Stressed in Agra

i suppose nobody thought that i would be writing again on this thing so quickly but ... have arrived in agra and spent the day here. it has not been the best experience so far. wally and i arrived bright and early to the train station this morning in New Delhi at 5.30. our train was leavin at 6.15am so we had time to chill out and try to wake up properly. the train arrived early and as we were making our way to it some guy asked me for my ticket. ..which i stupidly gave to him thinking him an official.. well this is where the drama started. for one thing he said that we didnt have a seat on the train! we apparently were waitlisted, so we were ushered off to the waitlist board to check our status, i couldnt fathom the board what with the stress abnd everything so he "read" it for me and wally and stated that we were not on the train... so he told us to head upstairs to the tourist office to fix it and to do it fast cos the train wouldnt wait. i dropped my bag and was about to legg it when he told us that the both of us had to go together.. curiuos, espcially as the office didnt open til 8am, luckily for us (suspiciously) a guy stepped out of the office across from the hall and took charge, we were totally freaked out by this point. so he checked the ticket made soime calls and then said for 1500 rupees we could get on the train but we had to head across the street to the other office (it isnt there by the way) at this point wally lost her temper, yelled him and we both legged it to the train and thought to hell with it... the worst they can do is kick us off!so we made our way to coach 6 and there were people in our seats or so we thought, so we quickly sat in near seats and started to pray, these germans arrived and almost confirmed our worst fears. we told them what had happened and the nice lady told us that we were in the wrng carriage! so i crept along to the other carriage and there were our seats waiting for us and looking lonely ;) the dudes in the station were total scam artists! couldnt believe we almost missed our train. the letters on our ticket meant window seat and not waitlist! felt like a right retard.. but a smug retard cos i beat the tout!

so we got to agra and thought that the day could only get better and it did. we managed to get this amazing taxi guy to bring us to the first hotel mentioned in my book. they didnt have rooms but we had brekkie there with views of the taj and crossed our fingers that something would turn up. it did and he offered us a room for 900 rupees which in real money is like 15 yo yos for the room (7.50 each) but i felt this was a bit steep so i pegged it down the road to the shanti lodge and he had a room for 400 (6.60 for the rooom!) and took it. so we settled in and i called the helpful taxi dude and organised for him to take us to the ghost town nearby, it is the ruined capital city of india when the mougals were in charge. we met 2 lovely travellers when i was organising it and they came with, Gudu was the taxi and the entire trip (hour and a half out to the site and then he waited and then took us back, to the red fort and the taj) cost us onlu 250 rupees each! nothing! he even organised us a guide who was very helpful (if facebook ever fixes the photo thing thenyou will see what im talking about) after that wal and i decided to head straight for the taj, good thing too cos the queues were awful, the place closed earlier than the book said and ayou couldnt take in your bag! but at least i saw one of the wonders of the world!!

heading out tonight to the poshest place here and will dress up, have a rare glass of wine and try to enjoy it!
xx