Blogs from National Capital Territory, India, Asia - page 6

Today is Diwali festival day and everyone is happy and wishes us Happy Diwali, we manage to squeeze in more food before the taxi arrives to take us to Dehradun to fly back to Delhi. The roads are clearer today and so it doesn’t take us that long to reach Rishikesh. We ask the driver to stop here so we can try and find the copper flasks that Amira told us she saw here by the river when we went to the Aarti. We forgot though that there are two bridges so the driver takes us to the other bridge and we head more into the centre of Rishikesh. It is lovely to see more of the town but we can’t see any copper flasks for sale. We wander further into the maze of streets and ... read more

After a pleasant breakfast with more interersting fellow travellers, we set off for our guided tour of Delhi. First step was the 73m Qutub Minar built as part of the Mulgul dynasty. Our guide was firmly Hindu and NOT a fan of anything Islam so took great pains to explain it might have been mogul king but it was Hindi smarts that designed and built this amazing, striking tower. This site include various other points of interest including an ancient iron pole that never rusted. Apparently the stupid British tried to deciper the writing on it to detained how it was made, only to find the inscription was a prayer to the relevant god, not the secret ingredients for rust proof iron. Next stop was the Jama Masque, the largest in india. It was buiilt by ... read more

Some 22 hours after leaving Auckland Liz and I have arrived in Delhi. Thanks to a 4 hour recharge in the 'nap room' at Changi airport, we were ready to go. Thikana home stay is really a comfortable little hotel with aircon, hot water and everything you need. After breakfast and a chat with a fascinating Amercian woman who is into textiles, we headed off to the Lodhi Gardens, where there are a number of tombs dating back to the 15rth century. After a wander around the gardens, amongst the picnickers and joggers, we headed to Khan markets, relatively upmarket markets where we ogled fabrics and traditional costumes before a great lunch. We had planned to go to Gandhi Smitri (Gandhi's home where he was shot) but there were about a million Indian tourists wanting to ... read more

Our bags emerged surprisingly quickly, there was a special booth for e-visas and we walked straight through customs to find a little man waiting with a sign with Dave’s name on it – sort of. It was quite a long walk to the car park – everything in India is on a large scale – and then we had our introduction to the truly appalling Delhi traffic, even at that hour of the morning. Dave thought the hotel was near the airport, and it is as the crow flies and by Delhi standards, but it is quite a long way round by road. We were a bit freaked out by this and we also had to negotiate some down time before beginning the sightseeing program. This rather inauspicious beginning continued when we got to the hotel ... read more

We left Auckland at midnight on 4 Sept and had a great flight Premium Economy on Air New Zealand 787-9. We arrived 630am Tues 6 in Singapore and spent 6 hours in The Ambassader Transt Hotel which was great...had a shower and a sleep and caught flight to Dehli at around 6pm with arrival at 830pm Dehli time. Getting through immigration etc was no trouble and we met Gets Travel rep without any trouble. If we thought Auckland traffic was bad then Dehlis is off the Richter scale...mind you there are 20 million people here.There do not seem to be any road rules apart from the rule of the horn. However we arrived safely at The Claridges which is a beautiful heritage hotel in New Dehli. The plan was to be picked up at 9am for ... read more