Never complain about the binmen.

Slept terribly because of a pain in my left shoulder; I can no longer turn my neck left and instead have to rotate my torso. To add to this, somebody, possibly with a severe mental deficit, decided it would be a good idea to blow a whistle every minute or two from 4AM until sunrise. Whether or not they were angling for the proceeding barking battle between every mutt from here to the horizon remains unclear.

The 'house boy' who served breakfast this morning was a strange guy and clearly found reason to hover around the table making the meal rather uncomfortable. No doubt he was waiting for a tip; has he not figured me out yet?

After breakfast the morning was spent planning our trip from Amritsar to Goa, which remained undecided: An excellent 2 hours work. We were able to make one decision and that was to visit Palolem and Jog Falls before meeting Belinda and heading to Arambol.

After yesterday at the Taj this is a bit of a boring day to blog. We went for a 4km walk to check out the 'real' Agra. It was nice to be away from the main tourist locations and hence the majority of the leeches; only encountering 2 touts, 7 beggars and 70+ Rickshaw prospectors.

Once thing your notice when walking around Agra: It's a shitheap.

Agra's waste management and sanitation system were but a couple of metrics the town planners left off the blueprints for the city. I'm not accusing them of negligence but it seems to me that a shallow moat dug from your home to the road is not an efficient method to remove excrement. It succeeds in adding to the terrifically pungent odour that haunts the city: A colourful fragrance I'm sure Calvin Klein could only describe as London Zoo meets human urine. Each house manages to delicately fuse new odours to this exquisite eau de toilette until you reach to city's municipal waste system: A Cow. Or, sometimes, many cows. At this point and perhaps in a 15m radius around it wafts the stench of garbage. Perhaps waft is the wrong word, hovers or lingers would be more appropriate. Why bother wasting time and money constructing a furnace to incinerate waste when a cow can digest it for you? Exactly: There is no point. A Rupee save is a Rupee earned.



Agra's Municipal Waste System.

Walking back proved just as eventful. Carefully stepping around one of the huge puddles from the rain last night I heard a huge bang above me. Looking up I noticed a power line had exploded (just like in Final Destination 2 where the kid can't get out of the garage) and landed no more than 2m from my feet. To say I shit myself would be an understatement. Strangely the locals didn't bat an eyelid. In retrospect I am not surprised because the power cuts this city endures are some of the worse I have known. So frequent I have been unable to fully recharge my phone in the last 3 days.

By 8pm the heat of the day had unsettled the atmosphere sufficiently to generate one hell of a storm. I headed for the roof to get some shots of this lightshow but after a few minutes this became very dangerous due to the huge chunks of hail pelting down.

"You Pussy!" You're all thinking.

Well screw you! These hailstones were 3-4cm across. I have never been spectator to such a storm before and this is the closest I ever wish to come to a natural disaster.


Huge hailstone, partially melted.



Storm Damage.









Me Blogging.



You don't want this job!