Gwalior

Our bus from Amritsar to Delhi arrived at the Red Fort around 6am.  Having avoided all the auto rickshaw drivers who crowded around the bus as everyone got off, we walked a little way down the road and found one all by himself.  After a little negotiation on the price, we were on our way to Nizamuddin Railway Station.  

At the station we purchased a ticket to Gwalior and went in search of our train.  We had just enough time for a quick chai before boarding the train. We had general tickets, which basically means you don't have an allocated seat so can sit anywhere, but if someone has booked that seat, you will have to move.  We found a carriage that had a few seats and sat down. Luckily no one came to move us on.

3 hours later we arrived in Gwalior.  First stop was food.  We had a chana samosa and a cup of ginger chai to keep us going.   Whilst we stood eating we could hear a lot of noise, like chanting coming from over the road. We enquired of a man standing next to us and he explained it was a political rally against someone's imprisonment.  It all seemed fairly calm and soon everyone got on their scooters and off they went, all tooting their horns, which made quite a noise!

A little further down the road we found a busy little stall selling poha (a puffed rice dish). We haven't seen this for a while so had one of those too. Whilst we were eating a group of young men came to chat to us and insisted on buying us more chai whilst we chatted.

Onwards and we came across the Italian Garden, which was very pretty. We also found a couple of other pretty little parks with statues in them.

We headed towards the Jai Villas Palace and came across a whole litter of puppies, 7 in total...they were very cute.  As much as we would have loved to get down and play with them, we have learnt not to be too friendly with them as they then have a tendency to follow you!  

When we arrived at the Palace, we were at the back entrance, which is reserved for the Maharaja. It was quite a walk around to the front and as we had our bags with us, we decided to continue on towards our accommodation.

We crossed a busy road and were just consulting our map to check the way when a young man stopped on his motorbike and asked if we needed any help.  We were heading to the  gurudwara up on the hill, next to the fort. It turned out he was heading to the same place and offered us a lift.This is when the bonus of having small backpacks comes in handy. We managed to get all of us, plus our backpacks on his scooter (he very sweetly apologised and said if he'd known, he would have brought his car!).  As we wound our way up the hill to the gurudwara we were very grateful for the lift!  It was further and steeper than we had anticipated and it would have taken us some time to get there.

**Pic of gurudwara in daylight 

On arrival we became the focus of many a selfie before our new friend managed to extract us from the group who all wanted their picture taken with us.  We headed to the office as our accommodation for the next couple of nights is actually at the gurudwara itself.  

We had our ID checked by the office staff and completed some paperwork.  

We then got chatting to a couple from Ludhiana in Punjab, who are here on holiday.   Before we knew it they had invited us to join them on some sightseeing as they had a car.  We dropped our bags in our room and off we set for the fort and museum.  It turned out the museum was down in the town itself so we went to the fort. 

Surprisingly for us all, there was no entrance fee to the fort grounds. It is a beautiful building with fantastic views down to Gwalior, which is actually a much bigger place than we thought.  There was a small archeological museum which again surprised us all with it's 5 rupee (less than 5p) entrance fee. 

However, we then found the 'tourist price' bit.  To go into the ramparts of the fort it was 20 rupees for our new friends, as they are Indian and 400 rupees for us 'foreigners'.  As it was only half an hour until closing so we decided not to pay the 400 rupees.  We then found the entrance to the fort palace.  Again this was 20 rupees for indians and 300 for foreigners. Again as it was 30 minutes until closing we didn't go in. Instead we watched the sun set over Gwalior before heading back to the gurudwara for langar (food).  

**Pic from archeological museum 

At all Sikh temples you have to cover your head.  Our new friend offered to do Darryl's scarf like a turban.  Having done it and it look good our friend decided the scarf wasn't really big enough so got one of his own turbans and showed us how to do it properly.  

Ater eating we went to the temple just as the evening ceremony was taking place.  This is when the Guru Granth Sahib (holy scripture book) is put to bed in a special room.

For the next hour or so we chatted with our new friends and a young Sikh student, as they were all eager for us to learn more about Sikism.  We were also then joined by an older Sikh man.  It was interesting talking to them all as they were all from different generations and sometimes had slightly different views on things.

When it was time for bed Darryl tried to give his turban back but our friend kindly offered it as a gift for us to keep.  It is in the traditional Sikh colour of orange.