Day 6 - Delhi to Agra

Humayan's tomb

After some of yesterday's frustrations we had a much more productive day. Due to the fact that it was Monday, a lot of the attractions in Delhi were closed so we did our research and  headed straight to Humayan's tomb (the second mughal emperor) . It was the first glimpse of sun we'd seen and so we spent time enjoying the warmth and relatively smog-free air, and wandering around the regenerated garden and yet to be restored ruins. At the far reaches where there was barely anyone else, we caught the eye of two Indian guys in a nearby tower block which overlooked the more remote area. Before we knew it, they were over the wall and we were engaged in some impromtu rounds of badminton.

One of the things in India is that it sometimes difficult to enjoy the interaction with others because, very often, there comes a point where the notion of favours or payment  arises and what had previously been an enjoyable exchange, becomes uncomfortable, upsetting and strained - or at least one starts to  re-evaluate the motivations and apparent kindness of others. Even worse, this means that when people are being genuine, it is easy to waste that time by expecting that things are about to turn and, consequently, feeling guilty that you were so guarded in the face of their humanity. It often means that you are catapulted from one state to the next and pretty mixed up a lot of the time. It is a place of such contrast here and we usually aren't sure where we fit in or how to handle it. Not as though that's always bad, just a little tiring sometimes.
The point is that the game of badminton was just a game of badminton. All they wanted to do was play and offer us advice. Everyone here tells you not to trust and to be careful; many of them as a way of getting you to trust them instead. We were told not to trust uneducated people but our experience suggests that this is not strictly true either - educated people are just more adept at saying the right things. Nodding our assent, we headed to the tomb and wandered around the outside, enjoying it's opulance and the panoramic views of both affluence and poverty.

India gate

We then went to India Gate and got closer this time - the benefit of a slightly better view not outweighing the hassle of the vendors and the guilt of child hawkers and beggars. The bright side however was the bloke we saw selling fake beards - absolutely hilarious as well as easily averted, given Matt's impressive face-rug.
Back at the hostel, we took one of our last few trips past the end-of-street urinal (just next to the evening foodstalls) to the hostel, to sort out the next adventure - a train journey. We'd booked this ourselves online and so were a little cautious. After trying to have a reccy at the station and narrowly missing a wild-goose-chase (to get a 'little ticket') that a man at the station tried to send us on (a ploy to get a cut of the tuk tuk and tourist info money we can only assume), we breaked for lunch before just going for the real deal.

The station at New Delhi was mayhem. The platform information was illegible and so, after a walking the entire length of the 16+ platfrom station, we finally found out where we needed to be. We then had to fight through the throng of several hundred people carrying large luggage (often on their heads) to get to where our carriage was supposed to stop. Fortunately, despite the efforts of the tourist info man to convince us that is was like a cattle train with hundreds of people simply hanging off the sides, we turned out to be vindicated in our belief that it was perfectly reasonable.

Anji in her sleeper bunk

We'd booked the sleeper carriage and so had tiered beds (8 per section) and therefore lots of room to lock our luggage. The bonus of it not being the 'recommended for tourists' 2AC carriage was that it was cheaper and didn't have air-con blasting out arctic-cold for four hours. Since we'd also had the experience to book the top bays,  I spent most of the time up in the air, feeling like I was sat in the luggage rack and having a great time pretending to be a genie.


Arriving at Agra, we took a pre-paid taxi to 'Friends Paying Guesthouse' where we were welcomed seperately by three different members of the family, all telling us pretty much the same protracted story. They were lovely  though and as there was a shared meeting area and 7 other English guests, we had a great night just chatting and sharing stories. There was a group of 5 recently graduating law students from Sheffield uni and a pair of young lads, who, from what we could gather, were travelling around the world filming a YouTube video to promote the singing/Justin Beiber lookalike skills of one of them. They were all absolutely lovely and had lots of tales to tell, including how one of them ended up with a line-drawing tattoo of a pig in a top-hat and what happens when you use Google translate to make a card warning of a nut allergy. I still keep giggling just thinking about it.