Arrived in Agra by the super fast train from Dehli in two hours. We settled into Hotel Sheela late morning; small cottage style accommodation in a peaceful lush garden setting, set well back from the road. We waited in the shade of the trees for our room to become available. While we happily sat on one of those seat swings; we were entertained by the juvenile monkey's playing in the tree behind us while the adults had a big snooze on the tin roof, occasionally being disturbed by one of their young who decided mum or dad need their fur checked for fleas.

We checked in and strolled 10 meters to the on site open air cafe and ordered; our now standard, sweat lassi. We would visit the Taj Mahal; early tomorrow morning; WRONG. 'No', the attendant told us; the Taj is closed on Fridays. A quick change of plans, in the heat of the day we decided to walk across to the entance; a 10 minute walk, and find out the details. We walked down a narrow street lined with, you've guessed it; tourist shops. We puchased our tickets and would come back at 4PM, it will be cooler then and we could see the Taj as the sun goes down.

There was no point hanging around Agra on Friday so we arranged a toot toot to take us to the Agra Fort railway station to purchase train tickets for the 5AM day train in the morning. We then asked the driver to drop us back at the Taj.

Impressive!! The white marble building
is truly awe inspiring. We took many photos, and then we took more as the sun went down on the Taj Mahal.

We wondered along many local village narrow streets, passing children, goats, and food venders. We bought a bag of peanuts; no, not for the monkeys but for Leigh; he does like his peanuts. We walked into our hotel tired and hungry, so had a candle light dinner in the warm evening in the garden of our in-house dining. Off to bed, early start next morning. Thanks Agra, here we come Jaipur.

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