So, we left (high tailed it out of) Delhi and made our way to Agra. Any fool with a map could work out that going East, then West to Rajistan, only to end up going back East to Kolkatta does not make geographical sense, but the crazy capital had disorientated us. Now we’re two weeks in and we’ve learnt to embrace and roll with the unorthodox and unsuspected punches India throws at you. It’s amazing how quickly you become acclimatized to walking past cows and nearly getting run down by rickshaws in the street. No longer are we chickening out of our plans by taking the easy life of Goa and kerela like so many brits do after the golden triangle (no names mentioned of course). The sheer size of the place means a month just in the North will hardly even do that section justice.
I digress. Agra epitomized the highs and the lows we had experienced in that first week. Namely that they are just far more extreme that anything you encounter in your comfortable life at home, where staying awake or falling asleep on the night us pretty much sets the bar at both ends.
One minute you’re looking at the Taj Mahal and the red fort (both impossibly built in the 1600s and for the fort at least, never ending)…the next minute you’re jumping off your rickshaw in the middle of no where because the ‘sweet’ old man is trying to scam us to go to his mates shop in the opposite direction to our hotel, thus surrounded by 20 Indian peasants.
Everything was, none the less, far less hectic in Agra and we did meet some well traveled citizens who had good advise…and so after a couple of nights (rooms being about $2 each!) we headed on another train to Jaipur (third pint of so called ‘Golden triangle’, although that’s not the colour that springs to mind about Delhi).
