1003 At the S place for breakfast. Left bag with hotel, dunno if I am supposed to tip them when I pick it up. I probably am going to see the Taj (well, I can see it from the table here, but I mean up close) - by the time I eat it will be 11ish, I want to pick my bag up about 3 for train at 1620 so that gives me a clear 3h going on 4h which would be pretty much enough for a first visit, never mind a second. I will just try to take it a bit more meditatively and not worry so much about zooming round. £7.50 isn't that much and given what it's cost to get here etc it is negligible. (FFS, it effectively cost me three quid to visit that mosque yesterday for about 5-10 minutes.) I just hope I am indeed allowed to take my mobile in; still, as I think I said, IIRC the signs say to make sure they are turned off, implying they are allowed.
Haven't tried to arrange pickup by hotel in Jaipur as no obvious mention this is a service they provide but have starred the hotel on map (think it might actually have been done already) and written name on tatty bit of paper. Not exactly looking forward to arrival but it can't be any worse than here and if I pay three quid when I should have paid one or two I can live with that, as long as it gets me to the hotel with my bag safe.
I will play it by ear but I might tack on a fourth day in Jaipur. I could kind of do with a completely idle day, here there has been too much getting up early. On the other hand, unless I strongly feel I need more time in Jaipur, maybe best to have that day somewhere else - otherwise I may move on to town X for three days afterwards and find there's only a day or so's worth of stuff and have a second unwanted idle day in town X. Let's just see how it goes.
1041 Food OK. Reminded for no reason there are posters all over town for the film 'Bullet Raja', which tuktuk driver explained to me means 'Bullet King'.
I'm sure it's just a case of "when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail" but although (what I assume is) Hindi doesn't generally sound like Spanish, every now and then comes a seemingly coherent two or three word Spanish phrase.
1059 Bill delivered verbally was 430. That seems a bit high, wonder if they charged me twice for my naan (it didn't turn up at first) but even so. Fuck it. Made it 500, minor shame as hoping to pay 400 with tip and acquire another 100 note. Oh well.
1517 At Agra Fort station. One shoe cleaner who was a tiny bit persistent but did go and didn't dump any shit on my shoe, otherwise touch wood being left alone. Got my 'usual' driver from hotel. I asked him how much to AF station and, to paraphrase Jerome K Jerome, he seemed to feel this introduced a sordid commercial note and said I should pay what I felt. I gave him 200 and he didn't go nuts, I suspect that is way over the odds but what can you do. Anyway, at least I sort of trust him, a random driver might have quoted me 200 and I'd have felt obliged to tip on top. Need to do web search re this, am I really supposed to tip heavily on top of these inflated tourist fares?
Did go to Taj Mahal again, glad I did. Took a few photos but with a touch more care than usual. Only went round the mausoleum twice today. I am almost certain it had a rather sweaty body changing room kind of smell, presumably because of the sheer volume of people. Wasn't like that the other morning.
Wandered grounds, sat on a couple of seats staring at Taj and letting thoughts wander a bit. Indian chap asked me what I was doing on my own at one point; we had a very brief conversation, but I was not super open with my responses. He was OK, just being friendly, not a tout or anything.
Anyway, will stop writing this as running battery down and attracting more attention (probably) than if I just stand here reading book on phone.
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