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We drove from Gurgaon to Agra in the morning. It is about 5 hours and 220km. Arrived in Agra at 1pm and at 2 we started touring. Tickets for foreigners are INR750 but only 20 for locals. Talk about getting ripped off! It's another 250 for the Red Fort. The guide was pretty good, especially with the camera. He took most of the photos and I was in most of them. He knew which positions and angles from which to take the photos. The Taj Mahal is truly beautiful and the story behind it is really touching too.
The Red Fort where the royals lived is also beautiful although 60% of it is being used by the military so you can't see it. The English really stuffed the place up when they stole all the gold and diamonds from there. The guide described to me how the place would have looked back in the day and it must have been awesome. The Shah's grandson had a harem of 300 women living in the fort!
I am getting tired of India now. I am totally dependent on others. I cannot walk around freely anywhere. I don't understand Hindi properly. It's becoming a bit too much. Biggest expense is paying for activities and driver/tour guide tips. Every tour guide wants to take you some place to buy something that you can only get there. I was pretty hard with today's tour guide and said he can take me to the place where the family of the artisans who did the mosaics of the Taj Mahal still create things, but I would not spend a cent there. He agreed we would not go there. I am really looking forward to sitting on a beach in Goa and then coming home. Still 3 weeks left unfortunately. Hopefully I have good hotels everywhere going forward. The hotel in Agra seems decent enough and is set on a massive property with a convention centre.
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