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Making it to Agra was like hell has slapped us right in the face, ok I'm being slightly melodramatic but It really it wasn't a pleasant experience, considering we were looking forward to out last train and what we hoped but could have only hoped would be an easy ride.
WRONG... It couldn't have ran worse than a car with serious engine problems. After figuring out 5 minutes before the train in due to depart from Varanasi we luckily establish were on the wrong platform and need to make a quick bolt to out platform which required lugging 20kg back packs and day packs and luckily at this stage we only had one extra bag we had filled with gifts. After finding the right area to board, the train was delayed like an hour or something we had already waited 2.5 hours at the hot, urine smelling station where flys swarm around your face and everyone in the entire station stares at you until you pick up that staring back or waving out of annoyance gets them to usually blink and look away, until you catch them again. There was what to me looked like a bunch of older women waiting to board they looked like they belonged to a small slum village. They all had teeth as red as a stop light from the copious amounts of tobacco they all chew all day everyday, spitting the red saliva all over the streets. I do give them a small amount of credit for the perfect stream the manage to do eject from their mouth. But one of the women, really paints a picture in my head for her one and only standing red tooth she still had which had quite the over bite. She played and played our bongo drum which was sitting in Rachs lap, in the end we gave it to her as a gift. She loved it sang along tried to get us to join. To me it was a relief not to carry it around any longer.
But the worst wasn't yet after we did finally board the train we established our seats/berths were full, it came down to being our travel agents era and he didn't change the destination on our pending tickets. But after squishing ourselves into the one berth for most of the journey like 2 sardines that were crammed into their tin, we were kindly offered a second berth which we took. 5am hit and we had arrived in Agra, our driver thankfully called and met us at the right station and we went to the hotel. Later we visited the Agra fort which to us was a replica of the Red Fort in Delhi. The following morning we rises at 5am so we could experience the Taj Mahal at sunrise. It was as
Beautiful as the pictures we have all seen. After we established we could go inside the Taj we took off our sandal and lined up, of course I made a grand entrance, slipping down the white marble step onto my knee then slipping forward so my entire body flat on the ground, a kind older Indian man helps me up, so did Rach with a grin behind her eyes. As she couldn't wait for me to say I was ok, she had a good old chuckle at me. But there can't be many people out there that can say the have fallen over in the Taj Mahal. I hobbled my way around hoping that the rest of the people & tourists didn't remember the blonde girl that fell over. From Agra we went to jodhpur, we saw a fort and temple and then set off the following day to Jaipur there were monkeys everywhere here we visited yet another temple and were excited to hit Udaipur, here we were left for 2 days to explore and see what the city had to offer, we saw the city palace and did lots of shopping and also grew quite fond of the German bakery just down from our stunning heritage hotel, with a lake view. Anent stop was Jasilmer, we were staying 2 nights and one of them in the desert on our camel safari. That was scheduled for the second night but on arrival we were informed that it would just be us two, unless if we opted to go today we would be apart of a group of 8 or so. After the 5 hour drive there we took the option to go that afternoon, so we packed our day packs and head out to the 47 degree desert. I'm glad we had the safari that night it gave us the chance to make friends with the people and spend the following day by the pool and then out to a nice rooftop restaurant that overlooked the city for a meal. Out in desert though was such an amazing experience. We spent a total of about 5 hours on the camels back, out until the sun set. I did enjoy a nice beer with my fellow safarians on the dunes. Then we made our way back to base for dinner and a music show. We then took a camel card back out to the desert with stretches on the back and swags to sleep in. The stars shone as bright as they do at home. It was my first real sight if stars since being in india & the night become more and more pleasant in temperature. After Jasilmer we hit Bikaner wasn't much to report there or Madawa as they were just places to stop on the way back to Delhi before making the grand 12 hour bus trip north to Daramasala, McLeod. I really enjoyed Rajasthan an the beautiful forts, temples and monuments the rat temple being one that stood out, but after 2 weeks touring in 45-47 degrees days I was looking forward to being in the Himalayas.
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