Regarding the tigers and the parks/reserves I have already posted my experiences.
After I described the kind of game drives to be expected in India - Now comes more "general" stuff..........
Arrival in Delhi on 28 May/01.00am. Pick up by ITPL and transfer to the Taj Palace Hotel. The hotel
is "old glory", the lobby huge and rooms average with tiny bathrooms. The lawn is exceptionally gracious especially under consideration that's going towards the end of the dry season. So keeping grass that green must take a lot of watering.
Morning of 28 after 5 hrs of sleep and a quick breakfast we do a city tour visiting a Hindu temple and a large Mosque. I don't know the names of these temples as I have not paid attention to it. I appreciate visiting these buildings and taking in the atmosphere but I am really neither an "architecture" nor "religious" person and these things are so complex and request rather studies than just information and so I am just not listening when all these names bombard me. The facts on incarnation, re-incarnation, worshipping different gods for different reasons etc. were interesting at the time I got them but I won't "store" them onto my hard drive. The visit to these places were interesting and also left some kind of impression but I am more driven towards the animals I came for to India to see.
Beyond 09.00am it became HOT and HOTTER! At 14.00hrs after we did also a rickshaw ride (I felt so sorry for the poor gentleman who had to push so hard to get us moving; I requested 2 rickshaw but was convinced that he will be "doing fine" in just one for the 2 of us.) to a very big market place next to the Mosque I requested to get back into the A/C car followed by the A/C hotel. The thermometer climbed up to 48°C but very little to no humidity which mad it "bearable".
I asked our guide whether 100INR were sufficient as a tip for the rickshaw driver (the ride itself was paid for by the company). The guide stresses YES but when my husband handed the tip out we both felt he seemed disappointed. But to this impression we soon became familiar. Whatever we handed out - it seemingly was never sufficient. That is also something which did have an impact onto our trip experience.
We relaxed a bit and then packed up again because at 17.30h our driver came to fetch us. We were facing our very first Indian train experience.
We went to the train station where hundreds of people were waiting for their train or expecting travellers - or just hanging around to give us our first impression on how to cope with begging.
Frankly - at the beginning it was kind of fun to rush thru all these people towards our compartment. But as the trip evolved it became annoying.
The train Mewar Express left almost on time (19.00hrs) so off we were looking forward to reach Ranthambore at around 23.30h. We asked the conductor to give us a shout as soon as we come close to
Sawai Madhopur - which he did.
Our compartment was in first class a 2 berth A/C one with fresh linen, cushions etc. of which we did not make any use. Still too hot and excited.
We reached Ranthambore at 01.00am - obviously the train stopped several times for unknown reasons which caused the delay.
Again there were a driver and a guide waiting for us and we got a transfer in a gypsy car to the Taj Sawai Madhopur Lodge. This lodge once was the Maharaja's hunting lodge - in the lobby was a stuffed Leopard on display 
We went to sleep at around 02.00am. Our alarm clock went off at 04.30am. Oh my god..........we were so tired. I feared that I will most probably fall out of the vehicle while on game drive.
05.00am we were fetched by the "naturalist" and the driver in their gipsy car. We were informed that we must fetch 3 more people who do the game drive with us. At that point our enthusiasm was gone .............The cars are tiny and don't offer much more ground clearance than a regular passenger car. So the vantage point is by far not comparable to a landcruiser or landrover. We were lucky because the 3 others sat in one row so we had at least some space in between us left for our gear.
We checked in at Ranthambore NP at 05.30am, got route 2 (out of 5) for the morning (park closes at 10.00am) and the information that route 4 is the best for tiger sightings
We rushed thru the park not stopping for anything along the way in search for tigers. That whole Ranthambore experience was to become a ferrari safari.
NO luck this time.
We left the park as requested at 10.00h and were hoping for the afternoon drive which started at 04.00pm.
This time we got route 4 and voilâ we found 2 sub-adult tigers - a male and female. The story behind the cubs was told in the other post. While we were enjoying our sighting there were coming at least 6 more gypsys plus one of the huge topless busses packed to full capacity! This time of the year (May and June) is summer school holidays in Rajastan and therefore the crowd was almost solid Indian vacationers incl. babies. One of the tiger cubs started hissing at one point.
We left the park at 18.30hrs happy about that awesome sighting but also extremely disappointed about how the game drives are executed. We realised that an Indian safari is a completely different thing to an African Safari.
We were charged 3.300 INR/person/game drive. Based on the fact that there were 3 more people in the car that company made 16.500INR for that one game drive! THINK: an accountant with experiences in a mid-size company makes 7000INR/month, a waiter 4000INR and a worker in farming 50INR/day!
Just to give you some figures to get iyou nto the right perspective!
We had one more night in the lodge and left on 30 May towards Agra.
HORN PLEASE.....................
At 09.00hrs off we were looking forward to our road adventure. How right we were: The driving in India is madness. Full speed everybody drives whatever is under ones butt in the middle of the road, breaking at the very last second in order to pass. The cars have their outside mirrors either retracted or lost. It's REALLY close most of the time. People, dogs, goat, cows, chicken........what is alive in India is on the roadside or in the road. NO RULES accept everybody takes care of everybody - mostly at least.
That traffic under these circumstances seems to me somehow functioning as we did not see tooo many carcasses in the roads. The clue is: BLOW whatever horns you have onboard in order to make others aware you are approaching means expecting them to drive/jump/run out of way.
I could not sleep in the car despite I was soooo tired.
While being driven we watched the Indian way of life to unfold all his colourful, bright and sad sights.
In small towns the traffic became hazardous. Closed train railings: "Our" side and the opposite side were 4 vehicles (rickshaws, cars, lorries, busses etc) side by side pretty close. So we were waiting how that chaos is going to be solved. It did not take long and everything ran smoothly again. No big deal for Indian drivers.
We stopped at MIDWAY restaurant (it's really midway between Ranthambore and Agra) which was some kind of Indian/Western cuisine which was nice. I already started to get an aversion against Indian food as I hate curkuma and coriander.............of which I had my share when staying in Kenya for 2 weeks several times.
We visited the old Fort some 60k's before Agra. Again it was HOT. We were happy when we finally
reached our hotel with view towards the Taj Mahal.
From now on that feeling of happiness when we reached a destination by car became very familiar..........
The Gateway hotel belongs to the midrange of the Taj group and is a moderate friendly but by far not luxurious place.
At 17.30h we were fetched by the driver and the guide and taken to the Taj Mahal. Here again - as also at the old Fort - we were the only westerners. At least we did not see other intl. tourists. Crowds of Indians and the women in colourful saris.
We DID NOT SIT on "Lady Diana's bench". It was pointed out to us but we resisted: too childish for our taste.
The Taj is wonderful! An awesome sight at sunset. Our sunset was dramatic because clouds were building up and formed a dark blue background to the white building.
We ordered room service for dinner and fell asleep not long after 09.00pm.
Alarm clock next morning went off at 04.30h again and at 05.30h we left for the Taj to witness the sunrise.
Again - that was wonderful!
Back to the hotel at 07.30h and breakfast. Packing and off we were towards train station where we got onto the Shatabadi Express for Jansi.
To be continued.
It's interesting but frankly - I would not undergo the effort (train + road) again to visit. It certainly is interesting to people who have prepared their trip by studying books on history, culture etc. beforehand which we did not because of lack of time. My motivation clearly was to get a clue on the tiger parks combined with a "bit" of culture/history along the way.