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We arrived at 3am in Delhi after a hair-raising drive back to the hotel - a sleepy driver negotiating his way around hundreds of cars and cows is pretty scary! The next morning we met up with an Italian couple who were about to go into town so we shared a tuk tuk with them to Dilli Haat, a market, but the drivers seemed to just drop us off in the middle of nowhere, where we were met by a beggar who followed us around for about 10 minutes repeatedly asking for money - not a good first impression! Luckily things improved and we got another taxi to Connaught Place in the centre, where we got some food and coffee before heading back to the hotel.
The hotel was run by a couple called Pervez and Lubna, and they cooked dinner for us which was really nice, and we got to meet some other travellers.
The next morning Lubna made us an Indian breakfast (daal, puri, toast, fruit, scrambled eggs, toast, fruit) before we went on a tour with Coralie and Iacopo, the Italians, and our driver Kuldeep. The tour was great as we visited the Red Fort, Humayan's Tomb, the Jama Masjid Mosque, India Gate, and Lodi Gardens - although just as we arrived it poured with rain and we had to make a run for it! The tour was really nice, especially as we had the luxury of an air conditioned car and a safe driver! Driving in India in general is pretty bad, it seems you can drive on either side of the road and random animals will be running/standing/sleeping there too! When we got back to the hotel, Pervez organised us a 2-3 week tour of Rajhastan with Kuldeep, and we decided we would visit Varanasi at the end of our tour after hearing mixed reviews of the place. Varanasi is a very holy city and apparently if you die there you go straight to heaven! Hence there are thousands of people who flock there to bathe in the Ganges and also go there to die...cheery. However we've been told it's a worthwhile trip so we've booked a night train to take us there at the end of our trip. Should be interesting...especially after hearing the story from another traveller of going on a sunset cruise, only to pass a severed hand and a corpse. Mmm!
We arranged to meet Coralie and Iacopo the next morning at 6.30am to share a taxi to Agra, however we must have set our alarm wrong and we were woken at 7am by Lubna telephoning us to find out if we were "ready". In her sleepy state Amy replied "ready for what?", much to Lubna's amusement! After our bad start we had a great day in Agra, where we visited Agra Fort which was very nice, Akbar's Mausoleum (everything round here was built by Akbar you soon realise), Mehtab Bagh Park, and Chini-ka-Rauza.
To be continued... :-)
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