So, where did we go? (Agra trip, part 1)

The city of Agra! Home of the famous Taj Mahal – a UNESCO World Heritage Site, as well as one of the New Seven Wonders of the World. I'll take a few posts to share about our trip, just to spread out the fun a bit (plus, I need to sort through all the pictures). So we'll come back to the Taj. First…our travel day: getting there.

We left last Wednesday, traveling to Agra by train. It was a long train ride, almost 7 hours. Thankfully, I opted for the air conditioned cabin when I booked our tickets in early April. The funniest thing happened at the train station in Lucknow. We had sort of a stressful auto rickshaw ride to the train station, and arrived with a little less time than we would have liked. The station was really crowded, and really confusing. We must have looked lost, because an officer approached and asked to see our tickets. He sort of looked familiar… It finally occurred to us that it was the same guy who had approached us at the Bara Imambara…where he made us sign a visitor's book/log (because he could tell we were obviously not Indian). At the train station, he motioned for us to follow him, and he took us inside a small office where there were two more officers, one sitting behind a desk. The guy behind the desk pulled out…a visitor's book! He made us sign this book, as well (including our names, addresses, passport number (?!), phone number and "some comments about India"). At this point, we were just getting anxious to get on the train – and that's when he told us we were in the wrong place. Great. We had to go to a different station, but it was right next door. We made it to the train, finally, and settled in for our long journey. In a city of 5 million people, what are the odds we would run into the same guy twice?! I told Brandon if we ever see him again, we should turn and run because we're obviously being tracked by the Indian government!

We rolled into Agra pretty late, so we headed straight for our hotel – The Taj Plaza. Our first impressions of Agra were that it was MUCH cleaner, quieter and less crowded than Lucknow – a welcome break from some of the chaos. We were beat, so we fell straight into bed. We knew we were going to get an early start on the day – first on the agenda was the Taj Mahal!