DAY 1 in Delhi

Really this more night 1 in delhi,

We came in at about 9pm and drove to our hostel for about 1h. Delhi is really spread out, it's unbelievable the amount of people on the roads (cars, rickshaw, pedicabs, horse carriage, bicycle and motorcycles). Also people here drive on the left side of the road, which I hadn't experience since my trip to Australia. We met a girl from Austria who shared our bad to our hotel who had been traveling for one year by herself, and who is finishing her journey over the next 7 weeks, she told us that from what she know India, Australia, England and a few old british colonies in Africa drive on the left. Good times!

Our hotel is small, stinky, and in a tiny tiny place BUT we are safe, our door locks and there is someone monitoring who inters and leaves.We had to good surprise to not have linen on our bed, but he had each brought our own travel sheets and sleeping bag/pillow for those of you who intend on traveling, never go to a warm country don't ever leave without your travel sheets (it looks like a sleeping bag but really think and fits in jean pockets).

Although we only were in the hotel for 5hours we crashed hard after long travel ! Pictures will come in our next internet cafe stop since this one will not allow us to upload pictures.

We got up around 430am to catch our 5am train to Agra which was 3h long.

Agra is the city where the Taj Mahal is located. We spent the day there from 9am to 3pm. What a fantastic experience.

We hired a guide in an autorickshaw to take us around. we figured we would see more than by foot since our time there was so limited. We ended up paying 900 rupees for the day (about 20$) and it was the best idea ever. Our guide Mr. K.K was very nice, friendly and full of great advice, he thought us how to not get ripped off, how to buy water and make sure it's acutally commercial water and not just recycled city water but into used bottles and sold as new. He took us to the old Agra, the Baby Taj, to the Red Fort and finally to the magnificient Taj Mahal. The peace and the shade paired with the amazing beauty was one of my favorite places. Located in the heart of traffic,noise and pollution, the baby taj is a smaller, more detailed version of the taj mahal tomb. The marble is very fine, very soft and amazingly detailed. To visit the inside foreigners get to cover their feet in hospital like slippers.

For lunch we were shown the local food, in a small little restaurant; up until then we were leery to try the street food because of how many stories we had read and heard of foreigners getting sick from the dirty water used or the fresh food. The Naan here is AMAZING, nothing to do with the naan served in the US, there are so many different kinds, from garlic to spicy peppery. I am officially in love with DAL which is a stew like mix of lentils and spices, absolutely phenomenal, since my stomach doesn't usually do spices, the DAL with jasmin rice is a mouthful, I recommend it!

After visiting the Taj Mahal we came back to Delhi by train, experiencing our first episode of bribe. We accidentaly got on the wrong train that happened to go to the same station and at the same time that we were supposed to leave agra from BUT was apparently a different train. The official who was controlling our tickets told us that our tickets were not for this train and that we were therefore illegal and has to buy new ones, but because he was nice he gave us 2 options: 1. buy a ticket with receipt from him for 700 rupees or one "without" receipt for 300rupees, no need to say which one we shows. :)

Finally an exciting moment was to wake up from napping in the train and opening my eyes to 5 people sitting by us, who weren't there when we fell asleep and who were staring at us sleeping. Yes, weird. However i laughed because I knew our skin color and Heather's blond hair was very entertaining to them.

During our tour of the Taj, several people ( and I mean 1 family, and 4 different groups of friends) asked us to take pictures. Not picking up on it initially i grabbed their camera and waited for them to pose in front of the Taj. This is when they all laughed and grabbed the camera from my hands and explained to heather and i that they wanted a picture of the men with us, the tourists, haha.  Good times.

Enough for this day.

More to come ! Cheers !

Mo.