To visit the Taj Mahal, I have, against my better judgment, left all my belongings with a complete stranger who sells marble ornaments. Bags aren't allowed onto the grounds, but this man offered to look after my things. Problem solved.

When I retrieve my luggage, I’m so relieved everything is still present and untampered with that I buy £40 worth of marble from the seller out of gratitude.

I’m unable to keep a running price total for my marble souvenirs because, typically, nothing has a price on it.

But the wares are better than the ersatz rubbish on sale by the other vendors lining the boulevard on the approach to the Taj—I’ve chosen my vendor well.

I need my luggage back because I’m headed to catch an overnight train (#15055) from Agra to Ramnagar on the edge of the Himalayas to attend a Hindu wedding.

Bartering for marble to get my luggage back

Before getting my hands back on belongings, I have to endure an elaborate procedure.

Two chairs, one for me and one for my friend, Cameron, with whom I’m visiting India, are conjured up and flung into the backs of our legs.

We’re then treated to a detailed explanation of all the types of inlaid marble for sale in the shop.

Without a price list to help out, I try and calculate the value in my head, and reason that, like wine at a restaurant, the second-cheapest option is probably the best.

Much later into our trip, I ask Cameron what he is most looking forward to when he gets home.

“Fixed prices, clearly displayed on everything,” is his answer.

As it happens, I end up leaving with a rather fetching coaster inlaid with shell, and a small elephant inlaid with lapis lazuli for my mum. Not bad.

The bag stowage options at the Taj Mahal were, to put it mildly, obtuse.

We had to leave our flight bags with a random shopkeeper as mentioned, bribe the clerk at the cloakroom to store another bag, and convince the armed guards to let us in with the remainder of our belongings.

Pushing our luck, we take a Tuk Tuk to Agra Fort, hoping the bag situation there is simpler.

Thwarted at Agra Fort

The Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan was imprisoned in Agra Fort after being overthrown by his son Aurangzeb during a war of succession.

His daughter and architect of Old Delhi’s Chandni Chowk, Jahanara Begum, voluntarily joined him in imprisonment until his death in 1666.

Cameron and I have a few hours to kill until our train tonight to Ramnagar.

We would quite like to visit Agra Fort, but our willpower has been sapped by the Taj Mahal's exhausting bag stowage rules, so we’re not getting our hopes up.

After a hair-raising rally stage, our Tuk Tuk drops us off on an absurdly busy road opposite the fort.

We research the bag drop situation online.

To our dismay, it’s the same as at the Taj Mahal—no bags are allowed inside.

We’re unwilling to go through the same ordeal again, so content ourselves to look at it from across the road.

Still, forts are designed to look opposing from the outside, so there’s that.

And it certainly is opposing, with massive, squat bastions and sheer walls, built entirely of Agra sandstone that’s the same colour as dried blood.

The horn—India's simplest language

To escape the worst of the intolerable honking (one of India’s many languages, I recall James May once saying), we perch just upstream of a ring road that assuredly must be Dante’s 10th circle of hell.

We’re not far from Agra Fort metro station.

Another backpacking tourist follows our example and steps away from the choking traffic to stop and smoke a cigarette in the waning afternoon sunshine.

I get the sense he would like to talk, and I would like one of his smokes, but Cameron and I are too drained to strike up conversation.

He moves on. We move on.

We’ve been on the go for three days without sleep or a bed or a meal, and we don’t have the heart for any more sightseeing, which does not happen easily in India.

Besides the fort, there isn’t anything else local that we would like to visit.

So, with four hours remaining until our train out of Agra is due to depart, we head to Agra Fort Railway Station to wait and catch out tonight.

Why vaccinations are essential to visit India

We walk past a stream that’s been turned into an open sewer, stinking of warm human excrement.

It’s a sad irony that India’s holy waterways are now so polluted, and the sight severely depresses us both.

I suspect Cameron and I are both feeling the same urge to return to Indira Gandhi National Airport and go home.

But we’re here to attend our friend’s wedding, and we must find “a gear” despite our exhaustion.

To our credit, our travel plans before and after the wedding are very adventurous, and we’ve planned them to maximize our time here. Annual leave hasn’t been easy to negotiate, and we want to take in as much of the country as we can.

But we’re so drained that we’re at risk of short-changing ourselves. The weary leading the ignorant.

On the brighter side, our entire journey so far has been a laborious, sightseeing detour en route to the wedding destination, and all our key travel legs have gone to plan.

