Jaipur to Agra

Dinner Views of the Taj Mahal

Before drifting off to sleep last night we spent a good half hour convincing ourselves to fly back to Australia as soon as possible. We talked ourselves out of Nepal, out of India and into Melbourne. But, overnight, India did what India does best and convinced us otherwise. We slept well in a comfortable bed with comfortable pillows and woke to a surprisingly piping hot shower.

With a fairly relaxed start to the morning and some WiFi we hit the road around 9:00am. We happily avoided the crazy Pink City of Jaipur and detoured through the 'burbs onto National Highway 11.

We stopped for lunch at a roadside restaurant and giggled when the English menu, unlike the Hindi menu, mysteriously lacked prices. The food was delicious though...veg pilau, paneer butter masala and a few chapati. We also grabbed a bottle of water from next door, making sure to pay only the maximum retail price, despite the store owner's attempts to charge more. We might actually be getting good at travelling India. Is it possible? Just as we near the end of our trip?

The roads were consistently four lanes and sealed, until we approached Agra, which made for a nice change. And there was a distinct lack of idiots on the road by India's standards. Again...India was doing her thing and convincing us to stay just a little longer.

As we approached Agra the road dropped back to two lanes and the idiots made a small appearance but it was nothing that we couldn't handle. After trusting Tripadvisor's always terrible directions, getting stuck in horrendous traffic and still not finding the homestay we were looking for it was on to plan B...ride to the Taj Mahal and then try to find a hotel as far from the craziness as possible. We went a bit too far away from the craziness though and instead of hotels we saw buffaloes being forced to mate. Returning to town we found Pushp Villa and checked out the room but, as usual, we thought we could do better. As usual though, we returned. We treated ourselves to a 3200 rupee per night room with a showerhead reminiscent of that from this morning. He could we refuse? And when they served us glasses of fanta in the lobby, we were sold.

We checked in, waited for the water to heat up (yes, this was the problem last night only last night they were unable to communicate the fact that each room had its own hot water cylinder and hence needed time to warm up) and showered. Next stop...foot massage. As part of our 3200 rupee deal we had scored an Indian foot massage. Sadly it was just for one person and we didn't think they would take kindly to us asking to have one foot massaged each so, I won out, thanks to generous Chris. While I enjoyed my foot massage, which actually turned into a delightful whole leg massage, Chris bathed and did laundry so when I returned, we were ready to hit the streets of Agra.

Dinner and beers, Agra

We caught glimpses of the Taj from the streets before finding Shanti Lodge's rooftop restaurant where we could enjoy dinner and beers with views of one of the New Seven Wonders of the World. And they even had meat! Mutton rogan josh went down a treat as we crossed our fingers that it would help with the constant tiredness we have both been battling. We were served a flat Kingfisher beer that the seemingly stoned waiter happily replaced for us upon request. Team that with another veg pilau and yet more chapati and we were very happy to be in Agra. We were even happy to sit and listen as countless mosques blared the call to prayer because, as the sun set, we knew we were staying out of town where it would be relatively quiet.