D & B: Adventures in Gringolandia: Agra, land of the great Taj Mahal

Ready to head in!

After arriving in India only to find out that our pre-paid, reservation-confirmed, hotel room was given away (and so was the money we paid too), we spent our first three hours in Delhi trying to find a place to sleep for the night... The results were not as wonderful as I would have liked, but we found a room with A/C (though no clean sheets and no curtains) and got ready for our trip to Agra the next day. We hired a taxi before getting to India to drive us to and from Delhi and it was quite a ride. Never have either of us experienced such liberal use of horns as we did on our little journey to Agra (and that's saying something because I use my horn as much as possible). Our driver was friendly enough, though we couldn't quite communicate with him. We did see what the outskirts of Delhi looked like and there were people everywhere! Quite the introduction to India.. The driving was crazy too- no one really follows any traffic patterns or rules, you just go. We were glad to have someone driving us for sure. After 5 hours (they told us 3.5, but oh well) we made it to Agra. After being taken to a touristy restaurant, we headed to the Taj- man, was it hot. This was probably the hottest day of our entire trip and we immediately began sweating hardcore (enjoy the sweaty pictures!) and were swarmed by people selling trinkets and their guide services.. After getting rid of 5 fellows pestering us to be our guide, one continuously followed us every step we took and after much haggling (we didn't even want a guide) we settled on 100 rupees (two bucks). Of course, at the end he claimed that meant per person and demanded 200 rupees.. Oh well, it was worth the money to have someone take our pictures together!

With our guide of the day.. he knew lots of jokes, but not a lot of history.

Here's a few photos of our hot time in Agra. Should you ever want to go to India, both D and I would encourage you to go in January or February- I think if we ran a 10 K then got in a sauna, we wouldn't have sweated as much as we did on this day.. Also, throughout our time at the Taj I noticed a lot of Indians staring at us and then a few asked for a pictures with us.. Our guide told us that they had never seen white people before and we were quite the sight. Of course I was super excited to have my picture taken with strangers while my shirt was soaked through with sweat and they were dressed in beautiful sarees..