Chillin' in Chennai

Millar's tower!!!

The girls zoning out watching TV

After our fab trip to Agra, Jaipur and back to Delhi we headed off to Chennai.  I brother, his wife and their two kids live there at the moment so that was a good reason for us to go there one would think.  Seriously, I had not even heard of the place before my brother said he has a contract for 6 months working there and it sounded almost Chinese in origin rather than Indian.

It was so awesome spending 5 days there.  We went swimming at least once a day, Millar loved his inflatable shark birthday pressie so much!!!  We went to a mall and looked around, although this place without air-conditioning was close to unbearable.  It was nice to catch up, compare war stories and play with the kids.  Darren and Toushka even got a night out and hit the red pretty hard (success in our opinion)!!!!!

Reading "We're going on a bear hunt" with Millar.  He decided a spotlight was highly necessary...this was after Grant had made a fort with him out of cushions and blankets.

The pool on the roof.  Loved it!!!!

Grant and Xanthe waiting outside Millar's school for him to come out and catch the auto-rickshaw home with us.

Agra & the Taj

We were originally planning to spend two days in Agra, enjoying the Taj and having a relaxing time for our 4th Wedding anniversary, that plan was laid to rest when we tried to book train tickets, first through our hotel in Delhi and then by travelling the hour and a half to the New Delhi train station to visit the tourist booking office. After arriving at New Delhi train station and seeing the throngs of people and the absolute chaos, and realising we would have to repeat this journey and be at the station by 6am, with suitcases in tow we decided it would be easier to go by car.

We booked an all inclusive overnight tour, taking in Agra and Jaipur which picked us up from our hotel and dropped us back the following evening. We thought great we will meet some other people and have a great couple of days. Sadly we were the only people in the car, with a driver who was very enthusiastic, but struggled with our accents, and we would later find out after turning around a few times and going the wrong way, this was his first time driving this particular route. It was great to see some of the rural parts of India, and enjoy the Indian style of driving when in the countryside, which makes the cities seem tame. It is pretty much a drive as fast as you can, overtake everything, if something cant be overtaken safely, honk very loudly for a prolonged period of time and overtake anyway style of driving. The rollercoasters at Movieworld suddenly seemed very tame.

We did manage to arrive in Agra in one piece though and collected our guide Sanjay for our tour of the Taj Mahal. He was an absolutely brilliant guide and made what is a truly spectacular monument even better. The Taj Mahal was built in 1653 and is truly an absolutely amazing place. Better than I ever imagined it would be, and certainly lives up to its status as one of the wonders of the world.

Despite the fact some of the photos look photoshopped we were actually there!

Couldnt visit the Taj without a couple of cheesy photos.

It's Very heavy.

The entranceway to the Taj

Jemma recreating a famous photo

Inside the Taj, a replica of the actual mausoleoum which is directly below. Photography not allowed in here, unless your guide helps you be sneaky like ours

The detailing on the building itself actually looks painted on from a distance, but it is all carved inlay work. Incredible crafmanship in building the Taj. We visited a showroom afterwards and saw the direct descendents of the builders of the taj at work demonstrating there craft. We resisted the salesmans attempts to buy a large marble coffee or dining table (at several thousand dollars, and the promise there would be no problem, we ship it to your house. Yeah right!)  We did however settle on a small piece of marble with an inlaid elephant, much easier to squeze in the suitcase.

After a very average lunch at the Taj gateway hotel in the 40 degree plus heat we finally set of for Jaipur. More about that soon.

Grant

Delhi

So after what seemed like an eternity of waiting for the holidays to come, we finally made it to India. Neither of us particularly liked Delhi as a city, it is however not Bangladesh which made it better. It is such a sprawling city, and having found what seems like the only reasonably priced hotel (with a pool) in Delhi, we had to take a 15 minute rickshaw ride and the metro for about forty five minutes to get into the centre of Delhi.
The security in Delhi is quite intense, with metal detectors, pat downs and bag x-rays at every metro station, shopping mall and hotel. It did make us feel quite safe though knowing that they do take security seriously. The only slightly unnerving time was on a tightly packed metro train when a man suddenly started praying quite loudly, not something we would normally even take notice of. The whole train carriage suddenly looked very nervous, and being in a country where religous extremists have attacked before we all probably had good reason to feel a little uncomfortable (if it weren't for all the security to get on the train, I probably would have got off at the next station, better to be safe than sorry).
We enjoyed eating lots of great Indian food, and also took our chance to indulge in some faster food that we dont get in Dhaka. (Dominoes pizza do a great pepperoni!!) Traffic was not nearly as bad as Dhaka, which was nice, but its still a hard city to get around in because everything is so far away. We visited the Red fort which was amazing from the outside with its extremely high walls, and moat, but was a bit of a letdown on the inside. It was cool to go to India gate and see in person what we saw on TV when the commonwealth games were on. And there was a really great exhibition of bears (photos below) on in Connaught Place. There was one from each of the UN member countries.

A little taste of home.

Ireland

Red Fort from outside

These walls are massive, the photo doesn't really do the size of it justice

Jemma, with the Guard post behind, machine gun pointed at the entranceway just incase somebody decides to invade

Inside the Red fort, the buildings weren't very impressive inside, most of them are poorly looked after. The squirrels running around all over the grounds were far more interesting.