by lackadaisical men.

We woke up after a heat addled half sleep ...

... Taj was next, it really is much more beautiful than photos. It's so massive people look tiny compared to it. Again, not much time so I went around it taking photos, trying to absorb it properly but I must admit I was little peeved at the short amount of time we had so I didn't appreciate it fully. It didn't help that there were hundreds of other tourists there either so getting ...