Exciting sightseeing tour around New Delhi
Our first day of touring Delhi was filled with a dazzling spectrum of sights and sounds from impressive historic buildings to the perpetual honking of city traffic to the hauntingly hypnotic tones of snake charmers playing music to make cobras dance.
We started at the Red Fort, a Unesco World Heritage site in the heart of Delhi. Made from red...
Into gardens of New Delhi and on to Chandigarh
We came to India for many reasons. Most of us wanted to get a more intimate, personal, first-hand experience of the country rather than relying on what we had read or been told by others.
However, many of us came with some negative expectations. We had accepted that we were likely to find streets crowded, after all we were well...
Into Chandigarh’s weird and wonderful gardens
Chandigarh, which is also known as the “beautiful city”, was one of the first planned cities after India got its independence from Britain in 1947.
The city’s planners opted for a grid system with each area called a section rather than having a neighbourhood or district name.
Our hotel here, for instance, is in Section 17, close to a lot of...
From the chaos of Agra to the serenity of the Taj Mahal
Our journey from Delhi to Agra was uneventful, but for our awareness of the poor air quality. The thick white mist sat like a morning fog, obscuring most of the countryside until we were a good distance from the Indian capital.
We saw the smoking chimneys of brick works that were pumping dark smoke into the air.
As we...
Into Jaipur to see pink architecture and elephants
Apparently, the word “pur” on the end of any Indian town or city name means place.
So, Bharatpur, I assume means, the place of Bharat and Jaipur, means the place of Jai.
From Bharatpur, we headed to Jaipur, the pink city, stopping on the way to see a village public school where the kids were sitting on the floor in small...
Time in Udaipur, Venice of the East, white city of lakes and palaces
We left Jaipur to catch an early morning flight to Udaipur, also known as the ‘Venice of the East’ because it is a city on five lakes.
However, our flight was delayed and we ended up waiting at Udaipur airport for a few hours before finally making it and arriving in the city known for its zinc mines and its...
From Udaipur to Munnar and the beautiful tea hills of southern India
We left Udaipur and flew back to Delhi for one night before catching an early morning flight to Kochi in southern India.
The moment we arrived, we were aware of the change in temperature and humidity, even though it has been hot - in the 30s - in Udaipur.
But in Kochi, it was also humid and tropical and we quickly...
