*UPDATE* I have now posted pictures of my trip to Delhi and Agra. You can view pictures of the full trip here or you can view pictures of just the Taj Mahal compound here.

This weekend was only my second trip outside the state of Karnataka. Thursday night 3 of my friends and I decided that we wanted to go to see the Taj Mahal. So that night we bought 4 plane tickets to go to northern India, Delhi to be specific. The plane landed in Delhi around 11:00 pm and we progressed to get a taxi from Delhi to Agra, the city in which the Taj Mahal sits.

After we got our taxi it was around 11:45 pm and we were hungry. Our taxi driver took us to a place but when we got there the gates were closed and they turned us away. That is until our taxi driver went up and had a few words with the guard at the gate. We proceeded to have dinner at this restaurant, I believe it was called Resto Splash but I’m not sure. I’m glad our driver managed to get us in for dinner here, as it was possibly some of the best Indian food I have had here. I know that Northern Indian food is different than Southern Indian food but I did not realize that the difference in spiciness was so big. The food tasted amazing but it was very spicy. My friend, Ryne, was breaking a full sweat just eating his chicken. I, however, was able to tolerate it enough to come out with only a runny nose.

After dinner, it was around 12:45 am at this point, we took off for Agra. We arrived in Agra around 4:45 am and our driver took us to a hotel where, again, he had some pull to allow us to just use the hote facilities to clean up (wash our faces and brush our teeth). We chose not to stay at any hotel that night because we were going to see the Taj Mahal at 6:00 am so we could see the sunrise at the same time. According to the locals that was the best time to see it.

Within the first five minutes inside the grounds that the Taj sits on, I was the victim of pigeon droppings. We were walking through an open structure that had plenty of pigeons roosting at the top and I was the unlucky person to get dumped on while taking a picture of the Taj through this structure. Since it was so early and cold, I had no choice but to clean the sleeve of my sweater. Luckily enough two of the guys with me carry hand sanitizer at all times.

Seeing the Taj was pretty neat to begin with. You get to see just how big this place really is and how much marble was used to build it. It is astonishing. However, once you get over that novelty the place is fairly boring. We were able to go inside the Taj, which I was excited about, but soon after going in I realized that, it too, was boring. Once inside all that exists is a room with an octagonal partition where two tombs are located. It just so happens that the setting that these two tombs are in is the only thing that is asymmetrical about the Taj Mahal.

I think one of the reasons I was not so excited once I saw it was that I was expecting a lot more out of it. It is, afterall, one of the top seven tourist places in the world which puts a lot of pressure on it to stand up to its reputation. I am still glad I can say that I have been to the Taj Mahal. There are not many people I know who can say the same.

After leaving the Taj, we ventured back to Delhi. On the way our driver stopped at another neat looking structure. I have pictures of the place, but can’t really remember the name of it, so I’ll add that later.

After this we finally made it to Delhi. The trip back to Delhi seemed to take a lot longer than it did to get to Agra. Once we were back in Delhi we had our taxi driver take us to a hotel by the airport since our flight left at 6:45 am on Sunday. As we were driving there we drove through a neighborhood that looked fairly typical for India. It was not clean but it was disgusting at the same time. That is until we saw four children all squating on the sidewalk dropping a load off. At first I thought it was odd and a little weird but then I looked at the sidewalk on the other side of the street. To my surprise, the sidewalk was covered in human feces for about a quarter-mile. When I say “covered” I mean “covered” in the most literal sense. Just piles upon piles of feces right on the sidewalk. It would have been almost impossible to walk on this sidewalk without even stepping in it. We even had to roll our windows up as the stench was getting to us.

That was pretty much the last exciting thing that happened on my Taj trip. I have a lot of pictures of the experience and will put a link to them as soon as I upload the pictures.