Incredible India
My wife’s family has a long and happy connection with India and I had heard many an inspiring story of their life there and she had wanted me to have a taste of their experience for a long time, so we arranged a holiday to visit some family/friends and see places from her memory and discover some new wonders along the route too.
We arrived excitedly to Delhi to find that it is still a growing metropolis with newer modern suburbs but a traditional older central area. Sometimes Delhi is overlooked from a tourist perspective but I was impressed with the variety of sights from luxury Indian art deco hotels to the ancient Qutab Minar tower to the beautiful Humayan’s tomb. Delhi is also a good place for getting acclimatised to the Indian way of life, the crazy traffic with sights like five members of a family all riding on one motorbike, spicy food, rickshaw rides through the busy market, a cow roaming the street revered as a deity and the women in their colourful saris and excess gold jewellery. Just the sounds and smells awakening all your senses!
Our driver (I could get accustomed to this style of travel!) took us to Agra next, the driver tends to become a big part of your trip when you have a private tour and India is one of the best and most cost-effective places to try this style of travel. Agra of course is home to the Taj Mahal and it is one of those sites that completely lives up to your expectation even if at peak times the crowds are huge, the awe of being there to behold one of architectures most beautiful sights is simply breath-taking.
The route from Agra to Jaipur has some interesting sites too, Bharatpur/Keoladeo for some peaceful bird watching and the abandoned city of Fatehpur Sikri for some historic and grand sites are two highlights or if you wish to go a bit further afield a worthwhile detour to try to spot rare tigers is also possible. Jaipur was to be our gateway to Rajasthan, it is perhaps the most famous of Rajasthan’s cities and also is the capital of the state and you can easily see why it is has become known as the ‘Pink City’ for the trademark colour of some of the buildings in the older parts of the city. It is a great place to shop, explore and sight see and a visit to the Amber/Amer fort outside of town is well worth the visit.
We left Jaipur late on an overnight train to the desert walled city of Jaiselmer the ‘Golden City’ – here life slows down a bit but it’s beauty is the equal of anywhere else in Rajasthan with intricate haveli’s and a massive lived-in walled fort on top of the hill.
From Jaiselmer we travelled to Jodhpur the ‘Blue City’ via a brief but interesting visit to the temple complex at Ranakpur. Jodhpur has two giant sites to visit, the incredible Mehrangarh fort that looms over the town and the remarkable Umaid Bhawan Palace which is part hotel, part private residence (of the Maharajah’s family) and part museum.
The last of the cities of Rajasthan that we were to visit was Udaipur and we were glad to be able to fit it in, known as the ‘White City’, it is famed for its beautiful lake with ‘floating’ palace and sometimes the whole place has an ethereal feel to it, leaving you wanting to stay on longer but we had to start heading home and our last stop before flying back was to be Mumbai, it is a very exciting city with so many people and so many eye opening experiences which can be both shocking and heartwarming at the same time, it seems to comprise the whole of India in one place. You can almost feel the history as you explore the CSMVS Museum, VT Station, Gateway of India and Taj Mahal Palace but also feel the warmth of the people even in one of the world’s biggest, busiest and most obviously unequal cities. My wife had the opportunity to continue her trip for an extended period and managed to see a large part of Goa and Kerala too. Mumbai though was a fitting and spectacular end to my first foray to this part of the world.