Tuesday 24 March 2009

India: On the road

Agra itself is not an attractive city and so, after returning to our hotel for breakfast on the terrace with the Taj Mahal looming in the distance, we headed for the local bus station...



...to board a bus for the one-hour ride to Fatehpur Sikri and its long-deserted palace, a sight well worth seeing according to Val and Sue, new friends from Melbourne that we met in Delhi.

The journey was typical of others we were to make: rattling old bus, bearing the scars of encounters with assorted other vehicles,



road cluttered with aforesaid vehicles,



not to mention pedestrians, occasional cows, sheep and goats.



Buses, by virtue of their size, appear to take precedence over other road users, and the drivers take full advantage of this, sometimes to the point of taking to the wrong side of the road and challenging oncoming vehicles face to face. On at least two occasions we came to a sudden halt inches from the front bumper of a smaller truck or van.

Nonetheless, we arrived unscathed in the heart of Fatehpur Sikri, a small but bustling town not yet on every tourist's list of destinations.

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