And we have the cosy prospect of finally ditching our heavy bags and sleeping on the train this evening.

Cameron is very quiet, so I remind him of these positives to try and cheer him up, despite feeling no better myself.

Beyond the open sewer, we stop on a patch of bare, shaded earth in a park beneath the fort walls.

As soon as we stop, we’re beset by pestilence.

Flies, mosquitoes, macaques, and dogs all slink in to road‑test our vaccinations.

In search of a more sanitary place to loiter, we head across the road to the station.

Peace at Agra Fort Railway Station

Agra Fort Railway Station this Sunday evening is very serene.

Young monkeys play in the gantries above us, while older ones snooze and pick the fleas from their young's fur on the steps down to the platform complex.

A sanguine, mustard light spills in and blots out the parallel tracks with a nostalgic haze.

Parents walk along the tracks with their bags and their children.

A heavy locomotive rolls through and deafens us with its horn.

Evening folds in with a satisfying rhythm of bustle and quiet.

A pair of rangy backpacking girls briefly appear before catching out. What’s their adventure?

The calm slowly cheers us up while we perch on a massive concrete block in restful silence.

Hot samosas are being sold from a portable cooker on the platform. Their smell is torture to hungry bellies, but we have the strength of mind to resist them in order to be fit for the wedding.

Our third consecutive sunset without sleep is of the deepest indigo and umber.

We snap a picture as it disappears behind a mosque.

Completely unbeknownst to us at the time, it turns out to be the exact same photo of the Jama Mosque featured on the cover of Paul Theroux’s Great Railway Bazaar.

Waiting on the platforms after dark

Agra Fort station becomes seedy after dark.

Cameron witnesses a foiled bag robbery, and I abort an al fresco piss on the farthest platform when a shifty fellow emerges from the shadows ahead of me and walks determinedly in my direction.

Insofar as we can tell, our train departs only once per week. (It actually departs 3 times per week from Agra Fort Railway Station, on Sundays, Tuesdays, and Fridays at 8:50pm.)

When it appears on the departures board, we deduce it has been standing on the platform all evening, waiting for its crew.

It starts its journey here in Agra, and will terminate at Ramnagar tomorrow morning, 440 kilometres away. We’re staying aboard for the entire overnight journey.

As the departure time approaches, passengers assemble by their allotted carriages.

We’re very glad to have berths pre-booked in, by Indian Railways’ standards, the comparatively palatial class 2A, meaning we can avoid the scrum for general class.

Thoughtfully, the sleeper carriages are located farthest from the locomotive.

Thanks to a gentle-mannered and unusually helpful tout back in Delhi, finding our bunks is the easiest thing we have done all day.

We pull out of Agra very tired and sore, but reflective and optimistic.

On the overnight train from Agra to Ramnagar

Cameron and I now get to present ourselves to the world as two pairs of conspicuously large feet and shove our heads in a dark corner—for 12 whole hours.

Looking at our beds for the night, Cameron astutely remarks that they are "the perfect colour to hide stains; a mottled halfway house between red and brown."

On point as ever with her gallows humour, my mother said our berth looked like a cell on death row after I unironically sent her a celebratory photo. She had the presence of mind to withhold this truth until I was home.

Yet, to our Agra eyes, these are luxurious and capacious chambers, scrubbed squeaky clean by the promise of monastic solitude.

We waste no time flattening ourselves down onto our bunks.

We have the bottom two, meaning we can watch the activity on the platform that already feels very far away even though we have not yet moved.

Cameron stole his pillow from our Air India flight. I make do by throwing my sweater over my bulging rucksack, and with that, we’re both extremely comfy.

To assimilate the day’s staggering experiences, we crack open a bottle of Kentucky bourbon that I’ve brought along, and drink it from two camping mugs.

As we drink, two elderly passengers, almost certainly a couple, are ushered into our berth by a young relative.

They unfussily clamber into their beds above us.

It’s hard to imagine a well-off couple travelling this way in England.

Drinking alcohol is a taboo among pious Hindu elders, but our companions don’t complain.

There’s a surprising communal respect among the passengers that we are all here to sleep while we travel.

This carriage is much calmer than the one earlier today that carried us from Delhi to Agra, and has the hush of an exam hall.

We drink and murmur about the day for about an hour, feeling buoyed by rest and a little booze.

The lights on the train have been dimmed, but the sodium glow of the lights from outside cast shadows that move gently across the compartment while we talk and roll silently northward.

Sleeping on Indian Railways night trains

My first sleep on a train is fantastic.

