Rick McClure and myself boarded the SpiceJet 19:30 hours flight to New Delhi. We stayed at Hotel Airport Inn at Mahipalpur - ~5kms from I.G.I.A. We spent almost an hour to get the prepaid taxi at the Airport counter (No other transport means available at midnight at the domestic terminal).
Day -1:
Next morning, we started around 6:45 to Agra (Horrible Tata Indigo cab !) We had Aloo Paratha as breakfast on a roadside Dhabha. The food was much better than most of the star hotels in Chennai ! Reached Agra around 11:45 and visited the beautiful Akbar Tomb, Sikandara. We almost spent 1 hour there admiring the architecture. The Acoustics of the tomb was amazing as the sound traveled across the 5 tiers - 44 rooms - voice traversing through pillars !!
Next, the 5 km ride to Taj Mahal took almost 2.5 hours. We went through the West gate with help of a guide; which was relatively quicker to get in - 45 mins of queue. The East gate (main gate) has a queue of people in thousands ! And, there you go ! The B E A U T Y !! One has to see it to believe it.. !!!! Massive, White, Gorgeous, Breath-stopping, (whatever adjectives known can be added) ... We took lot of photographs and admired the beauty of it. The guide explained lot of things to us, which otherwise, would have missed it. (I too can be a guide now :-) ).
After spending 3 worthy hours, we slowly came out. We did not do INTO Taj, a looooooong queue was there .. mind .. it was Saturday ! We had lunch/dinner at Agra at 5PM and then started back one of the longest, tiresome, terrible, aweful 6 hours of journey back to Delhi.
After having a nice sleep and Aloo parathas as breakfast at the hotel, we started the Delhi TOUR.
Day-2:
Qutub-Minar, Lotus Temple, India Gate, Vijay Path (Parliament house, Rastrapathi Bhavan, Office of the president) and Indira Gandhi House were the places that we visited.
Qutub-minar is one the important places of the Mughal Dynasty. The Minar was amazing to watch. The history around the place was well written and interesting to know. The remains of the places around the Minar are well maintained. Next, we drove to Lotus Temple. It was Sunday, the queue to enter Lotus temple looked really long, and we took couple of pictures from outside and moved on the have Lunch. We searched for a place to have the lunch almost for one hour. The driver was well-aware that he does not know restaurants/hotels in "Delhi" ! Atlast, we had some good food and visited India Gate. The driver drove us towards Vijay Path - the road connecting the Rastrapathi Bhavan (President house) and India gate. This is the road, where the Republic day and Independence Day celebrations are held !
We then visited Indira Gandhi's house at No.1, Safdarjung Road; the place where she was assassinated.
Had Pani puri and bought some sweets for the team and boarded back to Chennai !!!
