An autorickshaw drives us to the hotel that we had initially reserved for the night before. We are in Agra, the city I have been trying to avoid since the last time I came to India. Stories have been circulating amongst travelers giving the place quite a bad reputation. Perhaps it is because of the amount of visitors each year to the Taj Mahal that have made some locals become a bit too greedy for money. We have heard of people become ill due to food poisining in some of the restaurants to get the insurance money back… Anyways the only real reason we are here is to see the Taj and we will leave again right after.
The traffic is loud and people are honking constantly… Perhaps we are also more sensitve after our exhausting 20 hour taxi ride. As we drive along theYamuna river the Taj suddenly appears, what a sight! The driver drops us off at the Taj View Hotel. The outside of the building is nothing special, a simple 5 story block, but as we step inside we feel as if we had just entered a secluded and exclusive world of the upper class… Quite a contrast to what we have just seen on the road coming here.
We are offered a welcome drink of rosewater as we wait sitting on soft couches by the reception hall. Soon our turn comes and we try to explain that we called the day before saying that we could not make it for the reserved night since we would be in the taxi for the next 14 hours. We had agreed on the phone that as soon as we arrived in Agra we would drop in and see how we could get some of the money back on the fee we had already paid, since we would not be staying. We thought we were understood and reached an agreement when they tell us to wait a bit until they speak to the hotel. Then suddenly we receive a key to our room...? Huh? They thought we had just wanted to tell them we were staying tonight instead of last night… We tried to explain again to the manager this time that we just wanted to get part of the money back, since we already had a reservation for tonight and the next two nights in a palace in Bharatpur. He then went on saying when you book and pay with your credit card at any of the Taj hotels in India there is no way of cancelling, unless you advise them more than 1 week before… So we had 2 rooms for tonight… In then end we settled it by using our room for a few hours to refresh ourselves before taking the taxi to Bharatpur. We are shown to our room on the 5th floor with a view of the Taj Mahal…Wow!
We enjoy the luxury of the room for a while and sit and watch the sun set on the Taj as we order room service. Might as well get the most of our little time in the most expensive room of our trip! Soon it is time to leave again by taxi for Bharatpur.
