20 January
The overnight express did what it said on the can and arrived on time around 6.30 in the morning after a 10 hour trip.  Things went pretty well considering the time of day, the hotel arranged a car pick up and by 7.00am we were checked in and having breakfast.

The rest of the day was spent wandering around the old part of town called Taj Ganj combined with a visit to one of the seven wonders of the world, the Taj Mahal, enough words have already been written about this building so there is little point in adding further comment apart from this little factiod: It receives 3 million visitors a year, that’s three times the population of Agra.
The attendance figures were pretty high during our visit.

Linda in Wonderland

21 Jan
We headed 40km west of Agra to Fatehpur Sikri, is it a fortress city, a palace, a tomb or a mosque? Well this place has all of the above, and for us it was an even more enjoyable outing than yesterday’s.  
Herein lies the tale of Akbar a 16th century Mogul Emperor who allegedly had 3 wives, one was Hindu, another was Christian and the third, you guessed it a Muslim, to add to this list of bedfellows he also had enough concubines to keep most men in a state of exhaustion.

No matter how hard he tried Akbar could not produce an heir to the thrown, then after a blessing/prophecy by a Sufi saint, well what d'ya know, a boy child is born by the Hindu wife and she gets the big palace while the other two don’t do so well.