Taj Mahal, camel riding, and a bunch of other adventures along the way day!

Saturday morning (February 22^nd) we got to enjoy the hotel’s “American breakfast” attempt which really wasn’t too bad.  We had the same driver come and pick us up and drive us around for the day.  First stop, the Taj Mahal of course!!!  Seeing it was so amazing, it’s so absolutely beautiful it took my breath away.  

My ticket in!

At the entrance. Yep, I was freaking out!

Walking through the entrance finally getting to see it!

I know my pictures aren't that great, but it really was SO beautiful!

I was beyond thrilled to see it!  Sadly pictures don’t do it justice.  When we entered there were lots of photographers trying to get us to pay for them to take pictures of us, we got one to agree to a reasonable price and decided it would be fun to have him take a few pictures for us.  We ended up having a big photo shoot in front of the Taj Mahal, it was a lot of fun!  

It got kind of annoying though because almost every two minutes people would stop us and ask for pictures with us (what odd people! I don’t get why they would want pictures with random people when they are at the Taj Mahal!).  Anyways, we finally made our way to the entrance of the Taj Mahal, we got to go in and see the tombs which were so amazing and beautiful.  We got to walk around and admire all the detail of it; I wish I could properly describe what it was like because it really was just so amazing!  

In front of the Taj Mahal, a picture of one of the entrances right across from it.

Just admiring the detail!

After we finished we were in a bit of a time crunch so we hurried to the south exit where our photographer said to meet him to buy our pictures.  We were led down a small crowded street packed with souvenir shops and obnoxious guys yelling at us to buy stuff (because yelling at people makes them want to buy stuff).  Once the guy gave us our pictures we made our way back to the main road where we had first entered the Taj Mahal.  We were in a bit of a rush to go meet our driver so that we could go and at least grab some lunch before we would need him to take us to our bus station, so we started speed walking up the long road stopping for no one.  This road that we were on was actually pretty cool because there were these carriage-like things being pulled by camels up and down the road.  I wasn’t interested in riding in the carriage; I just wanted to ride the camel!  Seriously I didn’t realize how freakin awesome tall camels are, so yes, I really wanted to ride one!  Some of the camel carriage drivers were determined in trying to sell us a ride; one in particular was super persistent and he followed us up the road for quite some time.  We told him we didn’t even want a ride in the carriage but that we would rather ride the camel.  Then he said that we could ride the camel….. um, SOLD!!!  There was no way I could pass on this opportunity!  Camel riding, in front of the Taj Mahal, in INDIA yep yep yep!!!  It was so cool, I climbed up onto the camel and then got to ride it up the road.  I felt like I was on top of the world!  Seriously it was the funnest thing I did, it totally made my day!  

Ah! Camel!

The other two girls got to take a turn as well, and then afterwards we found our driver and had him take us to Pizza Hut!!!  Well… we now know where all the other tourists were hiding!  Haha Pizza Hut was totally packed with people; I met this nice group of people who were from Texas, it was just fun being there and meeting some people.  The pizza was great of course, after that we told our driver to take us to the bus station.  We had google searched where the station supposedly was and it looked kind of far, so we figured we would need the rest of the time to drive there, but our driver said that apparently it was super close and we had time to go to another place first.  He wanted to take us to some marble shop, we were super anxious though to get to our bus on time (we had a hotel reservation for the night in Jaipur, so we needed to make sure we caught the bus to Jaipur since it was a 6 hour bus ride away).  We kept telling him to take us to the bus station but he insisted that we had plenty of time (grrr I’ll just very nicely say some people here are quite frustrating!).  So he (with no permission from us) drove us to this marble shop for more people to aggressively try and sell us things haha.  The store was pretty cool because it had table tops and things that were made out of marble and the same gems used in the Taj Mahal.  They used patterns and designs that the Taj has and it was all quite pretty.  It was cool to look at some of the things they had but overall the experience was quite uncomfortable, so we were happy to finally get out of there.  From there we got our driver to take us to our bus stop.  I won’t go into all of the details of what our bus ride was like, but I will say it was a completely terrifying, unsafe feeling, and frustrating experience that I will never repeat.  The bus ended up getting us to Jaipur around 11:00 p.m., it dropped us off in this sketchy place so we took the first rigshaw we could find and from there we got a ride to our hotel.  I was just so thrilled to be in a nice hotel where I could feel safe again!  We each got to enjoy a real shower again, and this hotel had a mini fridge with good stuff in it haha (most importantly my Coke in it (which was needed)), and it had a nice comfy bed so we felt all better by the end of the day!  It was so great!