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We arrived in Delhi at 4.30 in the morning having had very little sleep on the flight. We got through immigration controls very quickly and 2 people from the tour company were waiting at the exit to greet us. After our experiences in Jordan it was nice to know that the company we'd booked our India tour with was well organised. We were given our complementary sun hats and whisked away in a very nice air conditioned car to our hotel. We thought.we might have to wait around until lunch time for check-in however we got to our room straight away. The hotel was very nicely decorated and the staff extremely polite and welcoming. It was clear that our experiences in India would be much better than our time in Jordan. After a few hours sleep and a very good breakfast we set off on our day of sightseeing around Delhi. Raaj, our driver for the entire tour of the Golden Triangle (Delhi, Agra and Jaipur) drove us expertly through the chaos of the streets of Delhi while our tour guide for the day pointed out the various places of interest. There was so much activity on the roads - tuc-tucs, rickshaws, bikes, cars, cows, camels, carts and horses all jostled for position and by some miracle everything seemed to coexist without any accidents. The architecture in Delhi is amazing. In New Delhi a lot of the buildings were built by the British and the official buildings are very grand looking. In Old Delhi the streets are narrower and more like the India I had imagined. The first place we stopped at was the Red Fort. The building looked impressive but we didn't go in. Our guide told us that the Amber Fort in Jaipur was better and that we would be seeing that later in our tour. We were then taken to Jamar Mosque to have a look around. Shil had to wear an orange cloak to cover her shoulders. The Mosque is very ornate and impressive. Considering it is nearly as old as Macchu Pichu it is in very good condition. After the Mosque we went for a ride in a rickshaw down the narrow backstreets of Old Delhi. There were so many different types of shops and so many aromas it was incredible. We were then taken for lunch at a lovely restaurant for our first taste of Indian food. It's so much nicer than what you get in England. They reckon it's because of the water they use. The ingredients all taste so fresh, you can tell it's not been in tupperware for days. After lunch we were taken to see a Gandhi monument in the middle of a park. They keep a flame burning there and lots of people go to visit it. Our guide told us a bit about Gandhi's life however we'd just watched the film so we were already Gandhi experts. The last place we visited was Qatab Minar. There were two towers - one which is 73m high and is about 800 years old and another one which is incomplete. There are various tombs and structures just by the towers, all with insane amounts of details. They looked beautiful. It was good to see old things in excellent condition rather than just ruins. Our tour had finished and we were ready for a good nights sleep. We had the next day off to recover. We explored around our hotel but could only take the chaos for about half an hour. Within 5 minutes walk of the hotel I think you could buy anything. There were so many little shops all stocked up and everyone was so helpful. Delhi is such a big and busy place with so much life. I really like it.
On the third day of our tour we left Delhi early in the morning and made the 5 hour journey to Agra. Once we'd checked in at the hotel we were taken to Agra Fort - a huge crescent like complex on the banks of the river Yamuna. It is surrounded by a 70 foot high wall and contains a Pearl Mosque and numerous palaces. Agra is famous for marble and so most of the palaces have intricate marble designs. The type of marble they used to build the palaces is non-porous so it never needs cleaning and never stains. They were various clever features in the construction such as gravity powered fountains and air conditioning by having hollow walls filled with water. They really were clever in those days! The palaces looked like they had a painted design on the walls however the designs were not painted on. Instead the marble was inlaid with thousands of small pieces of semi-precious stones. The craftsmanship is incredible. After the fort we were taken to a marble workshop where we were shown the painstaking process of making the designs, cutting 3mm recess into the marble, cutting the different colour stones, mixing the top-secret glue and finally setting the stones. We were then shown the shop where they tried to sell us a dining table made of marble. "We send to England by DHL. No problem." We ended up getting a very nice set of marble coasters that I will be carrying around in my rucksack for the next 6 months. To end the day we went to see the Taj Mahal from across the river. It looked amazing. Photos don't do it justice. We couldn't wait to see it the next day.
