Agra- The Taj Mahal

We didn't have long in Agra, we just had time to go to the Taj Mahal before returning to our hotel and getting up at 4am to get our separate trains (mine 12hrs to Allahabad where I'd be working, Sarah's 3hrs to Gwalior to where she'd be volunteering). There's a reason why, like the Pyramids or great wall of China, the Taj Mahal is so famous: it's pretty spectacular. Apparently the British tried to sell it off for scrap marble a few hundred years ago, the plaque outside also had some comment about the British which had been blacked out, I wonder what it said? After fighting our way past cycle rickshaw drivers who didn't want us to make the 10 minute walk on our own, we began to see the top of the towers, but you do get a proper introduction when in the compound you first see the Taj Mahal through an archway. It was good to get there in the evening as the light began to give it a pinkish hue. We got a photo taken by one of the photographers hanging around, unfortunately it made my belly look huge! I think I must have been full of wind from all the curry or something because I'm sure I wasn't really that massive.

Our driver was a bit upset that we wouldn't spend out last night together for possibly a few months with him as well, but we had dinner without him anyway in the restaurant of our hotel. This was no ordinary restaurant, no, this was a rotating restaurant! I wondered how they would fit this into the very rectangular hotel, and it turned out it only had windows along one direction, with mirrors on the others. It only had a radius of about 2.5m, and even though it trundled round quite slowly it was slightly disconcerting.

Sarah's train left a few hours after mine, so unfortunately she was left to seek refuge in the women's waiting room and say our goodbyes to our driver on her own. On the train I found by 2nd class AC ticket had been downgraded to a 3rd AC, as there was no 2nd AC on the train. Coupled with the population of small cockroaches in the carriage this didn't seem to good a first impression of Indian railways (apparently the largest employer on earth). I sat on my bunk and decided not to eat the half a potato wrapped in tin foil (with sachet of tomato ketchup) I'd got in my packed breakfast from the hotel.
At 830ish that evening I arrived at Allahabad station where a car picked me up to take me the bumpy half hour ride to the Harish Chandra Research Institute where I'd be based for the next 3 months.