So, I should have expected that things wouldn't go as planned when they arrived. Back in November we worked out dates (arriving just after kids' vacation started), then earlier this year we made the plan: Ajanta and Ellora caves (supposed to be some of the coolest temples in India) followed by some time in a S. India hill station. It was going to be great!
Waking up on his first morning at Fortis Hospital You gotta hand it to my dad. There is nothing he does in half-measures. All out or nothing.
So, I should have expected that things wouldn't go as planned when they arrived. Back in November we worked out dates (arriving just after kids' vacation started), then earlier this year we made the plan: Ajanta and Ellora caves (supposed to be some of the coolest temples in India) followed by some time in a S. India hill station. It was going to be great!
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Immo and Diana, Sonampthpur From Jodhpur we flew back to South India where we spent a few days in Bangalore before heading to Mysore on a train, then back to Bangalore for a couple nights, then Immo and Diana departed for the US. Our return to Bangalore coincided with a bout of stomach flu that I naturally assumed meant that we'd gotten bad water, but since a new one of us fell to it every day or two I finally realized that it wasn't something we'd eaten. it put a bit of a damper on our South India time but it luckily passed pretty quickly so no one "lost" more than a day of touristing. We had enough time to find a beautiful kurtha for Diana (Fabindia, of course) and Immo even put together an invited speach at the Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research. Cold Jodhpur morning Oh, and yes! It is blue! We stayed at the Haveli Inn Pal which promised to have the best views of Meherangarh Fort in the town. It delivered fully with the most amazing breakfast views I've ever seen. Like all of Rajasthan, Jodhpur was cold and I spent most of my time double-wrapped in first my Polartech fleece followed by a Pashmina shawl, that I almost never took off. The hotel was actually in the walled and gated old Sardar Bazaar which meant that all you had to do was step out the door and you were in the thick of it. We asked about going somewhere when we first arrived and the hotel owner said that we should wait until after 10am the next day so that we could see it when it was "animated," and animated it was. A veritable sea of people and goods and, and, and . . . that made it very easy to squint your eyes a bit and float back in time to when the fort was still occupied and the markets were held here. Starting on our sunset camel ride From Jaipur we traveled to Bikaner (north east of Jaipur and further from the main tourist trail). By this time I was getting more than a little fed up with our driver who kept saddling us with "free" guides everywhere we went and trying to drag us into commission shops and restaurants. My frustration peaked in Fatehpur (a new Fatehpur). The small Shekhawati town is known for fabulous havellis but our driver refused to drive us into town, insisting that the police didn't allow cars in town (very much not so). Luckily Bikaner is a small city and easy to traverse on foot and with autorickshaws so we were able to take a break from our driver for a couple days. Entering the pink city From Agra, we drove to Jaipur, the Pink City. Jaipur is probably one of the most touristed cities in the world, but still utterly fascinating. It's a beautiful place and was a nice start to our week in Rajasthan. Rajasthan was the start of our luxury travel and we stayed exclusively in heritage hotels (all havellis) that were each remarkable. New Year's eve at the Taj On New Year's Eve we drove from Delhi to Agra to see the Taj Mahal. Tim and I had been there right after we were married and Kalani had been there less than 2 weeks before, but it was still a magical place whose beauty wasn't diminished by second-timeness. Temperatures were at record lows (falling to just below freezing) and on our second day the fog was so thick you couldn't see anything but we got there just in time for sunset on a lovely clear day and had a great time (tho Tim quipped that the first time I'd been there I nearly had heat stroke (August!) and the second time I was going to freeze to death). Old Fort mosque Immo and Diana visited from 28 December - 16 January, 2013. We flew up to Delhi to meet them then proceeded to travel through the Golden Triangle (Delhi, Agra, Rajasthan) then flew from Jodhpur back down to Bangalore. It was a fun trip, and we got to see a really different part of India. I'll start here with our three days in Delhi.... Here are a few pictures from our travels with Glen, Sasha and Anita that didn't fit in the other topics
Mysore's famous tuskers So, after our unexpectedly adventurous first day in Mysore (or rather outside of Mysore) we settled in for a proper Dasara on the last day there. We were supposed to head out to Chamundi Hill in the morning, but with 7 of us, it took us so long to get out of the hotel that there was no way we had time to go to see the temple and the Nandi Bull and still make it to the parade. Instead we made arrangements through Aslam's friend to buy scalped tickets to the sold out Jamoo Saravi parade (for ~2.5 times the original price but he managed to get the kids in for free so, in the end, we didn't come out too far from what we would have paid). Aslam dropped us off at about 10:30am and said it would start in an hour. There was some confusion on where we could sit, but after realizing we were in the wrong seats, we ended up with our pick of front row seats, among the first to arrive. That we had such good choice of seats turned out not to be so surprising since the parade didn't actually start until 2:15pm and we had a long, long wait in a fenced-in area. |
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