India

“A few of our favorite things …”

Now that the trip is coming to an end, we reflected over a gin and tonic about the good and the bad of the last 8 months. For what it’s worth …

Favorite “normal” places we visited – Seychelles (Mark); Split (Susan)
Favorite adventure – Rwanda trekking with gorillas
Least favorite “adventure” – hike across Le Curieuse Island in the Seychelles
Least favorite town – Bundi, India
Least favorite “things” during the trip – Food poisoning (Susan); Bad tour guide in Bundi and Kota

Best place for a drink

Beer in Serengeti
India Pacific train
Catamaran to MONA in Hobart
Beer while watching the total lunar eclipse from the rooftop in Bundi
Wine on the twilight sailing yacht in Fremantle

Best place we stayed (Other than with friends)

Meridien in the Seychelles with an oceanfront room
Sheraton in Koh Samui – best A/C of all!
Meridien in Koh Samui with a plunge pool

Worst Hotel – Bundi Vilas Halewi

Best Hotel Lounge – Bangkok Westin

Best flight – Munich to Bangkok in First Class on Thai Air

Worst travel day – Port Macquarie to Hobart – 4 hours of flying time turned into a 14 hour trip

Best restaurant

Steak at the Jail House Inn, Launceston
Mexican food at Terminal 21, Bangkok after 5 months of no Mexican food

Best restaurant view – Indique in Jodphur

Worst food – Colonel’s Retreat, Delhi – Susan’s food poisoning location!

Worst roads – India, hands down!

Rudest person on the trip – UK couple on the train in India

Weirdest person we ran into on the trip – the Indian guy who stared at us for 4 hours on the Indian train

“Glad it wasn’t me” event – Aileen not getting her luggage for 5 days on the safari

Great coincidence – Aileen didn’t have her phone charger and she used her phone to take pictures. Mark had his camera since he used his phone for pictures. He loaned Aileen the camera but didn’t have the charger for it. Annie from Tennessee had a charger that fit the camera! All was well in the photography world.

Unexpected experiences

Twilight sailing in Fremantle on a yacht and dinner at the Fresh Water Yacht Club
Seeing 2 kills in Serengeti by 3 lionesses. They killed 2 wildebeests
Landing in Mwanza, Tanzania, to clear immigration leaving Tanzania
Food Walks in Delhi and Jaipur

Little too close for comfort – the airline we flew in Tanzania crashed a plane into Ngorongoro Crater National Park just a few days after we used them

Illnesses – 4 colds (2 each) and 1 case of food poisoning and 1 sprained wrist

New friends and acquaintances

Avijet – Indian in Ranthambore NP from CA – works for EAS
Ana – met in Split – anesthesiologist from Singapore/Malaysia/Cambridge
Nora and Juhis – Finland met in Seychelles
Rob and Justin; Sonya and Graham – Australians met in Split
Peter from Melbourne via Rob and Justin
Gayle and Mark – Sydney
Margarida – Sydney Sheraton clerk from Portugal
Ben and Belinda – from Geneva – met in Golden Monkey trek
Uta – from Germany met in Tanzania
Ryan from Malta – met in Edinburgh
Clifford – from Madagascar – doing laundry in Bangkok
Suchin Shah – from South Carolina – sells RV’s
Per and Lise – from Norway
Debbie and Tim – from London

Even more signs

We have LOTS of sign pictures!

Warning sign in Jodphur, India – selfies and the guard rail warnings are good.

Snake warning signs are everywhere in Australia! We never saw a snale, thank heavens.

Yes, this sign really exists. We’ll pass on the political thoughts that came to mind when we saw it in Western Australia.

Mark thinks there must be a joke in these signs somewhere.

“Signs, signs, everywhere a sign” – apologies to Five Man Electrical Band

Signs are everywhere. Some we could read; others, not so much. Some are pictures giving directions and some are just bad translations. Some are written by the Brits; easy to recognize by their length – as in long. Here are some of the more amusing or puzzling or long signs we’ve seen along the way!

Spelling is a problem both in English and non-English as a first language countries.

This sign is in Fort Augustus, Scotland where English is the first language and they still can’t spell – or proofread!

No room for the “T”

Spelling is not always perfect in signs. This one’s in Thailand.

Then there are the signs about phones and computers!

A library coffee shop in Oxford wants to keep the tables free for patrons.

One of our favorite little pizza places in Rome has this sign.

No selfies with the penguins! We found this sign in South Africa while watching penguins.

