Day 3- Monday 3rd March- Agra/Ranthambhor, India

A very early start came at 5am, which was kind of odd since we were still on english time, which was 11:30pm. We packed up our bags, washed a little and felt our way out of the darkened guesthouse. We got to the tourism office minutes later and sat down inside. Across from us, a man was asleep on a couch. He stirred as we entered, but it wasn't until his phone went off fifteen minutes later that he woke up, noticed us and looked very confused. He looked like Nicolas Cage, but a moustachiod, Indian version. He spoke on the phone for a while before asking if he was our driver. We shrugged.
Eventually we were told our driver had arrived and we bundled our bags into his car. He introduced himself as KP and asked the usual questions about us, how we know each other and our travels.
On the way out of Delhi we passed a huge statue of Hanuman, the Hindu monkey god. It was awesome, and I took this opportunity to ask KP about the religion and the cows all over the place. He simply replied:
'Cows are holy.' and stopped talking as if it was a sensitive issue, so I didn't ask any more.
We were given more of an insight into India's attitudes towards driving. One sign we saw said 'It is your right to drive' and another said 'Remember not to drive on the wrong side of the road', which a hell of a lot of people do. On top of this, KP told us that all you need to drive in India is 'good horn, good brakes and good luck'.
KP was quite chatty and told us facts as we went along, but his thick Indian accent was hard to get through so often we just nodded and made interested noises even if we didnt understand.
After two hours of driving along the crazy roads, we stopped briefly because KP needed to pick something up. Next to the car, some men had monkeys on leashes. One of the men looked at me and pointed to the monkey. I took out my camera and took some pictures as he made the monkey pose. He then came up to the window (the man, not the monkey) and said:
'Picture charge, 300 rupees'.
I kept refusing, but he was very persistent and tried to open the car door. I pretended to delete the photos but he was having none of it, so I passed him 10 rupees. He sai it wasnt enough and kept asking. After a few minutes, KP got back in, shouted something to the man in Hindi and drove off. He told us we should ignore street people entirely.
Shortly afterwards, we stopped again at a restaurant for breakfast. In true english style, we were offered a vibrant range of Indian breakfast dishes and we went for toast and jam. It wasn't that we didn't want to try the food, it was that we didn't want to get ill. After breakfast, we continued our journey.
It reached 12pm and we got into Agra, the south east corner of the golden triangle. We stopped by Agra fort for a bit, which was impressive, but all the more impressive was the view over the Yamuna river to a silhouette of the Taj Mahal. After a little more driving, we stopped at the entrance of the Taj and KP told us to call him or meet at a designated meeting point when we were finished.
On the walk up to the Taj Mahal, there were hundreds of street vendors. A small boy pestered me to buy a Taj Mahal snowglobe for 300R, then 100R, then kept upping the number of snowglobes for 100R. What am I going to do with 8 snowglobes? I also had a guy approach me and ask if he could see my camera. Nice try, mate.
We paid our entry fee and the girls put their bags in safe lockers since they weren't allowed inside. Walking around the corner and catching a first glimpse of the Taj through the entry gate is unlike anything I've experienced before. It's so beautiful, it can't really be described with any justice. We were all in awe, but jokily picked out petty faults, like 'it's too white' and 'there's a few too many stairs'. It constantly looks picture perfect, and all the photos I took just look like any photo of it ever.
I think it would have been cool if opposite the Taj, they'd made an anti Taj, which is exactly the same, but black. That would look awesome.
A lot of locals requested to have photos taken with us, like we're big movie stars or something. We walked up to and around the Taj, having to wear little shoe covers when we actually stepped onto the marble. It was baking hot, so I slapped on some sunblock and my Buff. It was also so bright and the building is such a dazzling white that when you step into the darkness inside the building, we could barely see. We had to stand still for a few seconds for our eyesight to come back before wandering around the middle. Inside it's completely hollow and echoes a lot. There are replicas of the tombs buried beneath. Stepping back outside was even worse. It was so freaking bright, my photic sneeze reflex went into overdrive! After a few more wondrous gazes at the Taj, we left.
Yet more street vendors approached us. I was offered more snowglobes and then 18 novelty pens. We couldn't get through to KP's mobile, so we sat at the meeting point, attracting a lot of attention from street vendors, cab drivers and children. The Indian kids seemed fascinated by us, either because of the way the girls were dressed or simply because we're white. After about half an hour, we became worried that KP would never show up and we would be stranded, but he appeared out of nowhere and saved us from some creepy street vendors.
We began our journey on to Ranthambhor. By now it was nearly 2pm. As we left Agra, we stopped at an ATM and my card was still blocked, which was entirely gay. The traffic leaving Agra was choc-a-block. Lots of people stared at us when our car was stationary, including a young girl who stared at me for a good two minutes. I looked in my bag and discovered a pool of chocolate that had formed from a mixture of the heat and a creme egg from heathrow. KP saw it and said 'your bag likes chocolate!' I listened to my iPod for a bit and tried to sleep, but kept being woken up by the honking and the terrible road conditions. When I woke up, we stopped at a restaurant for lunch. Again, in true english style, we ordered chips and Hannah bought chicken noodles. Outside were lots of world clocks that were completely wrong. Dehli was set to 4:15, which was correct, and London was correct at 10:45, but then Rome was at 9:15 and New York was at 4:15 too.
We left the restaurant for the last leg of our trip to Ranthambhor. I only remember the name of Ranthambhor because I thought KP was calling me a rentboy when he said it. We passed through many small villages and moved into desert land, the roads of which were pretty scary because everyone used full beams and the road conditions were awful; most of them seemed unfinished and rocky, with lots of speed bumps and sudden dips which sounded like they were destroying the underside of the car. I'd noticed along the way that there were a lot of swastikas painted everywhere. I asked KP what it meant and he said good luck, which makes sense really, I assumed that India wasn't a Nazi country.
We stopped for a bit in a small village to stretch our legs. KP took me aside for a minute and asked which of the girls I was sleeping with, and didn't seem to understand when I told him neither. He told me we should have a few drinks and then I'll pick one of the girls and KP will have the other. He said 'It is my dream to make sex with white woman'. Oh lord.
The last few roads were unbelievably bumpy and it made us all feel rather sick, but eventually (after getting a bit lost) we made it to our hotel at 10pm. It was better than we expected. Our bathroom had been invaded by a strange yellow bug and I had to kill it. We all crashed out pretty quickly, ready for another early morning.