Agra, India

Bleary-eyed and cursing, the phone rang. Our 4.30am wake-up call disturbed some very strange dreams, inspired no doubt by yesterday's sensory overload and the after-effects of our highly-spiced dinner. For the second morning we seemed to hear distant drums beating out a rhythmic tattoo that was hard to pinpoint.

After a fine breakfast, served by liveried staff in a deserted dining room despite it not yet being 5am, we were met by a fresh team who whisked us off to New Delhi train station through dense fog. Suddenly, out of nowhere a ghostly regiment appeared, marching along the street, drums a-go-go. Apparently the poor soldiers are forced up every morning in winter to prepare for the India Day parade on January 26th. God knows what the city residents think of this each day, as they were still three miles from our hotel and up-close they could wake the dead.

Our train may have had a certain shabby charm but there's no doubting Indian service in the first-class section. We hadn't departed the station before newspapers were proffered, featuring front page pics of our fellow hotel guests, Russell Brand and Katy Perry, alongside new terror alerts from the UK government warning against visiting India. Oops!

To allay our fears the 5-star service continued as we meandered through Delhi's dark, mist-shrouded suburbs, by distributing generously huge bottles of water, hot chai and biscuits and, most bizarrely, dew-glistened roses presented by finely-dressed guards. British Rail this is not!

By 7am the sun was rising over what could have been English countryside, populated by green fields, little rivers, electricity pylons. And yet every now and then a reminder of India appeared - a rundown shack, a tuk tuk crammed with people, dirt roads or rubbish-strewn sewers. Seemingly randomly, although possibly connected to the god-almighty banging that echoed out as we ran over a mountain of stones on the track, the train stopped for a long time in the middle of nowhere.

To alleviate the wait, breakfast was served. As cornflakes, bread and jam, omelettes, paneer cutlets and idli vada with coconut chutney were thrust upon us, we rued the ridiculously early alarm call we had suffered for breakfast when we could have feasted on the train. Declining was difficult as it transpires the hospitality is run by an onboard company with the familiar moniker of Meals on Wheels, who assumed we were obviously not fat enough after the non-stop Christmas gorging we had indulged in just a few days ago, and wanted to hasten us to old-age obesity. We resisted manfully, not wanting to risk the on-board "sanitation facilities".

After two hours we pulled into a station, bang on time for Agra. However, our previous delay and lack of announcements, combined with every station sign being written in Hindi ensured that our carriage, full of European sightseers, had ripples of confusion as we all debated whether we should get off or not. Was this Agra? It didn't look like the kind of place we all wanted to alight. And the platform-bound locals were staring at us with a certain suspicious confusion too. Well, those that could actually see. An Italian man leant over and asked us "Agra? We get off?". Erm, you go for it. We'll stay here thanks.

And then the train lurched into life and pulled out of the station, the well-heeled tourists all still on-board breathing a sigh of relief, and the locals remaining on the platform. Apparently we had stopped at a town called Mathura, the birthplace of Krishna. I'm sure it's full of Indian vibrancy and colour, despite the somewhat menacingly squalid air, but we'll never know. Onwards we clattered towards the Taj Mahal...

And eventually, 45 minutes late, we arrived at Agra; bustling, noisy and different to Delhi. We disembarked, followed by half the train, and watched as others hailed taxis or were met by guides. As the crowds thinned, and we stood looking around with a touch of impatient alarm, we were relieved to hear our names called and a guide hustling towards us to take us on to The Gateway Hotel, where we shall spend the night, all before 9am.