Agra was a washout
It started raining the day I arrived in Agra. Heavy downpours in the morning and then more in the afternoon, just as I was half way round my visit to the impressive Agra Fort. The rain was unrelenting for the rest of my stay in Agra, at times torrential. I therefore spent a lot of time relaxing in restaurants, reading and watching the world go by. It was nice to just chill out, but I would have preferred to have spent less time there. I looked into changing my train out of Agra to an earlier date, but as I had feared previously, the trains are all fully booked for where I want to go next, so I was stuck.
The area of Agra around the Taj Mahal is known as Taj Ganges. Taj Ganges has many restaurants catering for the budget market, all selling the same mixture of Indian and Western dishes. Treat Cafe does the best breakfast, with tea or coffee, 4 pieces of toast with butter and jam, 2 eggs made how you like them, and a piece of fruit costing only 25 rupees. Yash Cafe is my favourite for wasting an afternoon reading as it has the comfiest chairs, its food is rather more expensive than other places though. The best lunches and dinners come from Shankara Vegis Restaurant where the thali is the best I have tried and costs only 65 rupees.
The Taj Mahal is pretty expensive by Indian standards so I was biding my time waiting for a morning where it was not raining. I waited right up until my final morning in Agra before biting the bullet and paying the entrance fee. Seeing the Taj Mahal up close in the morning light with so few people around (compared to later in the day) was well worth the money. Agra may have been a bit of a wash out, but I still enjoyed my time there.
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