Five weeks in India: AGRA AND BACK TO DELHI

We had a pretty terrible night in the Prashant hotel in Agra last night. The hotel was full of Indian families who left their children screaming down the corridors until after 2 in the morning and that just added to the already bad smell of drains and the leaking showers and toilets and damp rising halfway up all the walls and the stained bedsheets...(thank god we took your advice on the silk sleeping bag liners Caroline! ).

it culminated in Moira going down to shout at the management at 2 and then waking up the families with a 'wake-up' call at 6 when we had to get up- just out of spite!

We started the day with Moira having had no sleep with a splitting headache - not a good time to see the Taj. Anyway our driver Nipu took us to the Taj and it was as beautiful as we had hoped in the early morning mist. The location on the bend in the Yamuna river is really breathtaking and although the inside is an anti-climax over the visual impact of the exterior, overall it stands as a great world heritage building and for us romantics a timeless symbol of love.

We consoled ourselves by walking into the 5 star Oberoi hotel Amarvillas for coffee and cakes afterwards and you should have smelled the scent from the ladies loos in there! Moira and I lingered wistfully trying to wash away the stench of drains from Prashant and replace with 5 star french parfum. The patisserie and huge doughnuts and exellent coffee served by 'the best looking Indian I've seen so far this trip' (Moira's words) all these luxuries helped to revive our flagging spirits and we floated from heaven slowly back to earth as we speeded along the amazing expressway from Agra to Delhi - feeling as if we had been transported onto an English motorway. There are some amazing building works going on in Delhi from sports stadia to business buildings and apartment blocks... and slowly we were brought back to earth as we turned off into old Delhi from the Bath like buildings of Connaught square (much of New Delhi designed by English architect Lutyens) to the familiar shacks of old Delhi and Pahar Ganj area.

We approached our new hotel with trepidation after last night but have been pleasantly surprised at Heritage Home hotel which is not quite finished but shining and new in modern style in the old street- a haven of cleanliness and comfort amid the usual dirt and squalor.

We had a nice meal in a little cafe called Festa cafe just down the road from our driver's company office of Truly India Travel where we met Ajay who had organised the last 2 weeks for us.

Our meal was veg jalfrezi - delicious, yellow dal, rice biryani and some funny name for green round beans in nutty creamy sauce - mango lassi and lovely coffee - night night now as it's 5 oclock wake-up for Varanasi tomorrow and from then on we are under our own steam - watch this space!

After visiting the Taj we went along the river and across to the Baby Taj built by a Persian vizier grandfather of Mumtaz Mahal for whom the big Taj was built. This was worth seeing for the fineness of the work on the marble grilles and the pietra dura inside in the niches - we liked this one inside much more than the Taj inside as the latter was rather uncomfortable, hot and claustrophobic inside whereas the Baby Taj was exquisite in its details. The gardens around were also very pleasant. We saw the fort from a distance where the builder of the Taj, Shah Jahan was imprisoned by his son- and one can imagine how he could see a glimpse of his work of art from his tiny cell window where he lived until he died and was buried next to his dearly beloved wife under the Taj.