I thought that was weird, but today someone offered to clean my ears for me.

Freaked me out!

At first I thought there must be cauliflowers growing out of them and he was being polite, but a quick check eased my mind.

It seems there are many ways to make a living.

I'd had an excellent day up until that point and I'm not sure if it's coincidence, but things went wrong after that.

Having visited the Taj Mahal, which is this big marble kitchen bench carved into a mausoleum, I then visited Agra Fort, which is a big piece of red sandstone carved into a, well, a fort!

Both awesome, but pale into insignificance when compared with Machu Pichu in Peru. They just don't have the same serenity.

Well anyways, I was at the bus station waiting for a bus (hooray for Captain Obvious) to Fatehpur Sikri when the ear dude had a word in my cauliflower.

This place is basically another piece of red sandstone (I think this mughal dude had a bit of a fetish) this time carved into a palace and a big harem.

I've always dreamed of having a harem, but that's another story.

So after being a tourist I wondered down to the bus stop to head "home" to Agra at about 5.15pm.

The Lonely Planet said the last bus was at 7pm, whereas the locals say 6-6.30, which does wonders for the confidence.

So at about seven, in complete darkness, in a town that wouldn't win many "Tidy Town" awards, I figured there was no bus.

An old Austrian dude was there with me and we managed to get a "taxi", aka some dude with a car, to drive us home at what would be cheap back home for the 45km ($15 each), but over here we got stung big time.

So the moral of the story is "if someone tries to get in your ear, don't catch the bus".

Either that or don't be an ignorant traveller and learn the lingo...