Nan's Blog: Feeling like tourists for the first time in India

Agra

Sunday morning was epic, like Lord of the Rings epic. First we woke up at 4:30am to catch our 6:30 am train to Agra. We get to the station at about 5:30 and we have the receipt for the tickets we bought online in our hands. We looked completely clueless as we had no idea how to get tickets, find our train, or even where to go. This slick looking Indian guy (I'm going to call him Smeagol) comes up to us and tells us we have to go to the IRCTC office that’s a 5 minute walk from the train station.

It was a little suspicious as Smeagol was a little too helpful and insistent on taking us to this foreigners office to confirm our train tickets. But since we didn’t know any better, we followed him.

Once we get there, the guy behind the counter tells us that our tickets automatically expire unless we call 24 hours ahead of time and confirm them. Really? They will just automatically cancel our tickets if we don't actively call and re-confirm them? Even though we paid for the tickets? He will be named Sauron.

We ask Sauron to call and confirm for us, since he works at the IRCTC, so he begrudgingly calls in, and then tells us that our Delhi to Agra tickets are confirmed, but our Agra to Delhi tickets have been cancelled and that we need to buy new ones. He is definitely just evil. I later called our travel agency helpline and they confirmed that the tickets had not been cancelled. The guy at the travel agency will be Gandolf.

So we run back to the train station and get through the line. Then we are confronted with our next problem - which platform is this train located? There's about 16 platforms in total separated by long stretches of walking. After running around, someone points us to platform 1 for a train to Agra. With a huge feeling of relief we get on the train to find our seats, except when we do find them, other people are occupying the seats. Tom pulls out our train ticket receipts and a train worker informs us that we are on the wrong train (/facepalm). In the end, we get on our train with 6 minutes to spare.

When we arrive at the train station in Agra, we are greeted by a swarm of taxi drivers. "Taxi? Taxi? TAXI?? YOU NEED TAXI???!!!!11" Luckily, we discovered the farther Damon and I stood away from Tom, who is pale and freckly, the less we got bothered because, well Damon is black and I'm chinese. (The minorities get their revenge! :D) We finally settle on a cab that would take us around Agra for a day at a reasonable price (not including tip).

And SURPRISE! we get our very own tour guide! He turned out to be quite useless, a waste of money on tip, and we started tuning out most of what he was saying throughout the trip. I would advise against getting a tour guide for anyone who plans to visit Agra, because let's face it, if you're on a budget, you do not want to spend any money on unnecessary things. Nice guy though overall.

We drive around Agra and arrive at the Taj Mahal. This is my attempt at giving you, dear reader, the experience of seeing the Taj Mahal - through pictures.

Oh cool it's the West Gate