Sunday : fine

The room was great, but was so noisy with all the horns. So after the late night, noisy tractors at 3am then up at 6am I was not feeling great.

That didn't matter because today we were off to see the Taj Mahal. We got driven as far as the Indian officials would let us. They have laws saying no petrol cars closer than 1km away, then we have to catch an electric car 700m, then walk the rest of the way to the entry. It's for protecting the taj from pollution, even though this morning the air was quite thick and smoggy and wouldn't of made any difference.

There was a bit of a line this morning, I grabbed coffees from a cafe for the wait. It went pretty fast, but when we got to the security checkpoint I had a couple dramas. They weren't allowing certain things on the grounds, I had to empty out my water bottle and hand in a deck of cards and buddha! Our mascot has been everywhere and now he can't see the Taj Mahal, I was upset for him. Pretty lame not letting a marble statue into see a marble building I think.

Anyways the Taj was fantastic, it was great to finally see it. It was just like looking at a post card, except for the smog, and there wasn't much water in the ponds to get the great water reflections. The size and the perfectly built white marble structure certainly makes it a wonder. The detailed carvings and patterned colored gemstones throughout the place were great to get up nice and close to observe, touch and light up with a torch. Our guide was full of info about the Taj Mahal and other buildings on the grounds. We got to sit in the lady Diana chair, and wander through the inside of the mausoleum. Which the day before people had to wait three hours before they could take a seat. We got to wander around the grounds and look at the mosque, guest house and gardens. We sat on a number of benches to take in different angle views of the Taj, we both think the front on view is the best. We got there early to beat the crowds, and it worked. After spending four hours at the Taj we said goodbye and started heading towards the exit, by that time the crowds had increased in numbers a lot, and the line to get in was huge.

We got back to the car and got taken to another silly shop by our Taj guide. We never buy anything from these shops all of our guides take us to. We eventually got taken back to our hotel for some breakfast.

Yudhvir then told us that he wanted to make the 500km drive back to his family today. He said he will organize another driver to pick us up and drop us off at the train station 40kms away in one hour. The pick up was at 12:00, so that ment, we would be at the station seven hours before our train. We were hoping for some sort of restaurant where we could chill out in.

We got packed up and met our new driver, said thanks and goodbye to Yudhvir then hit the road. Off to Varanasi on the overnight train. Not looking forward to the night ahead.

We were pretty tired and both had a bit of a nap in the car, then we were woken up by the horns in a noisy town. We didn't notice anything close that resembled a restaurant on the way through the town. The town is a bit of a dump really, we found a bench and thats it.

It was a good wait, Kim got to read her book, and I caught up on my diary. We also met a few friendly fellow travelers, all were traveling by themselves and two boys from Japan met at the station two. There was a nice girl from Slovakia, who spent 2months in Nepal. We all got talking about our trips and the hours flew by. The Slovak and one Japanese fella have both traveled and worked in OZ, they both loved there time there too. Later on when our train actually popped up on the board, we moved to the right platform. Where we got an inside glimpse of some train carriages and it was not pretty. There were people sitting/standing everywhere and on everything, it didn't look like it was going to be a comfy 9hrs.

Our train was an hour late to arrive, so that brought the waiting time up to 8-9hrs. It was all good though we found our carriage and then found our cabin, and there was no one one in it. We just shared our cabin with two Japanese ladies that hopped on after us, they seemed nice. We made our beds and had a cookie and coke dinner, and then tried to get some shuteye.