After my friend’s wedding, we spent a few days in Dehli with a one day trip to Agra to visit the beautiful Taj Mahal.
The first two days were spent exploring Dehli and enjoying our hotel amenities. We stayed at the Shangri La Hotel which was located near Connaught Place. When we weren’t sitting pool side or catching up on sleep, we were taking the subway or the rickshaws around the city.
We visited the Red Fort and were duped by a tour guide who led us around the site for a mere 10 minutes before he dropped us off by a nearby garden area and went looking for his next victim(s). We did learn a little bit about the history of the place, but I could tell he would get irritated when I asked too many questions. You live and learn! But… we really didn’t learn… and we couldn’t really get mad because we had anticipated all of this before coming to India.
We were duped again when getting in a rickshaw hoping to get some souvenir shopping in. Mid-ride, we were told there was a protest at the market that we wanted to go. But wait! He knew another souvenir gallery that we would love. We were in the middle of Dehli traffic, and we didn’t want to offend our driver. As we anticipated, there wasn’t a protest, but we did get two really lovely paintings. It’s all part of the fun!
On our final day in India, we hired a private car and driver to take us to Agra to visit the Taj Mahal. The Taj Mahal was truly magnificent and our tour guide was amazing. He was really informative and so good at story telling. We were able to customize our trip a bit and visited the Baby Taj afterwards. The Baby Taj was much smaller in scale but just as beautiful. It’s a shame that many of the art work on the building has faded or has been vandalized. But, if you look up to the ceilings, you can get a glimpse of the untouched original Hindu artwork, which some say rival the Persian style artwork done on the Taj Mahal.
A week in India was much too short, but we were able to fit in some of our must-sees! We feel so lucky to see a small piece of such a beautiful country. ‘Til next time!
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