I am, however, a light sleeper, and wake around 5am to the sound of the train blasting its horn at five-second intervals.

At first, I’m annoyed by the driver blowing the horn so fatuously, like we’re stuck in Delhi traffic.

The honking is non-stop, and must be unbearable for the passengers directly behind the locomotive.

The horn that blew right next to us in Agra Fort Railway Station was ear-splitting, and physically hurt.

As I brood and shove my earplugs in, the early dawn breaks outside the window to reveal an impenetrable fog.

The driver is probably warning those whose hutments and livelihoods spill onto the railway line.

Morning sleeper train etiquette

Before it’s fully light, our companions wake up and dress silently, ready to get off.

Their young relative reappears to help them with their bags and returns to shut the curtain that blocks off most of the light from the aisle.

I’m very grateful for this small gesture, as it allows me a bit more precious rest.

Cameron sleeps through it all, like only a kiss from prince charming would wake him up.

Thankfully, it doesn’t come to that, and he snorts himself awake to his alarm at 7:30am.

The rural north. A truly different India

The scenery outside has changed dramatically.

The dilapidated urban tenements of Delhi and Agra have been replaced overnight by an agricultural landscape of crop stubble and low hills—the baby hillocks of the Himalayas that rise somewhere beyond fog.

Mounds of trash pile up beside the edges of swamps that have formed by the tracks.

They are full of algae due to the lack of rain and, very probably, fertilizer run-off from the farms.

The farm buildings themselves are painted in pale blues, pinks, and whites, and appear well looked after.

For a while, the farms thin out, and we pass through a marshy swampland.

Trees, many bare with the winter cold, pass very close by our window, which has a peculiar red tint to it.

With the mist, the scene looks positively satanic; not at all what we expected the approach to the Western Himalayas to look like.

By mid-morning, the train is deserted.

Cameron and I get dressed and hang out of one of the carriage doors that is open and swings freely in the cold breeze.

The day is still getting its colours, but with cool air descending from unseen mountains and having enjoyed a full night’s rest, we’re looking forward to the rural scenery of the Himalayan foothills.

Pulling into Ramnagar

Ramnagar Railway Station is just a few sidings with no main building.

“Welcome to India,” a stranger greets us.

People’s appearances have changed overnight.

City slickers, either paunchy or hollow-chested depending on income, have changed into tall farmhands, tanned and sturdy.

The Tuk Tuk rank is a seller’s market, and we pay an exorbitant 800 rupees to be taken a few miles up the road to our hotel.

A taxi all the way back to Delhi would cost only four times this price, but it’s very fun tearing up mountain roads, watching the sun burn off the morning mist to unveil massive ridgelines.

Ramnangar is a small town but is very busy at this early hour.

Baskets of fruit, as bright as a pack of crayons, are being sprayed down to keep the fruit fresh and, unfortunately for us, inedible.

The high Himalayan mountains are still 100 kilometres away, but already the land is rent into steep hills.

The Kosi River bubbling down from these mountains looks oh so clean compared to the coffee-coloured waters of the Yamuna in Agra yesterday.

We pass logging camps that look very sorry indeed compared to the surrounding forest.

Winter has taken its toll on the more sensitive flora; giant paddle-shaped leaves lay browning and sagging, but otherwise this forest is positively the healthiest thing we’ve seen in India so far.

A luxurious hotel in Jim Corbett National Park

Sitting in plush armchairs inside the immaculate reception of our hotel, Radisson’s Namah Resort, Cameron and I feel hideous.

It’s Monday morning.

We’ve been travelling without sleep, a meal, or a wash, since we packed to come to India 3 nights ago.

With some luck, the burning incense masks our smell.

Somewhere out of view, a water feature trickles in harmony with the pan pipes playing through the speakers.

Tonight, the hotel staff are laying on a stargazing expedition.

The comparative luxury after so long on the road is stupefying.

If someone told us we were in Beverly Hills, we would believe them.

Fusion food. Nutella on a dosa

After receiving ceremonial hats of the region, we take a golf cart—our third mode of transport this morning—down to the breakfast buffet.

I’m so tired, I spread Nutella on a dosa, mistaking it for a pancake.

The chef in his tall hat, preparing the dosas freshly from a thick batter, looks at me like I’m a savage.

“Dr. Warwick, I presume?”

Aware that we look as if we have evolved a few common ancestors backwards, Cameron and I take our breakfast outside and eat it downwind of all the other guests out of compassion.