Day 4 (January 1): And so we rested

In the morning, we video-chatted with Ravi and Dylan - yay!! Because we’d arrived so late, and were exhausted, we felt we had to change our itinerary so we would be able to appreciate the Taj Mahal. We spent the morning working on that. When we were down in the lobby after breakfast, Ekta (one of the fabulous people behind the reception desk) asked if we still were interested in upgrading our room (for free) to one with a Taj view. So we moved up two floors, looked out the window, and had our first view of the Taj Mahal. (Well, first view on this trip.) We had to take some pictures of the view and of our new (slightly fancier) room. Also, there were some people playing cricket on a rooftop. :)

We did some shopping in the hotel gift shops for a bit, and checked out the spa. I had every intention of getting some sort of massage, but every time we had down time from exploring, it just seemed more enticing to sleep.

All the guide books rave about seeing the Taj Mahal at sunrise and sunset, so we planned to see it that evening at sunset. When we went to the reception desk to ask the best way to get there, we were told that it closed at sunset. Also, it hadn’t been sunny at all, so there wouldn’t be any light reflecting off the marble. So, we thought we’d go around town a bit and explore, and try to get a peek at the Taj from a distance. Our tuk-tuk driver (that’s what they call the auto-rickshaws in Agra) drove us around and showed us various markets. We kept asking to be driven by the Taj Mahal, and he kept saying it was closed. We tried to convey that we just wanted to peek at it, but either he didn’t understand us, or we didn’t understand that there is just no way to do a drive-by of the Taj Mahal. We did a bit more gift-shopping, ate dinner, and went to bed. The food at this hotel was just amazing! Uppma and dosas and aloo for breakfast, paneer tikka and dal makhani for lunch, Indian buffet for dinner – we were very content.