We had a very early start on day 4. We actually arrived at the Taj Mahal before 6 am. Apparently it's best to get there at that time so that you avoid the crowds and because the Taj Mahal glistens in the morning sun. With it being off-season we didn't have to queue to get in and there weren't too many tourists. Without a doubt the Taj Mahal is the most amazingly beautiful building I have ever seen. It is truly breathtaking. It's very big and incredibly detailed. The logistics of building the place are impossible to comprehend. Not only would it have taken thousands of builders to construct but the workers would also have had to have been extremely skilled at all the minute detail. The inlaid semi-precious stone detail that we had seen the previous day was taken to a whole new level in the Taj Mahal. Each small flower on a design was itself made up of about 60 separately and precisely cut pieces of stone. Huge blocks of marble had been cut into to make beautiful designs - one mistake and it would have been ruined. When you go inside you see the two tombs in the centre of the building. These are exact replicas of the real tombs underground. The replicas were built at the same time as the rest of the building so people could visit without being too close to the exact resting places. Everything had been thought of! Apparently soon after the building was completed the ruler who comissioned is (I forget his name) was imprisoned in Agra fort. If he hadn't been, his plan was to build another Taj Mahal in black on the opposite side of the river. We spent a couple of hours wandering around the Taj Mahal and it's beautiful surroundings. I could have easily spent longer however we had to get to our next city, Jaipur. On the way to Jaipur we stopped off at a place called Fatehpur Sikri. I can't remember too much of what was there because we were both really tired. The abandoned city was very impressive however our guide was very annoying - at one stage we had to play hide and seek with him. He kept going on about a bit later in the tour where we got to make 3 wishes that he said would definitely come true. When we got to the bit he sat us down with a guy in part of a Mosque. We were given a piece of paper which explained in English how the wish thing worked. Basically you had to make a few offerings - a sari, string and something else (possibly petals - I was getting annoyed at this point). The guy sold the saris and we were told that we could choose which ones we wanted to buy. The prices started at £13 and went up as high as you want. We were told that we should do it because the beautifully designed clothes are then given to the poor. Apparently the poor don't need food - just stylish clothes. We didn't pay - if I want to help the poor I'll give them money myself so they can spend it on what they need, not give it to some guy posing as a charity. I tried to be polite about it but when he offered to take us to the ATM we just said no and walked away. Our guide then said that we couldn't get the bus that we'd paid for back to the car and would have to get a tuc-tuc. We refused and so he paid for our tuc-tuc. He then took us to his friend's shop to see and buy things the shopkeeper's grandfather made. We said we didn't want anything (it was all mass produced stuff). When we finished our tour he then tried to charge us for the tour (which we'd already paid for) and then argued about how much we should tip him. Some people! Suffice to say this was our only bad experience on what was an otherwise excellent tour. There's always one bad apple! We finished our journey to Jaipur and checked into a very nice hotel. Day 5 was our last day of sightseeing. We saw a couple of awesome looking palaces - the Palace of Winds (named because of the windows and cooling air current though the building) and the Water Palace (named because it is in the middle of a man-made lake). We had a tour of the gigantic Amber Fort, the royal City Palace and the Jantar Mantar stone observatory (which reminded me of Ecuador). That evening we braved central Jaipur in a tuc-tuc in search of food and had one of the best Italian meals I've ever had. The food in India is amazing. They don't just do excellent Indian food but every type of food you could want. On the 6th day we were taken back to Delhi and on the 7th we flew south to Cochin (Kochi). The touring was over. After two weeks of visiting ruins in Jordan and a week of visiting palaces, forts and temples in northern India we could now relax. Our tour of the Golden Triangle was unforgettable (apart from the bits I said I forgot). India is an amazing country and I'm so happy that we now have 2 weeks of unplanned holiday in the south.
D and S
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