Delhi and Agra: There will be poo...

...but I won't talk about it in too much detail. Aside from 2 things. The first is that I've so far escaped the Delhi belly (and I seem to be alone in this), and the second is what's being referred to as the pooshoe incident. While walking through Delhi, my friend had a guy fling a shit onto his shoe with a stick, and tried to get him to pay for it cleaned off. He wasn't impressed.

Delhi, you see, is full on. Very full on. The streets are paved with people trying to hassle you, take you to their friends tourist office for overpriced tickets or sell you overpriced goods. It's also very dirty, it smells pretty bad, but it's also nice and cheap!

I only had two days here though, and the first of those was spent on a day trip to Agra. We hired a taxi and a tour guide for some insanely cheap price, and headed out. Agra seems a lot calmer than Delhi, and the sites are amazing. Best of all though, it was Valentines day!




Note: I'm aware there's a thumb in the above pic.

First up was the Taj Mahal - probably the most famous site in India. This was particularly appropriate for a Valentines day trip, as the whole thing was built out of love! We entered from the East gate, and our view was of the gate entrance ahead of the Taj. The great thing about seeing it this way is that the main structure is hidden from you for as long as possible - you only fully see it once you walk through the gate. When you do get to see it, it looks a little like this (although normally without me):



The design on the walls is incredibly intricate, you can see why it took 22 years to build. My only regret here is that the original plan to build a black marble mirror image of the Taj Mahal on the other side of the river fell through. It would have made one of the best sites in the world even more insane.

Also in Agra we saw the "Mini-Taj" where Taj's Mother was laid to rest, and the Agra Fort. The Agra Fort was pretty impressive - on the way in there's a long incline with high walls on either side. The walls had small holes in, which were designed to pour boiling oil on anyone trying to attack the base. Nice. We were also told that one of it's rulers kept three wives, for political reasons. One was Christian, one was Hindu and one was Muslim, and he'd bring out the appropriate wife for the appropriate occasion, which seems practical.

Back in Delhi, I had time to visit the world's largest Hindu temple, called Akshardham. The scale of Akshardham is quite something, around the main temple there's literally hundreds of carved elephants, some with seven trunks. The temple itself is huge, and also contains endless intricate decorations and work. There's a giant lotus flower type hole in the ground nearby, containing quotes on God, which also looks pretty good.

The highlight of Akshardham though, was the animatronic shows! We had both a guided tour and a boat ride, explaining the history of a child spiritual leader, and also the Indian people. The boat ride made some pretty huge claims, including that India invented Space travel and quantum physics over 3,000 years ago. I had no idea. Apologies for the lack of photos from Akshardham, by the way - they don't allow any photography. Here was my best attempt from outside:



Next time: Trains! First class! Second class! Third class!