What can we say about Agra, home of the Taj Mahal? Well, actually, nothing good! The Taj Mahal is even more magnificent than it looks in the pictures and was without a doubt one of the highlights of our trip, but Agra itself is (also without a doubt) the most horrible town we've ever been to in our lives! It is mind-blowingly filthy - streets covered in huge piles (taller than us) of rotting rubbish, open sewers, packs of mangy dogs and wall-to-wall with beggars and incredibly aggressive autorickshaw and taxi drivers who often, regardless of where you say you want to go, take you straight to a shop which pays them commission (they don't even care if you say you won't pay them, as the commission is far more than the fare anyway!!!) So, to start at the beginning, we stumbled off the sleeper-train early in the morning, grabbed a prepaid autorickshaw (more expensive but we didn't feel like the stress of haggling so early in the morning) to our guesthouse, but before we even got there the driver stopped and a 'guide' jumped in and proceeded to unrelentlessly hard-sell his services!!! We managed to escape into our guesthouse, which was certainly not as nice as promised but fairly clean at least. The guesthouse was only a couple of streets away from the main post office, so we decided that we'd pop down there, post a few souvenirs that we'd been lugging around with us for a while and then head off to the Taj at about 11am or so... Yeah, right. In India, to avoid your stuff getting stolen by the post-office staff, you have to take your packages to a tailor, who sews them up in thick muslin, sealed with wax. We'd done this fairly painlessly and cheaply in Cochin so, feeling confident that there'd be loads of little tailors near the post office, we walked out onto the street with our bulging plastic bags. What we'd not taken into account was that, due to the fact that we obviously needed a tailor (who pay top commission in Agra), we were now a dream-come-true for every rickshaw driver in town! With 3 cycle-rickshaws and one auto-rickshaw in tow (one in front, two beside us and one behind) we attempted to ignore the yelling of the drivers and walk the 2 streets to the post-office. 15 minutes later, stressed and dripping with sweat, we made it to the post office - a huge building set in it's own secure grounds - and as there was not a tailor in sight, we walked in and asked if they had one onsite. Of course they didn't. So, back out again, too exhausted to figure out where the main bazaar was and fight off the five rickshaws that already had barred our path, we relented and got into a cycle-rickshaw, who, naturally, took us straight to an emporium, which to his credit also did sew up packages. After agreeing an exorbitant price for the sewing we sat down and waited while the emporium staff gathered around us trying to sell us poorly made trinkets, pashminas and jewelry for prices far above what you'd pay in the UK. When they realized we were not going to buy anything, the friendliness stopped short, our sewn-up packages were shoved at us and we were practically thrown out into the rain! So finally, wet and exhausted, we arrived back to the post office, thinking that now it would be easy. No chance. The post office staff were stumped. Parcels? To post internationally? Very controversial. After a small conference of about 4 or 5 people, we were interrogated (with a large audience looking on) about what was in the packages and who they were being sent to (which took quite a while, given that their English vocabulary was not huge and certainly didn't include 'spice identification chart' or 'recipe book'). Once this was established, they produced a mind-boggling number of forms, to be filled out in triplicate. The next challenge was explaining to the man with the chipmunk voice that we wanted to send them sea-mail. Then...you need to see our passports? Where were our passports? Back at the hotel, naturally. By the time we were finished at the post office it was dark outside. The next day we actually made it to the Taj! You don't realize from pictures quite how magnificent it is, sitting on the banks of the Yamuna river - it's pure white marble shining in the sun, surrounded by beautiful gardens and bordered on either side with ornate mosques made from red stone (one just for appearance, as it doesn't face Mecca). We spent ages wandering around and visited the cute little museum on the grounds and Nige managed to convince the Taj gardeners to let him have a go on the 'lawn-mower' - pulled by 2 huge white Brahmin bulls! After the Taj Mahal, we went and explored impressive Agra Fort, which is a bit further down the river and was built by the grandfather of Shah Jahan, the Mughal emperor who built the Taj. This is where poor old Shah Jahan was imprisoned by his son (to stop him from sending the country broke by building a mirror-image of the Taj in black marble on the opposite side of the river) until his death, staring out over the river at the monument he built to honour the memory of his wife, the love of his life. sniff, sniff. So, in summary, the Taj Mahal definitley shouldn't be missed, but if you value your sanity, do it as a day-trip from Delhi!!!