We arrived in Agra yesterday night after the train ride from Khajuraho. Maxi was here a couple of weeks ago, so he new some nice people who had a guesthouse. We took a walk through the already dark town, down to the river Ganga. It looked dirtier and smelled a lot worse than in Varanasi, leaving a sulphurous smell in the air.
We bumped into a couple of people we met on the train on our way to Khajuraho and we ended up with a group of nine people having dinner on one of the rooftop restaurants overlooking the Taj Mahal. It was too dark to see more than a faint silhouette of the Taj, but it was pretty nice anyway. It was a really good evening with really nice people.
This morning we tried to get up before sunrise to beat the crowds at the Taj, but it took us a little longer to get up.
We bought our tickets, costing 750 rupies, compared to the Indian price, 20 rupies. It's ridiculous that the difference is so big, but then again 750 rupies isn't even 10€, so it's really no money at all when you think about it and it's nice that the price is low enough for all the Indians to be able to also enjoy the Taj.
Of course it was already crowded when we got in, but it was still magical. It's unexpected to see the clean, white, majestic beauty of the Taj Mahal in the middle of dirty, chaotic Agra. It was bigger than I'd thought it would be and the white marble was breathtaking, the symmetry perfect and the details impressive.
We went to have some breakfast at one of the rooftop restaurants and were served by a sweet old man who went huffing and puffing up and down the stairs bringing us our food.
Now we are in a secret little garden just outside the wall around the Taj Mahal. The crowds queuing up to get in to the Taj are just a few hundred metres away, but there's not a soul here in this little rose garden. It's really rare to find such an oasis in India, with no people and just the sounds of nature. The perfect place to have a siesta, listening to the birds and watching the squirrels and green parrots scattering and zooming past.
We'll head to Fort Agra in a while and then the take a train to Jaipur this evening.