The train arrived almost on schedule. The station in Jaipur is quite convenient; along the platform there are electronic boards showing where each carriage number will stop.
Agra is a little over 200 km away, and the trip takes three and a half hours. However, along the way we stopped often and waited for someone, so we arrived an hour and a half late….
The train ride was pleasant, the sun was warming us. I dozed off and on, and wrote in my diary.
We had nice fellow passengers, and there weren’t many people on the train.
Indians are a strange lot; even people who looked pleasant would throw trash out the window, and the man on the upper berth threw a bag of chips right onto the floor. Then a beggar came, swept the floor, and started asking for money; the man who had just thrown out the empty chip bag tossed him some coins….
And here we are at Agra station. As soon as we stepped outside the station, tuk-tuk drivers swarmed us. We moved a little away from the most persistent ones and I started asking how much it would cost to get to the hotel; the hotel was 3.5 km away.
As in Jaipur, the spoiled drivers didn’t even want to bargain and all asked for 100 rupees, which we thought was outrageous, so we slowly started walking. A little later, a cycle rickshaw driver offered to take us; we agreed on 50 rupees. I don’t like riding in a cycle rickshaw; I feel sorry for the person and feel like a cruel exploiter — after all, the rickshaw driver isn’t just riding a bicycle, he’s pulling a cart with people in it too. But this time we had to agree; we really didn’t feel like walking, and the tuk-tuk drivers turned out to be completely unyielding.
The cycle rickshaw didn’t go fast, and by the time we reached the hotel, evening was rapidly approaching. The hotel is located on a noisy wide road. The hotel itself is not bad, with a nice lobby, pleasant reception, and beautiful corridors. The room turned out to be small, but it had proper hot water. The biggest disappointment, though, was the lack of free internet, and where! - in Agra… They wanted 100 rupees an hour for internet (about 30 UAH) — just a rip-off, there’s no other way to put it.
There was nowhere to go, especially in the evening…. This is not the cute little town of Bundi or Jaisalmer, this is Agra… But after checking into the hotel, we decided to go look for food. As soon as we stepped outside, the annoying tuk-tuk drivers appeared again, practically driving alongside us, promising to take us almost for free to the best restaurant in Agra — there was something fishy about all this. So we kept walking steadily along the roadside, dodging cars and motorcycles. There were many hotels with restaurants along the road, but they all looked too nice and expensive. We wandered into one of them and saw the most expensive palak paneer of our entire trip through India — 300 rupees per portion (even though we had never eaten it for more than 150, and usually it costs around 120). The restaurant was, of course, beautiful, with tablecloths and cutlery — but the price nullified everything…
Realizing we wouldn’t find anything worthwhile here, we returned to the Pizza Hut pizzeria, which was located right next to our hotel. But even there an unpleasant surprise awaited us. We ordered the cheapest pizza, for 220 rupees (about 70 UAH) — a price for which you can easily find a pizza in Ukraine. So much for all those stories about India being a very cheap country… I’m starting to think the cheapest country is Ukraine…
The pizza was quite tasty. But when we asked for the bill, it turned out that the price on the menu was before taxes, which added another 30 percent to the original price — so dinner with one small pizza cost us 290 rupees (almost 100 UAH)…..
Having firmly learned our lesson that in Asia (and in India in particular) you should practically never go to a pizzeria under any circumstances, we went home to drink tea with cookies — the pizza wasn’t much of a meal anyway.
In the evening we watched a strange film about a failed guitarist, “Inside Llewyn Davis.” We didn’t like the film much, but there was a very beautiful ginger cat in it. And the main character played the guitar beautifully too.