We woke up nice and early, full of beans and expectations on seeing the Taj Mahal for sunrise. Our trusty tuk tuk driver was there waiting for us.

Hannah began with a nice loud, “HELLO”

He looked a little startled with all the commotion.

“Yes she always is like this early in the morning, no need for it is there.” I said and slapped him good naturedly on the back.

Our poor tuk tuk driver gave a grimace and ducked into the drivers seat as quick as he could no doubt wishing to give his obviously throbbing head a relative rest.

“I say Hannah, I do believe he has a headache.”

“Do you think our voices are more piercing than this road racket?”

“Can’t help but almost feel offended.”

“Quite, at least we know we aren’t the cause of headaches.”

I paused at Hannah’s comment for a moment, I mean she could speak for herself.

“Mika I hope that pause meant it was the end of the conversation and not what I think you are thinking.”

Disagreeing with her was only going to cause me a headache yet she had put me in a bit of a bind with that sentence. I could say yes or no and she would interpret it the way all girls interpret things, the way she wanted. Yes, obviously would mean yes it was what I was thinking, no meant it wasn’t the end of the conversation and really what I was thinking. This of course was making me pause a moment which also meant I was trying to think of an appropriate response to her question and meant I thought she was the cause of headaches.

Meanwhile Hannah had given up waiting for the appropriate response, the response which I and all males on planet are still searching for, and decided to do something about the situation.

“Mika I do…” a slap on the back of the head.

“not….” Another slap on the back of the head.

“give….” Slap.

“headaches.” Double slap.

Now it seemed to me that the whole situation was quite the contradiction but trying to point out these things to women only seemed to make the situation worse. So I did the only thing I could do, pretend I had no headache and agreed with her.

“Obviously you’re not a cause of headaches, no sir.” There, that should sate the woman. Anyone normal, ie any male on the planet would be leaving it at that. Not Hannah, not a woman on a roll, no way.

“Oh so now you are saying I am a sir, a bit butch looking hey?”

I gulped.

She continued, “I cant believe you are saying I am fat.”

“I am not saying you’re fat!” I pleaded.

“Oh so what ARE you saying then?”

I seemed to recall I hadn’t been saying anything and that had been the whole cause of this mess. I considered for a second whether to bring that point up but decided to go against that, which was probably prudent considering the mood she was in.

“I think we have been through this once or twice before Hannah.”

“So now you’re saying I am forgetful and dumb.”

This pretty much continued all the way to the Taj Mahal. I was grateful when we arrived, I personally think Hannah was quite enjoying herself at my expense.

We paid out 20 rupees while the Indians paid their 2 rupees to get in. It was quite early and the sun had not quite risen yet and we were one of the first in. There was quite a lot of smog and pollution around and the sun came up finally about 10 degrees higher than the horizon.

There are a few words to describe the Taj Mahal. Pretty much all of them along the same lines of amazing. It is definitely one of the most amazing things you will ever see and it went straight to the top of my list of things I have seen. I can never decide which is the best thing so I grouped it in with Pamplona, that church in Barcelona, Venice, Vatican, Pyramids and Swiss Alps. Needless to say it is so intricate and the detail is crazy. So we took a few snaps, barking angrily at all the silly tourist foreigners getting in the way of our perfect pictures, ruining them all. Well I was the picture of civility of course but to keep the peace I’ll say we barked at them. Such was the Taj Mahal that we meandered through instead of the usual sped through we are capable of.

Outside we found our tuk tuk and spent the usual 30 minutes waiting for our driver to turn up again. I needed a few things and I was feeling exceptionally generous so I asked the driver if he knew somewhere I could buy some boxer shorts. He nodded yes but I was a bit unsure that he even knew what I was talking about but he took us to somewhere they had someone make clothes.

In the shop I explained what I wanted.

“So we will make you 6 for 300 rupees.” It was expensive but I didn’t mind because I was feeling generous and I was happy to be going home the next day. So I sat around waiting for the tailor to sow me up a few.

The shopkeeper not content enough that I had bought 6 items for a highly inflated price came up to me again, “So do you want to buy this.” And held up a useless bit of something useless.

“No thank you.”

“What about this then” and he offered something else up for inspection.

