3RD - 4TH OCTOBER

Our flight from Goa to Delhi was pretty good, the plane was new and clean, and we even got free peanuts!! The hotel in Delhi was a hovel, but we’d come to the conclusion that unless you pay loads, hotels in Delhi are generally not nice. We did find really nice restaurant though, just downstairs from the hotel.

We weren’t able to get train tickets in Goa for the Early morning Agra train from Delhi, so we’d e-mailed the hotel in Delhi asking if they would book them for us. Unfortunately it was Gandhi’s Birthday, which is a national holiday, so they couldn’t do it. We decided we’d just go to the station and buy tickets in the morning, as we’d checked on the internet and the train had plenty of seats. Not that simple I’m afraid, because the train was a “Shatabdi”, which means a posh express train, it is reservation only, and the reservation counter

didn’t open until an hour and a half after the train left!!! So we had spoken to the very helpful restaurant manager, who’d said that we could get a later train, which took a bit longer, and we’d have to go in second class. After having seen second class compartments from the outside, we weren’t too keen on this, but it was the only choice, as we’d arranged to meet Noah that morning in Agra. As it happens, when we got to the station, the ticket man offered us tickets for aircon chair class, which we gratefully accepted, and the journey was not too bad at all, including the regulation Indian railways Omelette sandwich for breakfast!!

We arrived at the hotel in Agra, which was as described - set around a nice garden, with clean rooms. It did seem like an Oasis of calm in the middle of the hecticness of Agra. And as we made our way in, we saw Noah sitting at one of the tables. He looked a