Today was our 'safari' in Ranthambore National Park. The animals are supposed to be most active in the morning, so the tour started early at 7:00 am. Safaris are done either in 'gypsies', which are like jeeps, or in 'cantors', which are trucks with seats in the back and no roof.

The park is divided into zones, and each tour group is randomly assigned to a zone. That way you don't get all the groups showing up at the same watering hole. It also means that if the animals don't happen to be in your zone, you miss out.

Our cantor picked us up from the hotel and took us through town and out again to the entrance for Zone 6. That took about 45 minutes of our 3 hour safari. After a 10 minute wait at the gate, we proceeded up a winding rock and sand path and through an arched gateway in a big wall.
 
The dusty trail continued down into a valley with many animals grazing. They didn't have much fear of the cantor, we we were able to get pretty close to some of them...
   
 
 

Of course what everyone wanted to see was a tiger, but with so many Jeeps and trucks and the hundreds of chattering Indian tourists, it's hard to see how that would ever happen.

We went down one trail that followed a stream bed in the bottom of a canyon. We spent most of the time trying to squeeze our truck past the many vehicles coming in the other direction, and soon found out why. We reached the edge of zone 6 and were not allowed to cross in to zone 1, so we had to turn the truck around and drive back out of the canyon the way we'd come in, squeezing past oncoming vehicles all the way.

Then we stopped at a clearing with a well and washrooms (sort of) where we waited for half an hour or more along with a dozen other groups. Then we loaded up again and headed to a pond where a small dam had been constructed, but there were no animals to see there.
 
Finally we drove back toward the entrance by the same dusty trail we'd come in on. And after that, back through town to our hotel. We saw a lot more wildlife in town than we did in the national park!

At the hotel, Ken had a late breakfast and Heather FaceTimed with the kids. At 11:00 we checked out and Mr Guru drove us north for 2.5 hours, back the way we came all the way to Dausa. Stopped there at a gas station to pee. Then headed east toward Agra on good highway again.

At a toll booth just past Tatamar a guy with a blue reliance card talked to our driver then came around and got in the front passenger seat. Later, our driver explained that he was a toll-booth employee who needed a ride back to town after his shift. He road with us until we turned off at Fatehpur Sikri, or what they call the 'ghost city', about an hour outside of Agra.

This is an old Mughal capital that was abandoned shortly after construction was completed - thus the ghost city name. While most of the city fell into ruins, the main plaza and palace have been preserved. The whole thing is now a Unesco world heritage site that attracts quite a few tourists. And the tourists attract the con-artists.

From the taxi parking area we had to walk for about 10 minutes up a gentle hill to get to the site. At the end of the road there was a large staircase leading up to a giant gateway.
 
At the gate we were "helped" by a young man who explained the rules regarding removal of shoes, etc. As we entered the plaza he walked with us and started explaining everything and trying to get us to take a specific route. We told him we didn't want a guide, but he insisted that he was just being helpful and wanted nothing in return. Then he got another man to come over and explain that the first man was a student volunteer and that we would not need pay him. We bluntly told him to leave us alone and even then he insisted on helping us. We finally did get rid of him after about 10 minutes of trying. His parting comment was they we should please come visit his family's shop and maybe buy something.
 
Once we were free of the guy, two boys stepped in to beg for money. We said 'no', over and over again, but they continued to follow us and badger us for the entire time we were there. They kept on repeating "Mr Money". Ken decided that it would throw them for a loop if he responded "Yes, yes, yes." Every time I said "No". It's a phrase he took from an episode of the Flinstones.

Next we moved on to the nearby palace. And of course we were approached by many vendors on the walk there. But when we got to the ticket gate we found out that it closed in 35 minutes. Given the steep $500 rupee admission fee and how much difficulty we'd been having getting cash, we decided to skip it.

By the time we walked back to the car and got on the road it was getting dark. So that made the last hour of our drive into Agra terrifying, with many vehicles passing despite oncoming traffic, and lots of people, bikes, animals and even cars with no lights.

At one point we had to line up and wait for a train. As before, they closed the crossing long before the train arrived.

In Agra, we almost had a head-on with motorbike in the middle of an intersection. Both they and we hit the breaks and stopped nose to nose. The motorcycle driver had some angry words (in Hindi) for Mr Guru, but he just laughed and pointed out that the motorbike was driving on the wrong side of the road.

Our car arrived at the Tara Palace, which is near the Taj Mahal in Agra, and we went for supper in the hotel restaurant. Then walked down the street a bit to get some water before turning in.