“No thank you.” I said politely.

“Ok what about this then?” and proceeded to show me every item in the store one by one. Now I like to think I am a patient man so I replied to each no thank you. However every man has their breaking point.

“What about this?” he said still as hopeful as ever showing me the same bit of uselessness that he had already tried to sell me 3 times already.

“Ok dude go away and leave me in peace. I don’t want anything else.” I thought I was being quite reasonable.

“Ok, what about this?” and help up something useless I had already seen 100 times.

“Dude, read my lips man, go away before I get angry.” I said angrily.

“Ok, what about this?” he said still as hopeful as when offering me the first item.

Hannah says I exploded but she can be wrong about these things. The end result was that I almost got kicked out of the store, I almost broke a few things and the only reason I got the boxer shorts was because our driver wanted his commission so calmed the store man down. It got me what I wanted though and he stopped bothering me.

“What about this?” I heard him ask Hannah.

I stalked over and he quickly left Hannah alone.

After that little debacle our trusty tuk tuk driver returned us to Abdul Boon’s shop. As we got in we found Abdul Boons brother.

“Sorry Abdul Boon isn’t here right now but why don’t you come sit in the office with me for a cup of chai.”

The office was air conditioned so we were only too happy to oblige.

After a bit of small talk he began to get to his point, “So I am a gem seller.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Anyway we have a few retailers in Australia but in order to get the gems to him we have to pay taxes. However if you take the gems over you can sell them to him for double the price. All it costs is $2000 and I can guarantee you can sell them to him for $4000.”

“Oh riiight.” Apparently Hannah and I both had in bold letters burnt on our forehead the words stupid, and stupider.

“Oh really.” I was going to enjoy this.

“Yes, all you need is to buy the gems with your credit card…”

As all well prepared travellers we always had backup in case of trouble. Like everyone says you really shouldn’t travel without a credit card in case of emergencies. So of course neither Hannah or I owned a credit card, our backup plan was to deal with that problem when it arrived. I tend to find leaving future Mika to deal with these sorts of problems the best solution. Anything that can be deferred to him is always best. He can always can be counted on to sort the problems out in the end, or so past and present Mika leads me to believe.

“Well that’s a damn shame then, because neither of us has a credit card.” Hannah pointed out.

“We can work around that don’t worry. Now what you need to do is this….” And so he continued with this big spiel. I was about to release the tiger on him when I remembered that they had our money for the rings and we had no rings and we had to leave in an hour or so to get to the train to Delhi. By suddenly remembered I mean Hannah saw the vein in my head starting to throb, me take a big breath and kicked me under the table none to gently and pointed to her ring fingers. I really don’t know how she seems to read my mind sometimes. I can be as unpredictable as a tiger, a wild tiger. A tiger because I am sure they are unpredictable and if they aren’t they should be.

So I had to be as civil as possible and the only thing I could get out of it was that those Japanese who wouldn’t talk to us the night before for some strange reason apparently had the words stupid and stupider on their foreheads and getting a big of comeuppance for not talking to us. I mean Hannah and I can be quite the gracious hosts. Actually maybe not when I remember back to Badge boy in Edinburgh, and Hannah and I making a list of how to be good hosts. Nothing on the 11 point plan said anything about actually entertaining anyone but ourselves to be honest.

I had drifted off from concentrating and came back with Hannah saying to me, “So Mika what do you think?”

“I think we need to amend some of our 11 points on how to make a good host.”

I think they were getting quite confused about what we had been actually talking about because they had been referring to the fact that we were awfully sorry but couldn’t help ourselves out because we just didn’t have a credit card.

Next came the part which I was quite impressed with. Just as he had finished giving up on us and our repetitions of sorry we don’t actually own a credit card, I think he thought we were lying because tourists never travel without one, Abdul Boon of all people came in and spoke to his brother in rapid Hindi then turned to us, “Oh I am so sorry for my brother, he didn’t know we were actually friends and tried to pull a scam on you.”

I was too busy choking to answer that one so Hannah was gracious enough to answer for me, “Oh we didn’t notice at all, thankyou for warning us.”

I looked at her and she pointed to her finger so I kept quiet.