This sign was on the train between Edinburgh and Inverness.

We like the “etc” on the hotel advertisement on this Jodhpur hotel.

The fort in Jodphur tried to discourage smoking.

The coffee shop at RMIT university was closed when we walked by.

No parking sign in middle of parking spot

This sign takes up a perfectly good parking spot and there were 3 or 4 of them in Porrt Macquarie.

Advertising Tasmanian sparkling wine.

Rome – Cash only economy!

Just in case you can’t figure out that water in a sink might be hot. This was in a Scottish toilet.

Don’t you dare feed the kangaroos!

Mark used the toilet in Terminal 21 in Bangkok. We saw many Japanese tourists there and we assume that’s why they had a Japanese style toilet with all the bells and whistles. At least they posted these directions on what the functions of the various buttons are on the toilet – sort of! It goes along with some signs we saw for how to use a western toilet – SIT on the seats!

Make sure you sit on the western toilet. We found this sign in Bangkok.

15.5K steps and 47 flights of steps – all in a jeep

We both have a Garmin Fenix – Susan has the 5 and Mark has the 5X. This watch is very accurate when it comes to distance. When we first got them before we left Colorado, we did a 5K (3.1 miles) and the watch recorded it as 3.12 miles!

On our trip to India, we went Ranthambore National Park to look for tigers. For all of you thinking “Didn’t you see Tigers is Africa?”. Nope! Tigers are in Indian; lions are in Africa. To see tigers, you need to go on a safari either for 4 hours in the morning or 4 hours in the afternoon. We were picked up at the hotel about 7 AM and the fun began. (We actually did 3 of these safaris, two in the morning and one afternoon safari.) As noted in our blog, the roads are extremely bumpy and the drivers drive like maniacs.

About half way through the one of the safaris, both our fitness watches indicated we hit 10,000 steps and that we’d reached our step climbing goal of 10 flights. When we finally got back to the hotel after being shaken like a can of paint, Mark’s watch said we walked 15,500 steps and climbed 47 flights of stairs and descended 31 flights. Susan’s watch had an amazing 104 flights climbed and 132 flights descended.

Susan’s 19116 Steps all while sitting in a jeep and bumping across India!

If you want to cheat your fitness tracker, just go on a tiger safari in Ranthambore National Park, India.

Toilet paper

A very small roll of toilet paper!

For whatever reason, toilet paper in India is quite thin but the rolls are also very small – as in not many sheets of paper. One was so small, it only lasted a day! And, no one had Delhi Belly!

Jaipur

Jaipur is a lovely – pretty clean, has a great flyover road to skip a bunch of traffic, lovely buildings with uniform signage. The traffic chaos still exists but the architecture and city layout help.

The Amber Fort was the first stop and it’s lovely.

This is the view through the screen at the fort into the courtyard.

The fort wall seemed to go on forever.

Amber Fort

Our guide was good at taking pictures. This is us at the Amber Fort.

Ajay was a good tour guide – took us to the hot spots. We used the ramps a lot that were built for the queen’s wheeled chair when her dress and jewelry were too heavy for her to walk. He gave us options on what to see or skip and told us if we want to shop or see the local block printing, just tell him. He’s been a guide for 22 years and definitely has the personality for it. We passed on the shopping.

It’s a small world! The guide’s nephew is at CSU. I looked him up in the Student Directory and he’s majoring in Engineering.

The parking lot at the Amber Fort was mass chaos when we left and tried to find Sonu.

The Wind Palace. It’s only one room deep and the ladies used it to watch what was going on in the streets. It’s very lacy and airy.

The Jantar Mantar Observatory was fascinating and measures time in India Local time which is not used any more. India Standard Time was started by the British when they needed uniform schedule times for the trains. The offset is shown every day at the Observatory. There’s an astrology clock too.

This is a good example of the difference in ticket prices paid by Indian nationals and non-Indian tourist. The exchange rate was about 62 rupees to the US dollar.

We went on the food and market walk in the afternoon from about 3:30 – 6:30 AND we even crossed the streets about 6 times with the guide. The street crossing rivaled Hanoi! The guide was quite good and we can now find the wedding dress section and the metal pan section in Jaipur. Had some samosas that were great. People bought them by the big bags full! The stand sells several thousand a day.

I’m not sure the name if these but they were tasty chilis.

Samosas cooked in front of us.

People bought these by the bag full. They sell several thousand a day.

Some of the spices at the Spice market we saw during the Food tour in Jaipur.

