After a couple days in Delhi, Agra seems quite relaxing. There is a totally different energy here which works better for me. Maybe it's because we're staying at a hostel instead of a hotel. Maybe it's because there are clearly more tourists. Maybe it's because I'm no longer traveling alone. Either way, I'm happy to be here a couple days before the ashram.
Our arrival in Agra was the most worrisome time yet, though. We bought a taxi but the car wouldn't start. So, they gave us a new car. It sounded weak upon start up but we had already paid (yeah, backwards. It was a taxi station sort of thing). After we get our stuff in the truck and settle in the back, our driver jumps in and so does another man. Two men in the car when typically there is only one seemed a little off. Both Bianca and I became on edge. After only driving a short ways down the road the car dies. There is a traffic jam ahead of us but cars were getting through. We waiting nearly 40 minutes for someone else to pick us up. In the mean time, or driver tells us because of this jam they can't take us all the way to our hostel, only to the east gate of the Taj Mahal where we'll have to get a tuktuk. Clearly, this was not going to work for us. We got in the new car and he tried to find us a tuktuk (we told him he must pay). He brought us through many dark ally ways, adding several drivers before he settled with one. It was a more open space filed with, if course, all men. As he spoke to these several men in Hindi, they kept looking back at us and laughing. This is certainly a time to feel worried. You are being transferred to a different driver whom they cannot track like a taxi service in the middle of the night and there are only two women and roughly seven men. We got the tuktuk, again, two male drivers. More dark ally ways and feeling completely lost. We finally got to our destination, Friends Paying Guesthouse, with relief. Later that evening, Bianca and I joked about the situation; Our new motto becoming, "just take a Rickshaw" :)
We have seen much already in Agra. More temples and gardens, monkeys, begging children, and roaming cows. Today we will visit the Taj Mahal and this evening we take the train to Khajuraho to begin our yoga training. It's a very exciting day.
All the sight seeing has been well, but I am certainly ready to go inside and explore myself.
