Incredible Agra tour
on Le Reveil du Soleil (India), 04/Apr/2009 08:14, 34 days ago
It’s been already a week since the incredible trip but somehow I didn’t have time to write about it. And I know now much of the story charm is vanished. A lot of things are happening and all days seem so busy that I can hardly find time and energy to come to internet café to write.Anyway just to make a short version. I went with other friends to visit Agra. We paid a travel agency for the bus ride and as it happens all the time with foreign tourists in India, we have been conned. .. And the whole trip was such an adventure. It was a 24 hours crazy incredible trip. But we had fun and enjoy it ignoring the ugly side of it..We supposed to live from Delhi at 6.00 o’clock in the morning. However the bus eventually left at 8:30 only.. There were 4 of us plus other 2 foreign tourists and all the others were Indians tourists. We finally arrived in Agra but there surprise surprise. We the foreigners had to get out of the bus and we were taken by a rickshaw to Taj Mahal where we had only 1 hour and a half.Taj Mahal, more than expected was so amazingly beautiful and impressive. It always sounds a cliché but yes it is so amazing and beautiful!!!!! Pure bright shining and huge! Impressively and astoning. It change its colour when the light is changing. We enjoyed the moment fully, had lot of wonderful classic pictures and were posing for various curious Indians who wished to have photographs withforeigners rather with Taj Mahal… I still can’t get used to people staring at me and wanted photographs with me…Than contrary our expectations the rickshaw driver had started to take us to several expensive shops. We realized we were tricked…and anyway after arguing with the driver we realized there is nothing to do but just to enjoy what is left of the trip. We did saw Agra Fort – a red sand made fort as well from outside.But more surprises were to come… We thought that it was the end of journey and that we were heading back to Delhi but on the way we stopped to visit two temples – one where Krishna was born and Krishna’s house. We never have been told where we are going and what is going on so we just followed the crowd. It was already darkand we were blindly walking in a completely weird village… The first temple was quite immense and crowded by religious people and massive number of armed soldiers. The music and noise was extremely loud and there was an incredible vibrant energy and all kind of rituals that we didn’t understandanything… Than we moved to the second temple which was even more strange. It was completely dark and we were walking in narrow streets with no electricity … Signs of a storm were added to this incredible weird walk..walking blindly..and no idea were we getting to. We reached eventually Krishna‘s house and surprisingly one of the guides came to translate us most probably because it was the moment of giving donations..More adventures were to come on the way back– we stopped on a street shop to eat (I didn’t have the courage to eat there though especially after I saw a rat crawling the walls) where people started to have a strong argument almost getting into a fight when they were asked double price for the food. The way back was crazy, the traffic waschaotic especially because of the darkness and all kind of obstacles on the road including a caw in the middle of the road which the driver saw it in the last minute and while trying to avoid it we were flying with the bus and in the bus… Fortunately nothing happened and we reached Delhi safe at around 2 o’clock in the midnight after 24 hours of mad incredible tour. Though we had lot of fun.