Mar 20, 2012 - Rajasthan - a new adventure

3 days entries follow in this post below as Internet is scarce and unreliable...photos to follow at some point... Saturday, March 17 With our Kingfisher flight cancelled, we left Kullu early with a local taxi driver called Anuj who did an impressive job getting us down to Chandigarh in 8 hours, including stops for breakfast and lunch. (I thought of you Bruce, as we were together the last time I drove in those hills on those terrifying roads!) The horns on the highway are constant, with trucks and buses hogging the roads; cars passing where...

Dec 2, 2010 - Taj Mahal and Fatehpur Sikri then Agra to Bharatpur

After a night in our tent we were up early this morning to get to the Taj before sunrise. We arrived at the ticket booth around 6:00 am, unfortunately it didn't open until 6:30, so we waited in the queue along with all the other tourists who were crazy enough to get up this early. After buying our tickets we boarded some electric buses that transported us to one of the gates leading into the Taj, no petrol burning cars due to pollutants that may damage the building. We hired a guide at the ticket stop and he met us inside the security gate....

Feb 4, 2010 - Bharatpur

When I look back at the last two weeks I have to admit that it's becoming a tiny bit blurry and sometimes I can't remember if I saw certain things in Udaipur, Pushkar, Jodhpur, or Jaipur. But today we saw something out of the ordinary that I think will really stick out in my mind. It was a stepwell! I've never heard of or seen anything like it in all my travels and I'm told that they're only found in certain parts of India. Basically it's a giant hole in the ground for getting water but all over three sides of the square hole are steps in...

Apr 2, 2009 - Bharatpur

Bharatpur marks the start of our Rajasthani adventure. A fairly unremarkable place itself, the only real draw here for tourists is the Keoladeo Bird Sanctuary. Although I once won a Young Ornithologist award at school, my knowledge of birds is really very limited, so four hours in the park proved to be an education for me, as the names of all the different birds was pinted out to me by our guide. We didn't get a great deal more information from him, but I guess this basic information is enough for people like us (people like us who forget...

Sep 14, 2007 - Fatahpur Sikri and Bharatpur

Today we took the local bus from Agra to Fatehpur Sikri.....and arrived for a visit to the ancient ghost palace. This city was built by Emperor Akbar between 1570 and 1585 AD but was virtually abandoned within twenty years, for state reasons, and not for lack of water as legends have it. The palace had a life size Parchesi game board, for which Akbar is said to have used slave-girls as game pieces. Next to the old palace is the Jami Masjid Mosque, which contains the tombs of several royals, but it is the tomb of the Sufi saint, Salim...

Jun 24, 2006 - Bharatpur - Koleado Ghana National Park

B - We visited the small (and frankly quite scary) town of Bharatpur as it was near to a National Park and Bird sanctuary. It was really relaxing, stayed in beautiful small hostel run by friendly hindi family. Was nice enough to stay all day - big jungly tropical gardens with plenty of wildlife to keep us occupied. Without leaving the hostel we saw many unusual birds, gheckos, lizards, lots of creepy crawlies, includng my first big cockroach (euw!) and monkeys and what the hostel owner thought was a sambir (nocturnal feline - I thought it...

Sep 17, 2004 - Delhi and moving on!

Hi everyone, Well we are here safe and even sound! Our flying hotel plane was full of distractions and we were in Delhi before we knew it. Em and I had a brief scare on arrival when it appeared that my stuff sack - holding my rucksack (brilliant suggestion to buy one thanks Debbie) appeared to have been tampered with. 'Our padlock has been changed!!' But how can this be, we thought- it was a combination lock. How are we ever going to open it now? They must have snapped my one off and put on a new one, wait - our own combinations works....

Jan 12, 2004 - Fatehpur Sikri

Located about an hour west of Agra, Fatehpur Sikri is the site of a long-abandoned settlement that was the capital of the Mughal empire between 1571 and 1585. Akbar, the greatest of the Mughal emperors, created this "perfect city" to echo his philosophy of Din-i-Ilahi (Faith of God). Although he created an architecturally magnificent city, the site and physical setting left much to be desired: it was in the middle of a desert and plagued with water shortages (all the ingenious irrigation techniques failed to solve the problem). It was...