Agra was an emotional roller coaster, a lot happened in such a short amount of time. We awoke on the Saturday at a ridiculously early time, 5am. We made our way around the general area within our taxi and picked up the Agra crew consisting of; me, John, Michelle, Rob and Lisa. Our ride there was going smooth most of the way, but then we were hit by torrential monsoon rains, which pooled around the vital roads it seemed we needed to take to get to the Taj Mahal. Some of the roads were almost covered in 3feet of water, people of course were swimming through loving the change in weather, it had been a hot summer. We finally had to walk the last 1km to the Taj, we payed for our tickets and made our way into the complex.

After we were thoroughly frisked and made our way through the non existent alarm system. We came to the gatehouse and an amazing site beheld us; the view was magnificent, with the Taj perfectly placed just 100 ft ahead of us. The sheer symmetry of the whole complex was mesmerizing, everything was perfectly placed and attention to detail was stunning. I got myself a couple of good photos of the Taj and some great reflections of it within the pools. The inside of the great Taj was very sombre, everyone was very quiet, but it was also quite dark and shaded.

The Taj construction was started in 1631 and was finished in 1653, it was built by 20,000 workers for the memory of Shah Jahanthird's third wife Mumtaz Mahal. The platform with 970 feet length and 364 feet width raising the mausoleum from the ground is surrounded by three storey four minarets on the corners with 139 feet height and completed with octagonal chattris. The building was made with mathematical calculations leaving no space for a fault in symmetry and balance. Brick, red sandstone and white marble were commonly used as the three main materials and finished with polished plaster on the surface.

After the Taj we visited Agra fort. The fort is built alongside the Yamuna River and stretches almost 2.5 km. It consists of a wall built in red sandstone and several buildings inside. The wall has 2 gates, the Delhi Gate and the Amar Singh Gate. You can only enter the fort via the Amar Singh Gate. As we made our way into the fort we were almost attacked by a band of cheeky monkeys, who were hiding and launching themselves at us from the rooftops. There were some horrendously cute little monkeys who would attach themselves to their mother’s backs and refuse to let go. There were also bats within the caves lining the main fort's walls. You could see the Taj Mahal from the windows of the Agra Fort, apparently Shah Jahanthird was imprisoned within the Fort by his son in the two years before the Taj had been completed. So he could constantly watch what he'd worked his whole life to build but he could never visit it.

The journey back was very long and tiresome. After about half an hour on the road our taxi stalled and the driver couldn't seem to get the car started again, he lifted up the bonnet and checked all the water levels and found the whole engine was overheated, steam was spluttering out from the water tank. He managed to get it started again after pouring 5 litres of muddy water he had commandeered from a ditch on the side of the road. We drove another 20 minutes without any hassle, until the taxi's heat monitor went off the scale, so we had stop again and get water from somewhere else. After 4 or 5 stops for 30 minutes and driving for 10 minutes we started to get very exasperated and demanded that we get a new driver sent out from the company, our current driver said he was speaking to his manager and it would all be sorted within the hour. After two hours the clock read 2am in the morning, we decided to go overboard and speak to the manager immediately if they didn't send out a replacement car, we had only travelled 50km in 5 hours. Eventually after a lot of kerfuffle the replacement car came and dropped us off in Delhi at the grand time of 5am.

Tom