We spent an exhausting night on a non-sleeper bus to Delhi, where – at 4:00am, we had to bargain our way through money thirsty Rickshaw drivers from the empty bus-station to the New Delhi train station where our train was going to take us further south. It was horrible.
But, we finally made it to the legendary Agra, which was on a completely different tourist scale than where we’ve been to till then. We got a pre-paid Rickshaw to go hotel hunting, which my dad later decided was going to spend the whole day with us showing us around Agra.
We were explained that a good time to visit the Taj would be early in the morning, and so we toured around the other Agra attractions. We started off with the gorgeous Red Agra Fort. Red Forts are something that you can find in quite a few places all over India, but they all have their own unique magic. It always looks like something from fairytales and fantasy novels. One can get lost in those for hours.
We toured around town, visiting some old mosques, the “smaller” Taj-Mahal and watching some locals river life.
Then, the Rickshaw driver insisted that we go shopping, and my dad was patient enough to agree, which actually turned out not to be so bad, with tours of the local Agra exploiting factories and craftsmanship for marble, carpets and clothing.
We set to meet a new big-taxi driver the next morning who was going to take us to the Taj and then lead our way to the glorious path of India’s historic Rajastan.