My friend Nils also came to visit me. When he arrived in Delhi we immediately took a bus to Agra. We rested in the hostel for the first night. The following day we set off to the Agra fort. It filled me with Indian pride that I could share the story of the Mughal empire. I had freshened up that knowledge through phone calls with my friend Nandan, who had given me the tour last time in Agra. In the fort, we noticed how massively rich those emperors were. From certain points we could see the Taj Mahal, similar as Shah Jahan must have seen it from his prison.
From the fort we walked towards the Taj Mahal. On the way we found a nice park and first took some rest there. Then we went to the main attraction. Having built up all the tension it was spectacular to see. With our foreigner tickets (which cost 1000 rupees instead of 40) we could at least skip some long queues. We still spent lots of time inside, just admiring it from different spots. As it started to get chilly we went back to the hostel.
Our next stop was going to be Jaipur. I was determined to show Annemarie and Nils Mathura on the way. We found a possibility to do that (which did not involve getting up early) and took a train.
Already in the dark we first went to the temple where Krishna was born. Again I got to act as a tour guide and could tell the story of how Krishna was born.
From there we took a rickshaw to Vrindavan, where Krishna spent his childhood. The ride was very interesting being driven by a kid with no headlights on dark roads where cars coming the opposite way would use our lane to overtake. Our driver made ourselves "visible" purely by honking.
We reached the love temple with all our body parts still in place. The temple was beautifully light up which is why people say it is best to see it at night. Even in the daytime I think this temple is very pretty and one of my favourites. We spent some time inside with our shoes outside. Afterwards, we discovered that Nils shoes were stolen. For a few minutes we went round looking for them, but it was hopeless. He wore his flip flops for the rest of the journey that day. Thankfully he did not let that event ruin our trip to Mathura.
At the train station we waited for our train to Jaipur. As we knew, it was delayed. We didn't know by how much though. Different websites showed different times, some even said it got cancelled. On the train station itself another time and even another platform were displayed. So we sat there, waiting for a train, not knowing when, where or even if it would come. In the end it came and we got on.
In Jaipur we went to see the Hawa Mahal in the pink city. None of us felt like going inside so we took a cab towards the monkey temple. It has some mystic feeling being hidden behind a hill outside the city.
To finish the day we went to the cinema to see the new Bollywood blockbuster "Dangal" with Aamir Khan. We all agreed it was a great movie. Though we didn't understand any dialogues, seeing the images and the actors emotions was enough to comprehend the plot.
The next morning, Annemarie left us and got her flight to Bangkok.
