Day 2
You left me in my last blog at 2am in our hotel room with my first experience of India filling my head so you can imagine I was pretty tired and buzzed when I woke up the next day.
We dress and breakfasted a normal indian breakfast of curry and paratha bread or egg in a morning full of swirling fog, with the rumble of anticipation in my stomach of what a full day in India would bring.
Our first stop of the day, and the trip, was the Taj Mahal and we make our way across the city, me with eyes wide as I experience the hustle and bustle of Agra for the first time in the day. It is literally madness and I would imagine a driving instructors worse nightmare. We arrive with warnings of hawkers, and as soon as we get out of the car we are bombarded with postcards, keyrings and camel ride offerings, all being shoved in front of us, but I take the advice of our driver and keep my head down and thankfully we are soon left alone. As we arrive at the main gateway to the mausoleum, curious to how magnificent this well talked about wonder was going to be, I realise that seeing will be a lose term, as in December and January, Agra has its winter fog and before 11am you can hardly see the end of your nose.
However as the morning started to clear, I couldn't help being struck by what a beautiful building and ground it was. Everything is symmetrical from its gardens to its steps, which I have never seen before on such a large scale. It was also built, I think, in such an astonishingly quick amount of time. It took 20 years and over 20,000 people to complete and their craftsmanship is incredible, every piece of writing you see on the marble and every picture inside is not painted but individual stone, carefully carved and stuck into the marble with one hand sized flower have up to 65 pieces in it. The Indians tell you the time scale like its a long time but it's beauty is easily comparable to the classic cathedrals which take 3 to 10 times as long. You can feel the love he had for his wife seeping out of the walls and I think it's amazing what beauty can come from grief.
We also experienced our first taste of circus freak status as our picture is taken constantly as we wander round. My hair is causing its usual curiosity but Ben is also well sort after, they love his tattoos and seem in awe of his size which makes him laugh. Ben is asked 4/5 times for his picture whereas I decline. It's not just staged photos as well, as soon as I posed for a picture , Ben will have 2 or so people around him snapping the same shot of me, ready to take home to show off as their new girlfriend our guide informs us.
Having a guide can be great as their wealth of knowledge and tricks and tips can be great when wandering around but they do have their downsides, they all have friends with shops and this one is no different. He takes us off to see a Stone "Art Gallery" which we should have clicked was just a shop when he told us it would be free to go, nothing in India is free. Although the main aim of the place is to get us to spend, it is actually really interesting to see how the stone was cut and how they put it into the marble just like the Taj Mahal and if we'd actually have £300 spare, I would have definitely bought one of their tables so it wasn't all a wasted trip.
We left our guide at this point and ventured out of Agra. I don't know if I've mentioned this before but the main traffic on the roads here is a little bovine. It doesn't need petrol or tyres, it just meanders, munching as it goes. India is full of cows. Our driver explain to us on the first night why they are so sacred, it's to do with their milk and how it keeps people alive and healthy so they just let them roam around. You can't go 500 yards without one casually strolling down the road or blocking up the traffic and the cows don't seem fazed at all, I am however and it doesn't leave me for the whole trip.
Leaving Agra reminds me of the background loops you used to get in cartoons. You'll see a food market, followed by a building site, followed by a cow, followed by a food market, followed by a building site, followed by a cow, followed by...well you get my drift, I don't think I have ever been on a long piece of straight road before.
We stopped off at a pretty red fort which was made by the grandfather of the Taj Mahal builder. He had many wives all of different religions so he made it multi religious which really impressed me. Here our polite Britishness is abused for the last time and we get coerced into charity and buy a sari for a poor child and get 3 wishes in the temple. It sounds like an easy thing to say no to but with our politeness and the pushiness of the seller and our supposed guide you can easily feel like you have no choice. We walked away from that one vowing to not be taken for mugs again and haven't yet.
Our next drive is pretty long but unlike at home, where I would be bored and restless after 30 minutes, the 5 hours fly by. Every stretch of road is full of so many things to see and its intoxicating. The countryside is nothing like we have at home, it's fields are full of brick chimneys, straw huts and greenery and then just as quick it's full of lorries and people as we reach a township. Each place has a new smell and different animals, so far I have seen dogs, cats, donkeys, camels, pigs and of course cows just wandering the streets. The dust and the multi coloured trucks are constant and I can't keep my eyes of it all. Everything is full of colour from the saris to the buildings with painted advert.
