Blogs from Jaipur, Rajasthan, India, Asia

Buffet breakfast was interesting. A lot of Indian style items we'd never heard of before. We went around and tried small portions of everything. Daisy had a dosa made which she really liked. Tour started at 8.30am and we met our guide Arjun and driver, Arjay. Surprisingly, there was still just the six of us for this entire tour. Certainly wasn't expecting a small group tour. Robyn and Anne however didn't opt for the Varanasi extension. First stop was a visit to Old Delhi. We were taken to the Jama Masjid Mosque (the largest mosque in India), which has three great gateways, four angle towers and two minarets constructed ofalternating vertical strips of red sandstone and white marble. First we had a rickshaw tour through Chandni Chowk, a colourful shopping bazaar in OldDelhi. Then a tour ... read more

Blogs of Rajasthan are plenty in the net, covering almost all well known places. I will add one more with a different perspective. I searched elaborately thru internet for appropriate inputs, to finalize the logistics of a weeklong tour program covering important historical places, wildlife of Ranthambore and of course the desert of Jaisalmer. But I did not get it in a nutshell and had to pick and choose from various sources. In this blog I attempted to summarize our overall experience, program, means of transport, accommodation arrangements etc. sharing our feelings, advantages and pitfalls as felt by us, to facilitate planning of an overall tour schedule by future travelers of Rajasthan. I also narrated detailed description of my location wise experience in detail, thru separate blogs. OUR PROGRAM Rajasthan is one of the most popular ... read more

Nagaur Festivalis a large cattle fair held near Jodhpur, Rajasthan in February every year. This fair is mainly for trading animals by farmers and ranchers. We flew to Jodhpur and drove about 5 hrs to Nagaur, this destination is truly out of the beaten tracks as there are no hotels nearby and OAT set up a tent city to accommodate their own travelers. Along the way, we stopped and chatted with goat herder and visited an outdoor animal hospital ran by volunteers. This is a huge open arena hosting over 1200 cows, some goats, a few wild animals and even birds. We saw sick cows with bandage on their horns due to cancer and injured animals with missing limbs sitting on the floors. Some baby were born there after their mother was brought in for treatments. ... read more

For the next twelve days, we have the luxury of our own private driver and car, something we’ve been looking forward too. No more haggling with taxi and rickshaw drivers or airport runs for nearly two weeks...... Bliss! Hariom was waiting outside the hotel at 8.30am as arranged. His car, an SUV as I requested, was immaculate, with white covers on our two buckets seats, free water/wipes and onboard wifi. After introductions, we planned the days activities with him and headed away. Our first stop was in the town of Amer, 11klm from Jaipur, to see Panna Meena ka Kund, one of the stepwells responsible for sparking my interest in these structures. The water at the bottom of the stepwell was bright green, obviously full of algae. All it took was a Pinterest photo and I ... read more

Day 3 arrival of the Jaan (the groom) ,the ceremony, a royal dinner and on day 4 the reception... read more