3 days. That was all the time we had to spend in India, after going through the chaotic process to get an Indian visa through the Indian Embassy in Kathmandu, Nepal we ended up with a 15 day period in which we could spend up to 72 hours traveling through India. As ridiculous and costly as this route was much of what we saw in the 72 hours was a journey in and of itself, most of it focusing around New Delhi and Agra (where the Taj Mahal lies).
Talking to other tourists throughout our journeys in Nepal we soon learned that Delhi was not the tourist friendly haven we had experienced throughout many regions in Nepal. We heard horror stories ranging from people not getting picked up from the airport and wandering around in the middle of the night to people staying in flea/cockroach infested hotels lining much of the touristy portion of New Delhi called the Pahar Ganj. After reading pages of Lonely Planets India we were well equipped to take on the many "tourist tricks" that are often used by taxi drivers and the like. A few of these include "Your hotel has burned down/is full let me take you to another hotel" or "Is this your first time in India? Yes. Ohhh well let me charge you 100x the normal value!" And so I learned to say no this is not my first time in India, even though it was and tell them no we still want to go to our "burnt down hotel" because we know it still exists.
After serious effort we finally decided on a low costly costly hotel with reputable reviews that was also situated in the Pahar Ganj area. Upon arrival we expected everything that could possibly go wrong would go wrong. However, much to our disbelief we were picked up straight away by our hotel, and therefore were not hasseled to be taken to another hotel, and best yet were not infested by fleas or cockroaches!
One way of describing India would be "extreme". In our case it was a more extreme Nepal with more people, more trash, more traffic, a larger dividing line between the rich and the poor, etc.
The second day we woke up earlier to catch a train, which we had to book at least a week in advance, as everyone and there mother seem to take the train to different destinations across India. Everyone had an assigned seat on the train and to my surprise the Taj Express was very low on tourists. Fans line the ceiling of the train and serve as a means of air conditioning in the summer (it can get up to 45 celcius plus in the summer!). Once the train starts vendors filter through the aisles promoting their products "samosas, tomato soup, pakoda" it was like a song repeating throughout the 3 hour train ride. On the second to last stop people filtered into our train from every direction which seemed like mass chaos to us, we often didn't know what was going on and it was very strange to all the sudden go from about 50 people in our car to possibly 150 people squished in like sardines.
When we finally arrived in Agra we took a rickshaw to our hotel and shortly there after were surprised to see a marching band go through the city followed by a parade of people. Apparently the marching band and parade of people were part of a political campaign supporting a politician for an upcoming election. I feel like our political campaigns would be so much more interesting if we had a different marching band associated with everyone in the US too! We were then escorted up to lunch where we had an astonishing panaramic view of the Taj Mahal. It was surreal, almost like a puzzle that had been carefully put together.
The next day we walked about a kilometer to catch a bus to see the Taj Mahal. It was unbelievable as expected. Tourists surrounded it from every angle and people lined the benches taking pictures looking as if they were holding the top of the Taj themselves. Taking 25 years to create it is no wonder the Taj Mahal is one of the 7 wonders of the world.
That night we caught a bus back to New Delhi where we were to catch our plane in the morning to go to Thailand for a week. One thing I know for sure I will not miss from both Nepal and India are the honking cars filling every street. Our bus had the most obnoxious horn making it near to impossible to sleep because every time you were about to sleep this loud pitched beep would ring through your head and wake you up out of near bliss. It seemed that the driver especially liked to honk his horn as when I was watching his driving he seemed to often beep at nothing in particular.
The next day we arrived at the airport to find it is just as difficult to leave the country as it is to get in. Our hotel told us we needed to arrive 3 hours in advance however they didn't tell us this until we were leaving (2.5 hours in advance) so we got there and realized the reason you need to get there so early is because their passport services must take at least 2 hours for one person to get their passport stamped to leave!
Anyways we finally left the country and are now in Thailand which is so different from both Nepal and India and that story will have to wait for another day.
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