Finally leaving Delhi!!

Getting up at 5am to get the train was hard enough. What was even harder was when Giles read the signboard wrongly and we went to the wrong platform and missed the train completely! We were by this time desperate to get out of this place. It generally takes a day to get train tickets in India so we decided to take the quickest way out possible, by bus.

This was an experience in itself, as it was too overcrowded (even though we had paid for our seats) and we had to sit at the front right next to the driver, the mechanic and the second driver. See the photo below.

After the usual ritual of lighting incense and praying to their Gods for a safe journey, we set off for Agra on a suppossed 5 hour journey but which took over 7. The journey took us through the suburds of Delhi (about 2 hours till we left the city) and then into the countryside, and of course we saw the usual cows lying in the roads, vehicles driving on either - or both - sides of the motorway, and thousands of people going from A to B. The amount of rubbish all along the roadsides was incredible. No-one seems to care, everyone seems to be used to it, probably as they know no different. For us it was shocking, and to see kids playing it in, looking through it, and cows eating from it. And we won't even go into the smell!

7 miles from Agra, the bus stopped and we were told that it went no further. Slightly strange as is seemed we were in the middle of nowhere. Of course someone was there to pick us up and accompany us to the Hotel, and on the way trying to tell us a better hotel to go to (where of course they have comission), and trying to persuade us to pay them to take us around the tourist sights of Agra. Getting inside of our hotel (once we had negociated the room rates) we thought we were safe, but once againg we were wrong. The hotel manager was part of the same scam and tried to charge us extra (his comission) for taxis, and our train tickets onto the next place - he even told us trains dont run on this day and we would have to stay another night, which of course was not true as we later found out when we asked in a bank, and they bought them for us!!

Between one thing and another this was the whole day: half of it trying to get to Agra and the other half trying to arrange our tickets out of it for the following night. This really is a very slow and complicated country to travel in!