Monday, August 1, 2011

More of Agra...


Most people only think of the Taj when they think of Agra. However, there's actually a ton of other cool sites like the Red Fort and Baby Taj.


To me, the Red Fort is really interesting because the rich dude who paid for the Taj was actually overthrown by his son and imprisoned in the Red Fort. He spent the last years of his life staring at the Taj with this view:


(PICTURE: The Taj is out there somewhere.)

There were two common themes among all the sites:

1. We would inevitably be harassed by freelance tour guides as soon as we set foot near the site. The guides would grow increasingly angry at us when we told them we didn't need a guide. We had our travel book which gave a brief history, and frankly that's all I could really retain after seeing so many sites.

2. The ticket agents would try and scam the site. They had this little scam going where they would take your new ticket and then give you back an old ticket someone had put into a special "return ticket" box. The scam is so simple and brilliant. Basically the ticket agents would take our new tickets and return them to the cashier for money. It doesn't affect tourists (unless you want to keep your ticket as a souvenir). Instead, it just rips off the Indian government.

Here's some other pictures from sites...

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