We had to get up really early this morning so we could go and see the sunrise on the River Ganges. This meant that we were leaving the hotel at 5:15am! Can you believe that we had to get up at this time on a holiday. We caught rickshaws from the hotel down to the river and the traffic was amazing. It was incredible to drive through the city and not fear for your life! When we go to the banks of the river we hopped on a wooden boat and headed out onto the water to watch the sunrise. Even [View Full Entry]

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We had to get up early this morning to catch a local bus to Varanasi. And boy was that an experience. It wasn't like the other time when we caught a lical bus and managed to get the entire front section of the bus to ourselves. Oh no, this time we were at the back of the bus complelty surrounded by all the locals. The seats on the bus were totally tiny as well, so once one person was on the seat there was really only room for the other person to place 1/2 a butt cheek with the rest of [View Full Entry]

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We set off in the morning in our private cars once more to start our journey to Allahabad. Because the journey is quite long it was going to be broken up over a couple of days and our rest stop for the night was going to be a little town called Chitrakoot. Out hotel for the night was the only hotel in the entire town which will probably give you a bit of a feeling for the size of the town. There were however a full complement of monkeys at the hotel and Suneil told us to be very careful of [View Full Entry]

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India Trip Day 8 - Ken River Resort / Panna Tiger Reserve We left Khajuraho this morning and transferred via private jeep to the Ken River Resort just outside of the Panna Tiger Reserve. This resort was a total surprise. It is just gorgeous! It is a very rustic looking place that is located just beside the river Ken. The rooms that we were given for the night were practically palatial and even had a little roof garden. We arrived at the resort at around 11am and then just chilled out until 3:30pm when we went on a game drive in [View Full Entry]

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We set off from Orchha this morning in some private jeeps to undertake a mad cap journey to Khajuraho. Driving in India is always an experience and this was no exception. Although I do have to say that the driving hasn't been anywhere near as scary as I thought it might be. The trip from Orchha to Khajuraho was about 4 hours in the car. We stopped just out of Orchha to visit the Tara Paper factory. This is a project set up by a very generous gentleman who wanted to help the local village women to earn some more money [View Full Entry]

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We were lucky and had a second day in Orchha today. This meant that we were allowed a little bit of a sleep in and didn't have to meet up until 8:30am this morning. Our first stop of the morning was the Orchha palace where we had a local guide show us around the ruins. These ruins were really quite lovely and are about 400 years old. It was another place where you didn't really have to try to hard to visualise just how beautiful it would have been when it was new. The Hindus who lived in the royal palace [View Full Entry]

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Today was a very very busy day. We started the day off with a bit of a walking tour around Chanderi. Chanderi is a small town (40,000 people) in northern India. Intrepid like to try and take you off the beaten track a little bit and show you some real villages were the people don't hassle you like they do in the cities. And this is fantastic. Instead of people constantly hassling us like they were in Delhi and Agra all the children wanted here was to wave at us and say hi and to get their pictures taken on the [View Full Entry]

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Today was a travel day. We had to be up bright and early to get a local bus from Chanderi to Orcha. Our guide had told us that we would have to walk for 15 minutes to get to the bus so it was a very pleasant surprise to find that the bus was waiting for us at the gate to our hotel this morning. I wasn't really looking for to a 15 minute walk with my pack on my back. The bus ride itself was relatively uneventful. Although the driving certainly wasn't uneventful. There were many times when the bus [View Full Entry]

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Today was an interesting day. It was a day of a 5 hour train journey from Agra to Chanderi. Because I am on an intrepid trip they believe in trying out the local transport as much as possible. So we spent 5 hours in a truely authentic Indian train. And boy was it an experience. The train station at Agra was very interesting. There are just people everywhere, as well as cows, donkeys, dogs and small children. The children are actually quite sad as you feel awful when they come up to beg money from you and you have to say [View Full Entry]

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Day two of the India trip started off in an interesting manner. We had to get up really early and catch the train from Delhi to Agra. This meant that we had to be in the reception of the hotel at 6am so we could get to the train station on time. The drive to the train station was a bit of a dream, right up until we got close to the station where it then all turned completely chaotic. In Dubai people like to use their horns a lot, but here they take it to a whole new level. I [View Full Entry]

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