A Not Entirely Unexpected Journey: Agra & Pushkar: The Taj Mahal, Also Camels.

She’s been described as the most beautiful building on the planet, and as a “teardrop on the face of eternity” by some top-gun poets, so we were expecting pretty big things from the Taj Mahal when we arrived in Agra. The Taj is undoubtedly the most popular tourist destination in India, which unfortunately doesn’t make Agra the most enjoyable city to be in due to the amount of touts crawling round the place (tout: any person who solicits business in a persistent and annoying manner). Despite all the hype and all the touts and all the tourists, the Taj absolutely lives up to all expectations. This probably won’t be remembered as a famous quote, but we’d say it is “a really choice piece of architecture”. Other impressive sights around Agra were the Agra Fort and the ghost town of Fatehpur Sikri, both remnants from the mighty Mughal Empire.

We unashamedly battled the other tourists to get our own, 'unique' snaps in front of the mighty TM.

A touching tribute to Shah Jahan and his 3rd wife Mumtaz Mahal. She died giving birth to his 14th child, leaving him devastated yet inspired to build her the world's most beautiful mausoleum.

Oh hai there! Is that the Taj we can spy from our hotel rooftop? Yes, it is.

(sorry)

A monkey doing the daily 5pm patrol along the ramparts of Agra Fort.

With an extra day in Agra, we took a road trip to have a gander at Fatehpur Sikri, a pretty impressive abandoned city. Our taxi driver was a man of few words although he sure knew how to blast those Hindi beats.

From Agra we headed to the much more laid back town of Pushkar, to get amongst the Pushkar Camel Fair – an occasion where thousands of camel-herders get together from around India to trade their camels. Everyone gets really into it; there are camels dressed in flamboyant outfits, hundreds of street-food stalls, ferris wheels, dancing camels, and lots of other festive things. Despite all the hustle and bustle of the fair (which is mostly held on the outskirts), the town of Pushkar somehow manages to maintain a really chilled out vibe. It seems to attract a lot of hipsters, which is not surprising at all – this is a town in which meat and eggs are forbidden, but bhang (cannabis flavoured) lassis are all the rage.

Money-saving intiative #57: India is cheap, very, very cheap, but there are ways to make it cheaper. We decided to ask the hotel if four of us could squeeze into a double room. We didn't realise they would simply remove the bed and chuck 3 mattresses on the floor for us...

As well as being the site of the Camel Fair and a generally really chilled out town, Pushkar is also a very sacred Hindu site. It's packed with temples and many pilgrims worship and bathe on the ghats.

The main street is basically just one big colourful bazaar. Although it's only about 300m long, it takes at least an hour to cross it due to all the distractions.

There were thousands of camels and camel-herders in the surrounding hills, training their camels, trading, bantering and drinking chai.

"Hello I am a camel and I like to dance but I'm not very good and my dancing is about as ridiculous as you can imagine a camel trying to dance would be lol give me money"