For the first time on my journey I am revisiting a city, and so after our last bus ride in northern India, I am back in Agra for two days. We arrived at about lunchtime, under yet another hazy blue and cloudless sky. Since the weather was identical to when I was last here, I decided not to go to the Taj Mahal with the rest of the group. Trying to revisit perfection is sure to leave you disappointed. I will say that there have been a number of changes since I was last here. Firstly, being a month later, the [View Full Entry]

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The five hour ride from Jaipur to Bharatpur was a largely uneventful trip, in yet another rattle trap of a local bus. The landscape remained relatively unchanged from the previous several days, until we neared Bharatpur, where it became a little more lush, but not as lush as one would expect for a town on the edge of a National Park that is a large bird sanctuary. I had bought the Times of India newspaper to read on the bus and happened to be a large article saying how the drought had left the Bharatpur wetlands bone dry and the birds [View Full Entry]

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The bus rides around Rajasthan are starting to get a little monotonous: poorly sprung buses bouncing through a flat, arid landscape. On the ride from Pushkar to Jaipur, there was five hours of this and not a whole lot else. The city of Jaipur, is quite different than all the previous cities that we had visited in Rajasthan in that is it is the state capital and quiet a modern city. Stores with western brands, modern glass buildings and bank branches line the wide, well maintained streets. On the downside, cycle rickshaws are back for the first time since Delhi and [View Full Entry]

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Udaipur was the southern most point on our journey through Rajasthan and in the early morning we took a train ride almost due north the Pushkar. The scenery outside was almost identical to that through which we had travelled down from Jodhpur: green scrub and dusty fields predominated. The crops in this Rajasthan had long been harvested and the fields have been plowed and now slowly bake, awainting the next rains for a new crop to be planted. The interesting thing about the six hour train ride was that I got to travel in the fourth and final class of carriage [View Full Entry]

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Immediately after leaving Ranakpur for Udaipur, we began to wind our way up the side of the tree-lined hills, passed black-faced monkeys and eucalyptus trees. It was a bit of a hairy drive, as our horn was broken (I would prefer we dropped the transmission) and so couldn't warn oncoming buses and trucks at hairpin bends, but with s few near misses we made it up. On the other side of the hills, there were fields everywhere, though the land was not that fertile and the farmers were clearly not wealthy. Most of the fields seemed to be tilled with horse-drawn [View Full Entry]

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This blog, without a doubt, will be the shortest entry to date, most because I only spent about 45 minutes in Ranakpur. Edwina had not been feeling well for a couple of days and just couldn't face the idea of a seven hour bus ride from Jodhpur to Udiapur and wanted to get a taxi. Rebecca, Allie and I were each happy to chip in the 700 rupees each to join her and gain a smoother, quicker ride and an hour extra sleep in. The road from Jodhpur is quite a good one and almost immediately the countryside began to show [View Full Entry]

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Leaving Jaisalmer for Jodhpur, the Golden City for the Blue City, I got to try out yet another type of bus in India. This one was built more like a Greyhound bus you would see in the West, with one twist. Where buses typically have a lot of headroom, and a rack for bags, in this bus this space has been replaced with a number of bunk beds. For a few rupees more than a seat, you can lie down above everyone else's head and take a nap. I would be in there like a slinky, but an average sized woman [View Full Entry]

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By the time we arrived at the train station for our four hour ride to Delhi, the combination of dehydration from my upset stomach and the fierce sun (it was 95 in the shade) had gotten to me. Boarding the train I climbed straight into one of the upstairs bunks and just lay under a fan for the entire trip and tried to sleep. Bob tells me that I didn't miss much on the ride in, but I should have ample chances to see it as I have one more train into Delhi and two out coming up over the [View Full Entry]

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Another tour, another overnight train ride, this time to Jaisalmer in Rajathstan. If you are going to take a seventeen hour train ride in India in 3rd class, I highly recommend that you do it on Diwali. It is like travelling on Christmas Day; pretty much everybody is already at home and so the roads and trains are empty except for a few tourists (ans some Indian guy who started rubbing Mark's feet in the night, thinking it was one of the girls). The other thing that I would suggest is leaving at around 5pm, which gives you an hour of [View Full Entry]

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Waking up pre-dawn in Shimla for my 10 hour bus ride to Amritsar, I was walking down The Ridge, when far to the north, what could I see but an old friend, the Himalayas. The snow capped peaks were just visible on the horizon on this morning that didn't have a cloud in the sky. I decided right there and then that next time I come to India, this will be my first point of call and I will work my way up through Ladakh and get closer to those magnificent peaks. I have taken many different form and levels of [View Full Entry]

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