I'm transfixed and only turn away when the plane journey finally catches up with me and I sleep uncomfortably on Ben's shoulder.
I jolt awake to find we have arrived at Ranthombhore for our early morning safari the next day to a cold and damp room, and I pile up in layers I didn't think I'd need to cosy down for the night.
Day 3
I wake up after a restless and noisy night sleep at 5am sharp for our safari. Oh my kittens, it was freezing! Luckily we saw a lady with a sleeping bag, who was also due to go on our safari, before we go on the open jeep thing so we ask for a blanket but that does very little to keep out the cold of the bright 6C morning. (Tip: India, in January, can be brass monkeys so bring thermals). 
After a drive where we thought we were going to lose fingers due to the cold we arrived at the park. 75% of the park is closed off to the animals have some privacy and 25% is open to visitors so we are warned we might not see any tigers if they don't want to be seen. There are 55 tigers in the whole park but less than 20 in the bit we are going to and there was siteings the day before of a tigeress with a couple of cubs so we keep our fingers crossed.
A short, bumpy trundle into the park and we saw our first piece of wild life and it was a truly awesome adult sloth bear, which even the guide was excited about as they are usually nocturnal. We didn't get any photos of this as we were a bit too amazed by it, but it really was incredible. Next on the animal list as we carry on our very bumpy ride through the park was deer, flamingo, warthog and crocodile, all around a lake looking quite surprised to see us.
It starts to warm up now so my teeth are no longer chattering but I wouldn't have noticed anyway as I was a bit taken with what I was seeing. We now make our way to a rest stop so the guides could confer and the weak bladders can use the toilet. Suddenly there was movement as alarm calls from the deer could be heard across from one side of the park. Guides run back to their trucks, visitors hurried back to their seats and we hare off as fast as our little bouncy open truck thing can handle. Dust is billow out behind us and the noise off all the trucks must carry for miles and I think if I was a tiger, I'd be off. We travel around for 30 minutes but it turns out it was a bit of a wild goose/tiger chase with nothing to show for it than a shaken skeleton and a very dusty hoodie. We start to make our way back now and end our ride with a spotting of a family of languor monkeys, who I want to put in my bag as they are so cute.
Back, half frozen with nice sun burnt noses, we pack up and are on the road again. It's voting time in Ranthombhore at the moment so each town we drive through is crowded with colourful saris and serious looking men that spill out into the road. We begin to get a little peckish so our driver stops off so we can shop in the market for some Apples and I make the discovery that carrots here are bright red, fact for you at home.
We arrive in Jaipur early evening and as we hit the crowed streets and hear the familiar sound of honking, I start to feel completely overwhelmed again. It is full of hustle and bustle and compact streets with too many cars and too many cows. We get to our next hotel and honestly all I want to do is hide in our nice clean room with wifi and pillows. But our brilliant driver tempts us (mainly me, Ben needs no tempting) out with promise of tea and possibly something to eat. Now I'm not going to lie, I was skeptical as we turned up at his friends spice and tea shop, thinking we about to get caught with..."here's some tea, now buy my shop" and my opinion of our so far great driver falling but I couldn't have been more wrong, it was brilliant.
First, he got us some chai, the old Indian favourite which was delicious and just the perfect temperature for drinking a whole tea pot. The shop keep started to chatted away about the spices and filling us with facts and figures of their benefits, who knew turmeric was so good for you? Next up was the relaxing Himalayan Kava, a blend of a few spices and the perfect remedy for a stressed traveller like me, as soon as I hit my tongue I mellow and by the end of the cup, I'm almost horizontal. As we sipped that, we tried some raw lemon which just explodes on your tongue, sniffed some fresh cardamom pods that were amazing and checked out so many other tastes and smells. Ben spied some sandalwood in branch form and wrapped up our buying experience before we bought the shop. They were probably the first Indians we met who weren't pushy, it was just the right level of sales pitch, he let you try without feeling pressured and gave you the right amount of information to keep you interested. We finished up with some spiced green tea and whilst we sipped, watched a blessing across the road of a cow by a day old bride and the family and I marvel at what a peculiar life I'm living right now.
We head back to the hotel and as we sit down to dinner at the hotels roof top restaurant and I experience the brilliantness of a Thali, I realise that India is starting to get under my skin as so many people said it would. It still terrifies me at times but I'm starting to feel an excitement for what it can offer and I relaxed back in my chair ready to take on tomorrow with the sounds of Jaipur beneath us and fireworks above.
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