Career Break Central

April 10-14

After leaving Nepal, our favourite destination of the trip thus far, we had mixed emotions about visiting India. Since our primary reason for visiting India was to visit our foster child, Hansu, near Bikaner, we had decided to limit our visit to Rajasthan and stay only 12 days. Everything we had heard from fellow travelers was that India was a beautiful, but often difficult, country to travel in and to expect to have a love/hate relationship with the country. They were not far off the mark.

We expected Delhi to be chaotic and dirty and were a bit nervous about arriving without a hotel booking. Our friend, Bishnu, at Nature Trails in Katmandu called his friend Bhaskar in Delhi for us and arranged to have him pick us up at the airport and take us to a comfortable but affordable hotel in the Karol Bagh district of New Delhi. As we drove to our hotel, we were surprised at how modern and cosmopolitan Delhi was compared to Katmandu. However, we did see a few cows wandering the streets and several groups of people were living under cardboard shelters on street corners and sidewalks and begging from passing cars. When we arrived at our hotel, Claude confessed that he hadn’t been feeling well all day and collapsed into bed. I told him to stay there while I took care of our travel arrangements. On the way to the hotel we had passed the first McDonald’s restaurant we’d seen since leaving Australia and the kids had howled to go there for lunch so Bhaskar took us there first. The beef-free menu was nothing like the North American version we were used to and the kids ended up with veggie burger Happy Meals while I had McMaharaja burger (also of the veggie persuasion). Next, it was on to Bhaskar’s office where he convinced me to avoid the hassles of trying to organize our own transportation and accommodation throughout Rajasthan. In the end, we got a nice new air-conditioned vehicle, our own driver, Sanjay, and three-star hotel accommodations (breakfast included) for 11 nights for $1000US. All we had to pay for was lunch and dinner daily and tourist attractions. Bhaskar also agreed to provide us with tour guides in Agra and Jaipur. The only issue was that he didn’t take credit cards, so I had to walk down the street and take almost 60,000 rupees out of the ATM. I was a little paranoid about walking back to the office with the huge wad of bills bulging in my pocket and was grateful that Bhaskar had sent one of his assistants to escort me.

The next morning, Claude was feeling a bit better, but Alexa was complaining of a headache and upset stomach and, on our way downstairs, she threw up in a garbage can – nice. Our driver, Sanjay, took it all in stride and didn’t bat an eye as she threw up in a plastic bag several more times on the five hour drive to Agra. At a roadside checkpoint along the way, a trained monkey jumped up on Simon’s window and I quickly snapped a photo.

The monkey’s owner was not far behind, aggressively demanding money for the picture. When Claude shook his head at the man, he actually opened Claude’s door and started getting pushy and Sanjay quickly jumped out and threw him out of the way. When he got back in the car, all he said was, “Don’t take pictures without asking first.”

Alexa seemed better when we arrived in Agra and we decided to risk a quick guided tour of the Agra Fort before heading to our hotel.

Once there, Claude and Alexa decided to bow out for a nap while Sanjay took Simon, our guide and me on a wild ride through old Agra to see the sunset on the back side of the Taj Mahal. Now this was the India I had imagined! We jostled through dirty crowded streets with horns blaring as cars, tuktuks, motorcycles, rickshaws and animal carts vied for space. At one point we crossed a long bridge that was so narrow that I didn’t think we would make it through without some serious vehicular damage,

but Sanjay prevailed and we made it through without a scratch. We arrived at the river just before sunset in time to see the beautiful white marble of the Taj Mahal turn orange as the sun set over the Agra Fort.

The next morning, we rose early to visit the Taj Mahal just after sunrise when the crowds are small. The white marble absolutely glowed in the morning light and we were amazed by its majestic beauty and the splendour of its perfect symmetry.

We were touched by the beautiful love story of its occupants, Shah Jahan and his beloved queen, Mumtaz Mahal. Even the kids were impressed. This was one tourist attraction that didn’t disappoint.

Next, it was on to the “Pink City,” Jaipur where we would stay for two nights so we could enjoy its many sights and attractions. Inside the walls of the old city, traffic was the craziest we had seen yet – like Phnom Penh traffic on cocaine.

At one traffic roundabout, a rickshaw driver tried to cut across in front of us and drove right into the side of our vehicle, causing his rickshaw to tip right over in the middle of the busy street (luckily he didn’t have any passengers). When Sanjay got out to help him right his rickshaw, the crazy driver screamed obscenities at him in Hindi as if it were Sanjay’s fault that he had hit us. Sanjay just shook his head and calmly drove away as if nothing had happened. At almost every intersection, mothers with babies and ragged children tapped on our windows asking for handouts. Sanjay warned us not to fall for their tactics and told us that they were “professionals” and that the babies probably weren’t even theirs. Sure enough, on the second night, at an intersection near our hotel, we saw the same woman we had seen the night before with a completely different baby in her arms.

While in Jaipur, we enjoyed a fascinating guided tour of the Amer Palace where the Simon loved roaming through the catacombs of rooms and hallways and Alexa dreamed of being one of the queens and princesses who once inhabited its lavishly decorated apartments.

We also visited a five hundred year old observatory with unique astronomical instruments that were, and still are, highly accurate (including the world’s largest sundial).

At sunset, we headed into the hills to the Naighar Fort where we got a stunning panoramic view of Jaipur at sunset.

I had a laugh on the way back to the car when I spotted the sign directing “ladies and gants” to the “Utilities.”

The next morning, we continued on to Bikaner for the most exciting part of our visit to India – our visit with our foster child, Hansu.

To see the rest of our photos from India, click here:

India

Tags: Agra, Delhi, India, Jaipur, Taj Mahal, Travel

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 28th, 2007 at 6:34 am and is filed under India, Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.