Agra, home of the Taj Mahal, is far the most touristy town we’ve been to – the touts and rickshaw wallahs are especially aggressive. There’s also some awful stories doing the rounds: our guide warned of merchants locking tourists in stores until they buy something, Lonely Planet mentions a local scam where travelers were poisoned and then rushed to crooked doctors who overcharge for services, and on the cover of all the newspapers when we arrived was a story of two female Japanese tourists who were raped by men posing as guides. Needless to say I wasn’t in the best mood after reading that story when we arrived.
On our first morning in Agra, we headed out to Agra fort. We were immediately latched onto by a very persistent guide. I had been feeling ill and was cranky so I told the guide to $%&* off. That didn’t work as I hoped. After about 20 minutes of persistence and arguing, we took on the annoying guide, and actually had a nice tour in the end.
Later, we checked out the ‘Baby Taj’ (Itmad-Ud-Daulah’s Tomb), which had a view of the real Taj, and took a rickshaw out to across the river from the Taj, and played around with fun photos. Had a lovely group dinner at a fabulous restaurant and went to sleep early, as we have a 5am wakeup call to see the Taj Mahal at sunrise tommorow. Busy day!
