Our last week in India was a whirlwind adventure in what Katie and I once dubbed “go mode” during our Australia travels. We didn’t spend more than one night in each place and covered a lot of ground, seeing the Taj Mahal in Agra, and exploring Rajasthan.

We set off from Delhi early, taking the sitting class train three hours to Agra. Piled in on long benches facing other passengers, Beth and I bundled up as best we could against the freezing wind blowing in through the windows. At one point, I stuffed toilet paper through the crack in the window, which seemed to help a little.

We arrived in Agra and were immediately set at ease by the slow pace and quiet nature of the town. We found a cute motel-esque guest house a mere block away from the entrance to the Taj Mahal. We ate eggs and drank masala tea in a quaint and sunny garden restaurant outside of our room, relishing the fact that we were out of Delhi. And then came the Taj…

After standing in line, being patted down, and having dangerous items such as dice removed from our bag to be held in storage until our return, we entered the courtyard that surrounds the grounds of the Taj Mahal. As we first caught a glance of the Taj through the huge, arched doorway, we were speechless. We were expecting it to be incredible, but were prepared in the possibility that it might not live up to all the tourist-trap hype and hoopla. But once we walked through the passageway and were faced with the Taj in all it’s glory, Beth laughed and said, “Alright. That’s pretty fricken impressive.”

It truly is an awe-inspiring sight, and the two of us walked around and around for the rest of the day to fully appreciate it, checking out the huge marble terraces, intricate marble inlay, the small interior that holds the sarcophaguses of Mumtaz Mahal and Shah Jahan, and different views of the surrounding landscapes.

That night, we ate at a restaurant with a roof top view of the Taj. Beer is not openly sold at the restaurants in Agra, but when the waiter heard us commenting on this, he said, “Oh, but we have beer here…”. Our beer arrived about an hour later with our mutton burgers, served out of a teapot with two small teacups in their saucers.

The next morning, we took a long bus ride through the deserts of Rajasthan to its capitol, Jaipur. A dusty, pink city, noted for its overabundance of pigs, cows, and other livestock in the streets, we didn’t plan to stay long. The one night we had, we checked out a tall, rotating restaurant so that we could have a good view of the city. We had a window seat, ate a Rajasthan Thali (small samplings of a few different plates), drank lassis and lime sodas, and spun around slowly over the city.

The next morning, we took a ride up to see Tiger Fort, a vast compound with a castle and a long, snaking wall up a mountain at the edge of the city. Upon arrival, we learned that there was one room available at the castle, with incredible views of the city, for a pretty affordable price. It was available for the following night, so we decided to rearrange our train tickets, shorten our stay in our next destination, and come back the following night for the experience. We shot down the mountain, jumped on a bus, and set off for our now only one night in Pushkar.

Pushkar was definitely one of our favorite experiences in India. This picturesque town surrounds a large, peaceful lake, with large, white buildings along the shore, and a dirt road filled with small shops behind them. We found a room at the Lakeview hotel, with, surprisingly, an incredible view of the lake, complete with a deck. We watched the sun set over the mountains from the hippy-filled steps at one side of the lake, and later ate vegetable pakoras, drank hot chocolate, and wrote postcards by candlelight at the Sunset Café.

We shopped a bit, then head back to our hotel where we ate grilled cheeses and drank masala tea on the roof. We sat over the lake, watched the reflection of the lights on the water, and listened with interest to the chanting of the nearby mosques. We asked the waiter, “So, how long do they chant anyway?”

“This is Pushkar,” he said. “They can go all night.”

Who needs drugs when you’ve got God, that’s what I say. These devotees chanted and sang, whooped and hollered with a dedication and vigor akin to ravers on E at a full moon party. We’re talkin’ all night, no stopping, from dusk until dawn, people! Not only did we have to contend with the echo effect over the lake, but these folks belted out their dedications over a fricken loud speaker. By 1am, Beth and I were no longer amused, and broke out the earplugs to try to block out the sound. As Beth pulled the sleeping bag over her head, she theorized, “I don’t think God would mind if they slept a little.”

At 6am, I got up to watch the sunrise over the lake and was able to spot folks heading down to the lake to wash themselves in the holy lake. The sunrise over the lake was just as spectacular as the sunset, slowly burning away the morning fog, and turning the buildings gray to brilliant white under a pink and purple sky. Shortly thereafter, the chanting picked up again.

We packed our bags, and sadly (though sleepily) said goodbye to Pushkar. We (literally) jumped on a bus as it was pulling away to Ajmer, and from there caught another bus back to Jaipur. There we found a motor rickshaw that took us up the winding mountain rode to the castle where we would be staying for the night.

Our room was in a small tower to the end of the castle overlooking the entire city. Beth and I admired the view and then had our first bucket showers with boiling hot water brought to us from the kitchen. When I finished mine, I returned to the room to find my birthday present, a necklace and earrings that I had been pining for in Pushkar.

We watched the sunset over the town on a stone wall beneath our window. We returned to the castle and enjoyed a Chai Teachers before heading out to another bar/restaurant further down the path where we had beer, nuts, and a sugar candy, sitting under the stars and looking out over the sprawling, sparkling city below.

We headed back to the castle where we waited in our candle lit room for the electricity to go on again after a brief outage. We emerged to find dinner waiting, and ate with a few other tourists who had come up the mountain for an evening meal.

We bummed around the castle the next day, hiking around the grounds, eating at the restaurant, and watching the monkeys steal food off people’s plates. We took a taxi down the mountain and boarded our train for the 6-hour ride to Delhi where we spent the night. The next morning we bid adieu to India, catching our plane in the early morning hours to the Middle East.