Much Ado About Taj Mahal

17 May 08 (Day 2) - Long Day In Arid Land
We woke up as early as 6.00am to get ready for exploring Agra. After we had breakfast at Taj Bano (one of Hotel's restaurant) it's already 7.20am. Our car and driver have been waiting for us at the hotel lobby. The car was ok and quite comfortable and the driver was friendly.

First stop, I asked the driver to send us to Taj Mahal. Along the way, we can see how dirty the city was. We can even see pigs running around the town (no kidding). Since we have to walk like 200m before reaching the gate, all these Indians trying to sell from chilly to souvenirs. Even worst, they pull our hand in order for us to buy from them. It's a very long 200m walk for us coz they're very pushy. This experience was even worst then I faced in Istanbul and Beirut. Coincidently, at the gate we met with Malaysian family holidaying there and we chat a bit with them and they share the same feeling about India even they went there with a tour package.
Personally, I don't understand what's the hype about Taj Mahal. It's just a building built coz of love. Yeah, it's intricately beautiful and Yeah, it's full of history (isn't all building full of history???) BUT to go to Delhi and Agra just to see the Taj Mahal, I just don't think it's worth it UNLESS you wanna go through what we went through yesterday. I can't really appreciate it that much. It's just another intricately beautiful building just happen to be one of Seven Wonders of the world (isn't it 8 wonders now).
Second stop is the Agra Fort, it's the same scenario all over again. Those Indians trying to sell thing to us and a lot of guides roaming around there persuade us to take them to guide us. They said the place is very complicated to venture and we'll miss out on the history. Come on, I'm not that stupid to hire a guide to know the history coz I can read all that in the book and the place itself was very easy to navigate. Since it's getting very hot in Agra, so we decided to get back to our car as soon as we finished navigate the Agra Fort.

After that, we proceed to lunch but since this morning our driver suggest a few places that we can buy souvenir so we decided to visit a few of his suggestion. We didn't really like what we saw but Neo end up buying t-shirt for his dad. I'm quite worried where we'll have our lunch but thankfully our driver brought us to a very clean and nice place. We had a very good lunch there.
Next stop is Fatehpur Sikri which is 1 hour away from Agra. Since it's so hot (45 C) and we had a full belly so we end up sleeping in the back seat until we arrived at the destination. Once we got out from the car, we can hardly open our eyes coz the temperature and wind were so hot and the land was very arid and dusty. Since we're quite tired and the driver also suggest us to get a guide for this site (actually we don't want any guide at all at first) so we just went along with his suggestion coz it doesn't cost that much for the guide. All my prejudice was right, the guide end up pushing us to buy a few thing at the site. I really regreted having decided to have a guide now. Once Indian always Indian. They're really not worthy of living coz they always wanna cheat and lie to other people. No wonder their country really SUCK.

Since it's very hot, we decided to call it a day and head back to our car. Unfortunately, the car broke down and we have to wait about 30 minutes for a replacement car. We head straight back to the hotel coz I'm tired of this city and never wanna go anywhere else except our hotel. It was a relieve finally we're in our suite room. The exceptional service in the hotel doesn't end yesterday. We have a butler to prepare our bed for a night time and provide us nutrition for our good night sleep. They prepare us a few local herb for digestion and almond in the water for the skin and hair etc... They even have aromatherapy for us to sleep better. The butler can even prepare a bath for us. I really like their service and never wanna go out from here.

Dinner time, we went to try another restaurant in the hotel i.e Bagh e Bahar which served quite a nice food with kinda live band performing. After dinner we try to book a train back to Delhi for the next day. Unfortunately, all luxury train seat to Delhi was taken. I don't want to share a seat with a pig on the normal train. So, we got no choice other than taking the long bus journey back to Delhi. After that, we went back to our room and sleep coz it was a very hot day we had. I'll continue with our journey on my next post. ciao....