Day 60 - Bird Land and City Chaos!

So working it backwards....we want to be at the Taj comfortably before it closes (4pm), 1h to sort hotel etc (3pm), 3h cycling (12pm), 1h to lunch/pick up bags from old hotel (11am), 2h bird park (9am), therefore, alarm 7:30 to be packed/breakfast/on the road by 9am at the latest.

Reality:

Alarm 7:30, breakfast, ask the guy of he happens to have a compressor we can use to tubeless our new tyres (Jeremy has restocked us with new tyres and Ben a chain 🥳🥳🥳) ....he replies "yes, of course, I've got 2".

Ok, not in the plan, but perfect opportunity to get tyres sorted, so we decide we'll fit that in after bird park...we order breakfast, decide it's probably most efficient to do tyres now while waiting for breakfast, one of those famous 10 minute jobs 🙈. And just like that, it's 10:30am, neither compressor work with the tyres, we've not eaten (miscommunication) , and we're heading off down the street to find a guy "right at the big intersection, through the arch, on the right" with a working compressor. 🤔

We find the guy, he's terribly confused about what our wheels are, how this is working and why Ben is insisting that we just do it ourselves....we just need his compressor. But to everyone's surprise, 10 minutes round trip and the bikes are good to go! New tyre day! (Would like to point out that these tyres have done ~6000km touring without a single puncture!)

So bikes are ready, breakfast done, it's 12 pm and we're ready to go see the bird park (just 3h late). Oh yeah, let's not forget to mention that Ben ordered 2 bowels of porridge, a huge bowl came out, gets devoured, Ben asks if there's any leftovers...and the guy proceeds to politely tells him that that's almost 3 servings of porridge, and that there's no more.

The bird park is awesome! The greenest/quietest/prettiest place we've been in India so far... We can cruise around on bikes, find a nice spot, see birds left/right/up and keep on cruising. We we're apparently in one of the worlds best bird parks, and we must have been the only people without a tripod/binoculars/massive lenses, but we were happy!

After the park it was quick stop back past the hotel to get bags, some more rotis for the road...and actually get moving for the day, forget the Taj for today, lets at least try get to the next city before dark!

So many overloaded vehicles later....

And we arrive on the outskirts of Agra in the dark, for the next 2 hours of raw unadulterated carnage "straight to the veins" (Ben, 2025). Dark, commuter time, high season, dunno what else, but it was mayhem.....I won't go into the details, but it was like being part of a loud, high consequence video game, when we're the highly vulnerable beginners thrown amongst the lions. Highlight was definitely Ben shooting a gap, full power, then square into the back of the tuk tuk that slammed on the ankers (surprisingly to see how far up the rear end of a loaded bike can go with that much luggage on!)

And let's not forget the electric tuk-tuk that ran out of battery in the middle of a busy intersection. 😅

The final 30 mins was Jeremy leading us down a neverending rat race following Google's "2 wheeler" navigation to the hotel. Goh we were pleased to all make it to that hotel alive...hard initiation day for Jeremy!

Food spend today: 28 euros