Friday 5th October
Our last day in the amazing Trident Hotel has arrived and after a bit of a lie in we headed down to breakfast. We ordered pancakes and French toast but the waiters just kept on bringing us more and more food! We headed back to our room absolutely stuffed and in awe of the amazing service we have received while here. The next half hour was spend packing our bags, checking out and meeting our driver for the day. Rory organised all our transfers with some guy called Raj on TripAdvisor. He booked all our trains and taxis and thankfully, is not a scam artist as when 11am rolled around Chand was waiting to take us to Fatehpur Sikri.
This fortified ancient city was once the capital of the Mughul empire. The emperor, Akbar, had visited the village of Sikri to visit a Sufi saint. The saint predicted the birth of an heir and when the prophecy came true Akbar built his new capital, including a magnificent mosque and three palaces – one for each of his wives; one a Hindi, one a Muslim and one a Christian. We spent a few hours exploring the complex and were really impressed by the mosque which is still in use today. The complex might not be the top thing to visit in and around Agra but we both really enjoyed it and while the mosque was pretty busy, the rest of the complex was surprisingly quiet.
When we’d finished at the complex we caught the bus back to the car park but not before spending £7 on a beautiful miniature chess set and £5 on some marble coasters. I’m 100% sure we got ripped off but for the price of a Nandos we got two pretty little trinkets that we will hopefully keep forever! It also seems a bit unethical to argue over £1 or £2 when that will make very little difference to us but could make a the difference to the seller. Nobody likes getting ripped off but for us it’s all about value and we were both very happy with our purchases.
Our next hotel, The Birder’s Inn, is just 200m away from Keoladeo National Park which is a famed bird sanctuary. We’re visiting in the morning so the rest of the afternoon was spent relaxing, watching the monkeys playing in the hotel gardens from our suite window and watching HBO. We did venture out to the surrounding area but there wasn’t much to see, apart from the occasional cow in the middle of the road and some questionable driving. A trip to the nicey shop was obviously needed and we managed to pick up two large fizzy drinks, three packets of crisps and shaving cream for £2.20.
The hotel is £42 a night and while it has a lovely traditional feel to it, it is probably the closest we have come to our budget backpacking days. With that in mind we didn’t want to risk having dinner here. I’m sure it would have been fine but we have an early start tomorrow (and lots of cycling planned) so we wanted to be feeling our best! Instead we had a nutritious meal of Fanta, crisps and Rice Krispie squares. Delicious.
Our last day in the amazing Trident Hotel has arrived and after a bit of a lie in we headed down to breakfast. We ordered pancakes and French toast but the waiters just kept on bringing us more and more food! We headed back to our room absolutely stuffed and in awe of the amazing service we have received while here. The next half hour was spend packing our bags, checking out and meeting our driver for the day. Rory organised all our transfers with some guy called Raj on TripAdvisor. He booked all our trains and taxis and thankfully, is not a scam artist as when 11am rolled around Chand was waiting to take us to Fatehpur Sikri.
This fortified ancient city was once the capital of the Mughul empire. The emperor, Akbar, had visited the village of Sikri to visit a Sufi saint. The saint predicted the birth of an heir and when the prophecy came true Akbar built his new capital, including a magnificent mosque and three palaces – one for each of his wives; one a Hindi, one a Muslim and one a Christian. We spent a few hours exploring the complex and were really impressed by the mosque which is still in use today. The complex might not be the top thing to visit in and around Agra but we both really enjoyed it and while the mosque was pretty busy, the rest of the complex was surprisingly quiet.
When we’d finished at the complex we caught the bus back to the car park but not before spending £7 on a beautiful miniature chess set and £5 on some marble coasters. I’m 100% sure we got ripped off but for the price of a Nandos we got two pretty little trinkets that we will hopefully keep forever! It also seems a bit unethical to argue over £1 or £2 when that will make very little difference to us but could make a the difference to the seller. Nobody likes getting ripped off but for us it’s all about value and we were both very happy with our purchases.
Our next hotel, The Birder’s Inn, is just 200m away from Keoladeo National Park which is a famed bird sanctuary. We’re visiting in the morning so the rest of the afternoon was spent relaxing, watching the monkeys playing in the hotel gardens from our suite window and watching HBO. We did venture out to the surrounding area but there wasn’t much to see, apart from the occasional cow in the middle of the road and some questionable driving. A trip to the nicey shop was obviously needed and we managed to pick up two large fizzy drinks, three packets of crisps and shaving cream for £2.20.
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