Jaipur to Agra

Posted November 21, 2015

We woke in the morning and headed for a breakfast the hotel had prepared for us. An aloo (potato) curry, puri (fried bread), bread with butter, and poha (southern Indian rice dish). It was quite nice except when we asked for chai/coffee, the hotel staff seemed to have no concept of what to do. We waited for about 30 minutes and didn’t get any beverages. Finally one of the hotel staff got us some tea but from the tap. We decided it was best not to drink it and move on. Beiju the driver was waiting for us and took us to our first destination, a Amer fort. Our tour guide was absolutely horrible. All he talked about was how the king at the time wanted all the religions to unite and had a Hindu, Muslim, and Jewish wife. He kept talking about the architecture of the places and pointed out the lotus flower, the elephants, the Arabic writing on walls, how the arches were Muslim, and nothing else. We walked around stunned at how garabage our guide was. Chris and Chrissy thought it would be funny just to ask a million questions to him to piss him off ha ha. At one point he was telling us a story about a specific “Hide and Seek” room and after he explained it Chris had mentioned that the story was untrue because the plaque infront of the room explained something different. The tour guide looked at him and said, “SIGN IS WRONG!” and moved on. How does that even make sense, my god, ha ha. After we were done with this fort we met another tour guide and went to a public square where there was a mosque. We weren’t sure what to expect here but then we were swarmed by a million children and adults trying to sell things to us. We thought, wow, this is a mosque some where of peace and this is happening all over again. Our tour guide was just as terrible trying to get us to buy things from his “friends” and by this time we were pretty upset with it all and felt like the tour of the mosque needed to end so we headed back to the car to grab some lunch.

While we were in the car we asked Bijou to take us to a lunch place that was a lot cheaper than last nights bill. He said yes no problem. He drives up to a place where there are only Westerners. We grab a table and ask for the menu. We were shocked, the prices are just as high as dinner from the night before and everyone’s in a pretty bad mood. We gather our things and get up to leave the restaurant when Chris slams his menu on the table in upset. I never thought this was possible for him to get this frustrated ha ha. The entire group was pretty irritated and we walked back to the car, the restaurant alerted our driver immediately that we had left. He asked what the problem was and I told him that we didn’t want a place that was as expensive as yesterday and clearly he’s eating for free here and has a deal with the restaurant. We get into the car and drive off and in Hindi he tells me, he’s never been so embarrassed by a tour group with how we walked out. I told him it was his fault as we made it clear we did not want to pay that price. A man approached the car and explained to him there was a buffet inside the restaurant that we missed for 400 some odd rupees. Since we were pretty frustrated, we declined his offer and asked the driver to go. He mentions there are no other restaurants in the area and we told him to continue to drive. We entered the parking lot of another restaurant where I went inside to see what they were offering and the price. It was also a buffet and when I spoke to the manager she told me the price was 500 rupees but she would bring it down to 350 rupees. Ahh ha! We could negotiate food prices in India? We never knew or heard of

this concept. I mean ya, we bargain all day long on souvenirs etc, but never food. The food is not the best but we were hungry and ate anyways. We headed towards our hotel and checked in. Bijou needed to do some shoe shopping so we went into the store with him, I decided a selfie was needed with him since he was a hilariously ridiculous man. We then decided to take a lovely walking tour of Agra complete with 3 rickshaw drivers who stalked us for hours, insisting we needed rides around the city. Imam thankfully dealt with the men in a lot kinder of a demeanor then I would have. We ended the night with a good Dominos pizza run and then retired to our hotel rooms.