Our train from New Delhi pulled into Agra Station in the heat of the afternoon on Tuesday 4 September. We were only able to get seats in Sleeper class, which is how the bulk of Indians travel long distance. It's pretty rough & dirty, so we were glad that the journey was only about five hours and we didn't actually have to do any sleeping! We quickly found a room in a guesthouse and then walked down the road to get something to eat. Afterwards we wandered around town for a little while and then spent the rest of the afternoon relaxing in the room. That evening we ate dinner at a cool little rooftop restaurant, before heading back to our room for an early night.

Wednesday we were up early to be outside the Taj Mahal for the 06:00 opening, which turned out to be well worth the effort - the air is still cool and the hordes of daytrippers from Delhi haven't arrived yet. We found the Taj to be even more impressive than what we were expecting - it's simply amazing to think that something this magnificent could be built so long ago with such relatively simple tools. We spent a good few hours wandering around the whole complex before heading off for a late breakfast, followed by a nap back in the room. That afternoon Kevin went off to see the Agra Fort, a huge fort where the emperor who built the Taj Mahal was kept imprisoned by his son until he died. Later in the afternoon we checked out of the room, caught an auto rickshaw to the bus stand and then a bus to a nearby town where we were catching our train - the bus trip was pretty wild but we made it there safely :-). We had some time to kill at the station, so we had dinner and sat around in the waiting room. Later on the platform, we met two Japanese girls who were in the same cabin compartment as us, so got chatting. The train was unusually late but eventually did arrive, and soon we had found our seats and were on our way to the holy city of Varanasi!