Agra

It was an early start to Monday with our driver and guide picking us up at 6:00am.

We had a 10 minutes drive to the entrance of the Taj Mahal 'park'.
From there you are taken by small electric buses to the entrance to the Taj Mahal itself.
The Taj Mahal that everybidy knows and sees is surrrounded by a Red Stone fort.
The fort has three entrances, we came in throught the East Gate.

There was a thorough security check, put pat downs for everybody, on the way in and a small number of armed police wandering around inside.
Our guide was a Doctor of History from the Agra University and explained much of the history of the place and also debunked a few rumours eg one rumour is the king had
the thumbs of all the workers cut off to prevent building a similar monument.
Evidently the King wanted to build another Taj Mahal this time in Black directly across the river from the existing one but was overthrown by his sons before this could get started.

Your first view of the Taj Mahal is through a Red Stone Gate which frames the Taj perfectly.
The Taj itself is as beautiful as the pictures suggest and is a little bigger than I expected.
Amazing engineering, the 4 minarettes are built with a slight outwards lean (which is visible to the eye) so that if an earthquake strikes the towers would not damage the central structure. This was built in the 1500's !
When you get really close you can see the central dome had hundreds of metal hooks in it. These were added during the 1970s war between India and Pakistan and a black out curtain was placed over the entire structure.

We have many photos of the Taj. The white marble is stunning and keeps itself clean. None of the mould which is evident on all the concrete buildings in india. I recon Mr Spray and Walk Away has a massive market here in India.

We went at 6:00am to see the sunrise and the effect of the light changes in the Taj's colours.
I heartily recommend this approach, the temperature was more reasonable although it was incredibly humid.

By 8:00am we were back to the hotel for a quick breakfast and on the road to the Red Fort of Agra.
At this point James has to confess he has succomed to a mild stomach upset and spent the Red Fort visit asleep on the back seat of the air conditioned bus. The others seemed to enjoy the visit and found it interesting.

We then drove for some 45 miles to an abandoned city called Fatehpur Sikri. By now it was really hot and all of us were wilting in the heat (Mike, I recon Bev was down to zero layers of wool). This would have been a city of around 100,000 people and the Murgal married 3 wives, one a Hundu, one a Moslem and one a Catholic. He wanted to unite India. Each wife had a separate palace constructed in the style of their background. Really interesting, except for Nicola who was 'forted out' by this stage.

We then drive about 30 miles back to a restaurant near Agra and had a quick meal (Chicken and Chips for James who needed familiar food). Our guide left us at this point and we took a backroad to Avoid the Agra traffic and when I say backroad there were large sections of one lane dirt road with trucks, tractors towing huge trailors full of bricks bicycles, motor bikes etc etc, I recon our average speed on the short cut would be less than 20 km/hour. I was really hot by now 35C+ and the buses air con was not coping. We were all not coping and Sean and James were taking turns on the back seat having a sleep.

Once we got onto the main highway again it was high speed maybe 70 km/hour until we hit a major traffic jam. Turns out a Tiger had mauled 5-6 people and we were waiting for the Police to come and drive it away. Sure enough after 15 minutes 5-6 Police came walking down the road with big sticks. At this point our driver decided the wait was going to be too long and reversed up until we go to a side road and did an even longer and slower 'shortcut' stuck behind massive trucks on one lane dirt roads. This was the real India the local kids all smiling and waving at us, not many tourists come this way I guess. We could see the fields were most of the food for India was grown etc. At one point we had to pull over for a tractor towing a massive trailor of bricks and the driver did his party trick by pulling a couple of wheel stands with the tractor.

Back onto the main road and then a slow journey home with lots of traffic and a few comfort stops for James.

We got to the hotel at 8:00pm a 14 hour day and much of that driving. We were all over the traffic at this stage.

Tomorrow, The Cycling at the Velodrome with Eddie Dawkins and maybe Ethan Mitchell in the kilo.
We dod not know which events the boys have been selected in.

Meren and Bev have clicked off hundreds of photo's and find this place endlessly fascinating.