Wednesday 9 December Such a good sleep. Up, packed and breakfasted by 7:45 and off we go to the bus station. We have to wait for the bus to arrive and ppl to board then we are off. The horn on the bus is awful and the driver uses it a lot. We have one stop for toilets and food. There are monkeys at the rest area. They are interesting to watch. I try and snooze in the bus and do more reading. At the stop in Agra we then take a small bus to the hotel. We decide n...

Tuesday 8 December It's so nice to not get up early! The buffet breakfast is good and we try and get enough so we won't need lunch. When the tok tok's arrive we head off to the main fort and palace. It's a new driver and he talks and asks lots of questions. We pass the floating palace on the way. We walk up the fort and there are lots of elephants walking up too. It's a little sad to see them in this way. At the fort we get a guide and spend a few hours wanderi...

Monday 7 December I'm wide awake. There is music blaring. It's 1:30am. It's the other group. And they show no signs of letting up. Sigh. I get my ear plugs and it's virtually quiet again. The alarm at 5:40 is not very welcome. But we want to see the sunrise. We get ready and Malcolm sterilises some water. But the taste is so gross we don't use it. There are just 5 of us walking up the hill. Lots of rocks. The old fort on top where the king used to live. It's mo...

Sunday 6 December 4:30. It's early and it feels hard. We leave for the train station and arrive in good time. Which is good because the line of taxis and tok tok's is long and slow at the entry. Security is rather lax, but maybe because we are tourists. We wait on the platform for the train to arrive. The guide, navin negotiates it so we have two rows of seats together. We get water and juice, tea or coffee and a basic breakfast. It's a bit unusual for me and I ...

Saturday 5 December It's quite noisy in the night. We eventually drag ourselves out of bed. We FaceTime family while we pack up and I eat. We check out and we mention the hot water issue. The guy has something he spiels off. Off we head to our new hotel. It's very close actually. A man joins us and tries to sell us a ride. He tries to convince us all the way to the hotel. They just don't know how to take a 'no thank you'. We are able to check in and the hotelie...