Blogs from Madhya Pradesh, India, Asia - page 3

The alarm call came through at 5am.The plan is to meet our guide for The Taj Mahal around 535am spend 2 hours there, back to hotel for breakfast and off to Gwalior at 11am. The Taj is incredible. ..around 40 to 50000 people visit everyday and we were in the first 50 to go through the strict security entry. A great time of the day to go as cooler and less people. As our guide explained the whole thing is not just about the building but the love story behind it. It was built by a Mughal king for his young wife who died after bearing their 14th child. However the building is incredible ..beautiful translucent but non porous marble it has never been cleaned is full of inlaid precious and semi precious stones. In the ... read more

In continuation of our self-drive from Bangalore to the Tiger Reserves of Madhya Pradesh we proceeded from Pench towards Bandhavgarh National Park via Jabbalpur. Starting our journey on the 7th April, 2017 (Friday) evening from Bangalore, we reached Rukhad near Pench, Madhya Pradesh next day night. We stayed two nights at Pench and visited the Pench National Park. In this blog I tried to depict our journey further from Pench to Bandhavgarh and Kanha National Park before finally returning to Bangalore. At the end I also mentioned our learning points from the trip which may be useful to the prospective travelers to this route. 10th April, 2017 Monday – Pench to Bandhavgarh via Jabbalpur Drive to Bandhavgarh Tiger Reserve via Jabbalpur Contrary to our plan we started late from Pench at around 9 AM. Bandhavgarh National ... read more

Montag Ganzer Tag in Tibetan Colony. Stehender Buddha Shakyamuni, Tempel, große Stupa. Abends: Treffen mit Riga Lama beim Abendessen. Er sieht gesund aus, sein Bein macht ihm keine Probleme, und er ist so eindrucksvoll und zugleich liebevoll wie eh und je. Wir sprachen über das Kloster: Ca 400 Mönche im Kloster. Die meisten Mönche kommen jetzt aus Ladakh, Nepal oder Bhutan, die jungen Tibeter haben keine Rechte Lust auf Kloster, sie wollen lieber ins Ausland. Die Mönche werden im Kloster mit allem versorgt, aber irgendwie muss das Kloster das Geld dafür verbringen. Guest House, Restaurants, und vor allem Spenden sind die Geldbringer. Früher hatten auch viele Mönche Sponsoren, die für eine finanzielle Sicherheit gesorgt haben mit den monatlichen Zuwendungen. Insgesamt geht es den Tibeter viel besser jetzt. Die große Stupa wurde von einem Chinesen bezahlt. Riga ... read more

Geo: 23.6127, 80.387Our trip round India is characterised by a series of contrasting adventures observing the different way of life both in cities and villages, discovering the culture and history of forts, palaces and temples as well as the fantastic wildlife of the national parks with their supreme predators, tigers and leopards. Every subsequent location presents an exciting new experience, even if getting there has sometimes been a challenge.Travelling with our own car and driver has largely been a breeze, with journeys between cities 4 or 5 hours long, but the journey from Udiapur to Orcha was 11 hours with no cafe stops on the road, because we were off the tourist route. The road in places was being rebuilt, which entailed an uncomfortable, bumpy diversion for many miles, a dirty toilet had to be found ... read more

So we left Bandhavgargh after lunch and headed for Kanha National Park. The journey was the first of many that took longer than we were led to believe and it was dinner time and dark by the time we arrived at the hotel. This one was much bigger than the last one and set out around a lake. We had a cottage in the grounds which was very comfortable. We grabbed a quick dinner and briefly watched some local tribal dancers doing a performance for an Indian party in the hotel before an early night. The game drive started earlier than in Bandhavgarh which turned out to be because the jeeps all line up at one gate and all want to be first so in fact we spent half an hour in the dark waiting for ... read more