The first time I have ever been to Delhi was in 2013, for counselling for AIIMS. At that time , I was too young, didn't know how to speak Hindi, had no clue how to travel, completely naïve kid I was, it didn't even come to my head to go visit taj mahal which was few hours away.
Then, back in 2017, me and Gopi were in our orthopedics office posting some procedure, which I don't remember now, and we talked about going out somewhere that weekend to lighten our mood as we were in a bad mood. We came to the hostel and discussed it with the group, and finally me, Navya Gopi, and Ancy decided to go to Agra and Mathura for a one-day trip. The trip planner was Aathira, who was very interested in planning but not interested in joining the trip, for reasons only she knows.
ooh! It was not a weekend; it was some other holiday, which does have importance in this story, by the way.
So, Aathira planned the trip, we arranged a few dresses from friends, mostly from Suruchi, and we did head off to the railway station—Habib Ganj, which is now renamed Rani Kamal Pati—which is India's first private railway station as far as I know, and it looks really cool compared to India's other railway stations as of now.
So, we got in the train, which came on time. Aathira also got inside, and right when the train started moving, she told us that Taj Mahal is closed on Friday and to go enjoy the trip, and she left. Yes, of course we are traveling on Thursday night.
Oh, yeah, none of us had any idea about the fact that it's closed on Friday; however stupid it might feel now, we really didn't have a clue!
The next morning we reached Agra, put on all the makeup we could possibly put on, took an auto, and saw every corner of the Taj Mahal premises except the Taj Mahal. Ok, we covered Agra Fort, took enough photos to compensate for our loss.
We headed over to Mathura and saw Janmasthan, where Lord Krishna was born. We had no return ticket booked. TTR caught us halfway and, as usual, threw us out of the compartment. the second half of the travel was a mini wagon tragedy in the general compartment.
On January 1, 2023, I went on my first solo trip to Agra. I was chilling cold; my train was from Rani Kamalpati and came almost 6 hours late. At 3 am in the morning, I waited in the railway station for almost 6 hours. It was frigid; I had to take back-to-back coffee or something hot to survive there. I am generally not very comfortable with cold climates, to mention The train, which was supposed to reach there early in the morning, reached there by noon. It was still cold, around 15 degrees. By the time I reached Taj, phone was almost switched off.
Finally, I saw it; it was spectacular. The solo trip was cool except for the fact that it's difficult to get good pictures. I revisited Agra Fort again, and I came back on the night train.
In August 2023, me, Rishika, and Sushma planned to go to Vrindavan and Gwalior. Gwalior has been on my bucket list for a couple of years. This was the second time I was planning the same trip; the first time it got cancelled because the train got delayed by 8 hours and I had to file a TDR to get the ticket money.
The second time, the train didn't get delayed; it didn't even start from the source station. The only ticket available at the time was a ticket to Agra; I took it. early morning, we reached Agra. After visiting the Taj Mahal and Fatehpur Sikri, we headed over to Vrindavan. Vrindavan was altogether another story, which is beyond the scope of this blog post. so we will talk about it later! So that's all for today.
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