By now we had 30 minutes until we had to leave so we enquired about our rings.

“They are just getting finished now and I am getting someone to bring them soon.”

“I just have to take Hannah over here and speak to her if you would give us a minute.”

So I lead Hannah over to a quiet corner for a quick word.

“I say we trash the joint. He looks quite small.”

“Mika stop being silly, we have half an hour left until we have to go.”

I am of the opinion personally that everyone is out to get us. Hannah on the other hand is of the opinion that everyone has good in them and can be trusted. So instead of doing anything I stalked. Just to make sure everyone knew I was stalking I tried hard to look like I was stalking and added a big frown to cap it off. That would sure show everyone I was unhappy and was stalking. After 10 minutes of stalking and not getting the attention I had hoped for, the type of attention even I was unsure of but I would know if I had it, so I switched to tapping my feet impatiently and looking at my watch and flexing my guns.

Five minutes to go a courier pulled up and handed Abdul Boon our rings. Hannah didn’t have to be so rude about rubbing it in.

As expected the rings were all mixed up and none of them looked anything like how we wanted them. I was about to tell Boonie that I wouldn’t mind if we had our money back but then I considered how lucky it was we even had some rings so I left it. By I figured it out I mean Hannah slapped me on the back of the head informing me I was to figure something out.

Just as we were jumping in the tuk tuk Hannah turned and looked at me surprised, “Don’t you think you should go to the toilet or something before you get in this tuk tuk, its like 20 minutes away.”

“Excuse me?”

“Well with all the wincing and screwing your face up and walking to and fro scrunched up it is obvious you need to go to the toilet. It would be best to go now.”

“…..”

We had organised with our driver that we would pay a set amount for driving us around the last few days whatever we wanted to do or place we wanted to go. So of course once we arrived at the train station he decided to try and be a bit cheeky and double the price.

“Oh really.” I began. This was the opportunity I was looking for, possibly the third last bloody taxi I was ever going to take in my life and he wanted to play like this, “so you want to double the price after we let you get a commission on our rings, room, boxers, took us to a place that wanted to scam us out of lots of money, lied to us about the alcohol.”

At which point he interrupted, “alcohol?” he hadn’t seemed anything to say about the other things on my list which was weird.

“Yes the alcohol you said we were not allowed to buy and charged us more than the actual price.”

He didn’t know he should just shut up and leave it at that so he tried to look innocent, “No I didn’t charge you more that was the cost.”

I anticipated something like that so I pulled out the scrunched up piece of paper which was the corner of the label and contained the price of the whiskey and showed it to him.

“Oh so you are saying that I am reading this price wrong?” and I shoved it closer into his face, “IS THERE ANYTHING ELSE YOU WOULD LIKE TO SAY.” I may have been a little fired up at this point so I decided to continue. “So you want to change the price when we have said absolutely nothing about always waiting an hour for you to turn up after you take us some place, you are a liar a cheat and trying to be a thief. Where do you get the cheek? I mean you are just like them all and you think I haven’t learnt to deal with them! Just like the first taxi in Cyprus….” And I proceeded to give him in detail an account of just a few of my latest taxi experiences.

Once I had finished he looked a little haggled. Hannah was wide eyed and looking a little afraid for me or of me, I wasn’t quite sure which.

“So that’s a no then? Ok I wont ask for any money then.” and tried to drive off without us paying him anything.

I wasn’t a thief so I grabbed him on the shoulder. He started to panic thinking I was about to rough him up so I got the change out quickly in my stash. When dealing with taxi drivers you must always know how much it is before you get in and always have the change ready and able to give it to them or else they will always manage to wrangle some more money out of you some way. So I had the money and stuffed it in his pocket with him using the full throttle trying to get out of there as fast as he could never quite realising I had actually paid him.

I smiled at Hannah.

“Mika I think we should get out here.”

“Might be a good idea yes.” Apparently it looked like I had been trying to attack a tuk tuk driver and the crowd was not giving me the benefit of the doubt and looking at me in quite the same way you look at a wild tiger.

“Well Mika I think you got what you wanted, you always wanted to unleash the tiger and have people realise.”

I don’t know how she does it because I never mentioned anything about the tiger within before.