Once again we find ourselves in a new place. Agra is actually a nice town, although the pollution is a bit much. It inocently appears to be fog/mist untill you take that nice deep breath of fresh air in the morning and have that instant hit of india's finest. With that said, other aspects of this area are nice. We managed to find the pizza hut located 10 mins from the hotel much to Charlie's delight having to not eat Indian food so the first nights food was under control. After a feast of what tasted of home we hit the hay for an early start the next day.

10:00am, well early-ish. We did plan to do the whole sunrise thing but it seems much sleep was needed! After a questionable breakfast of chunky milk and cornflakes (i think thats what they were.....) We set out to take in one of the seven wonders of the world.

After checking in our bags and being probed by security in places I was saving for my wedding night....we head inside with our guide, who swiftly handed us to his brother who took over the tour. There are a good few pics on the gallery of the Taj and it's surroundings, something that is definatly worth a look if you ever get the chance, some breathtaking sights to be seen and to learn about how it was made is simply amazing. We also had a few "fun" facts thrown our way from the guide about how awesome the British are. Seems when we popped in for a bit in the past we decided to pinch a few parts of the Taj for ourselves. Have a look at some of the pics on the gallery that show the top of the Taj, well the big bronze bits on the top of it used to be gold so it seems, but as said, we took it and replaced it with bronze, After melting the gold down! How nice of the british eh! The Taj Mahal also used to be home of a rather large diamond which we kindly took off their hands..it now resides with the crown jewels I believe to be in the tower of London.

We decided to move hotel as the one we currently occupied couldn't spare the room any longer. So we managed to find ourselves a nice little spot at the east gate of the Taj Mahal called Hotel Sheela (classy). Turns out, for 700 rupees a night we could have a nice clean and comfortable room, with a decent restaurant. Not bad eh!

The other major sight seen in this area was Agra Fort (also found in the gallery) where I managed to feed some squirrels, cute little creatures. The fort is pretty cool, we didn't get a guide for this one so not much I can tell you apart from the fact it was red and was a fort in Agra. Nice to see though! As a side note to this, we thought it would be worth mentioning our friendly Rickshaw peddler called "la la" who seemed to almost pass out trying to go uphill to the fort. You have to feel sorry for the guy, he works hard to make his 50 pence. Now, bear in mind. Rickshaws are a fun novelty and are very cheap, but after what could have been walked in shorter time La La decides to wait for us untill we are done in the fort to offer us a return journey to be included in the price, you feel bad saying no. Although the desire to pay more for an Auto-Rickshaw (one with an engine) becomes much stronger.

As our time of relaxation and comfort draws nearer to the end, we have to work out a way to get ourselves down to Sawai Madhopur, home to the Rathambhore National Park, apparently home to tigers and lots of other wonderful creatures. We decided to be strong and visit the train station, no turning back. It's simple, go in, buy a ticket and go.

So we book a car with the hotel to drive us down there (that's right, we chickened out again) turn's out getting a train in India is a bit more complicated than we thought and the language barrier proved a problem again! so for a fairly reasonable 3000 Rs we can get ourselves about 200 miles in a taxi and will only take 4 hours, can't go wrong! Off we go again to a new area and in hope of seeing some Tigers and have a few days chill out and then decide what happens next.

Check out the gallery and check back for more updates as we do new and exciting things!

Ta Ta for now!