Paneer – it’s fresh cheese and was yummy in all the veggie Indian dishes we tried.

He munched on the food he found along the street.

Proper gin and tonic by the Samode Havelli – lovely hotel in a historic building that was a palace for a ruler from Samode.

Jodhpur

First stop was the Jaswant Thada Memorial to the Maharajas where they are cremated and then a memorial is built over the ashes.

More mausoleums on the same site.

Jaswant Thada. It has translucent marble walls. They are beautiful when the sun shines through them.

Jodhpur has a current maharaja but he has no power. It was all given up in 1971. The maharajahs could keep their land and holdings by paying a tax to the government. This maharajah kept the palace (Now a Taj hotel is on the property.) and deeded the Mehrangarh Fort and other palaces to a trust in the same form as in England. He became King at age 4 and was educated in England so likes the UK form of trusts for national monuments.

Mehrangarh Fort from across the lake. We could walk, take an elephant, or have Sonu take us to the top!

Mehrangarh Fort Jodhpur

After we finished at the fort, we walked down through the blue city – home to Brahmin caste and jewelry smiths, historically – through the temple area, past the public kitchens, bangle market, wholesale spice market and grain markets. We ended up at the clock tower where the clock was built using the same type of mechanism as Big Ben. It was a block from the hotel!

Yes, potato chips can be bought loose. I have no idea what a kilo of these costs. I stuck to finding strange flavors of Lay’s potato chips!

A bangle bracelet vendor. Pick your favorite color!

The country people buy the bangles in wholesale and mark them up a bit, selling them in small quantities. They come to the same location every day to sell them. The sari section sells used saris. The people buy old ones and then resell them here for uses as curtains and other items that need large quantities of fabric.

One section of the market had fireworks stands everywhere.

Michael, tour guide, was great! He’s from around Goa and earned a MS in Tourism Mgmt. Told us good info and answered questions about India. He’s Catholic so no long weddings for him but he did have receptions on different days from wedding – one for his veggie friends and one for his non-veggie friends.

Makeshift scaffolding for carrying bricks and mortar from one level to another.

We watched construction across the street – ramps used from one story to the other to move cement and bricks!

We could see this groom on a horse from the rooftop restaurant where we ate dinner. He was accompanied by friends and a very loud music truck!

A procession for the groom came by the hotel so everyone was watching from the roof. The groom-to-be is on a white horse.

Udaipur – a clean city!

Udaipur was a wonderful surprise! The streets are amazingly clean – very little trash. The mayor is adamant about having a clean city and it was very noticeable!

Every city comes with a tour guide and the guide in Udaipur was excellent. The City Palace sits on top of a hill – surprise! It was built by the kings and added on to by every king. We gave up trying to keep all the rulers’ names straight – too many and names are way too long!

City Palace Balcony

City Palace. We were in a boat in Lake Pichola.

One of the mirrored rooms in the City Palace

City Palace of Udaipur

Two hotels use part of the palace. “Octopussy” was filmed partly at the City Palace and in the streets of Udaipur. “Marigold Hotel” scenes were filmed here, too.

My favorite part was the window screens carved all from one piece of stone or marble. These allowed the women to see out but prevented anyone from seeing the women.

These carved screens were carved from one piece of stone.

The Queen’s Side of the palace can be rented for parties and weddings now – to the tune of millions of rupees for this site.

Mark and Susan on Palace Island. We needed one posed picture to prove we’d been together on the trip.

We had our own boat out to Palace Island. The guy who built the Taj lived on this island when he hid from his Dad.

Washing clothes and bathing in the river is technically illegal in Udaipur. They don’t want the soap in the water.

Garden of the Maids of Honor

We made a stop at the Water Gardens built for princess with lots of fountains that run naturally.

These ladies wanted their picture taken with us.

A few of the many monkeys at the City Palace

Bundi

Bundi was our least favorite stop In India. It’s a small town with fort and palace – surprise! The tour guide was terrible – we fired him after about an hour.

Nighttime view of the fort

Bundi Fort during the day

The best thing about Bundi was sitting on the roof of the hotel and watching the total lunar eclipse.

The lunar eclipse occurred when we were in Bundi. We watched it rise over the fort and then go into eclipse.

Tigers!

Ranthambore National Park is home to tigers along with a variety of birds, monkeys, sambars, but the tigers are the big draw. Tiger safaris leave in the morning or the afternoon. It was back on safari schedule – 6 AM wake up with coffee and tea, quick showers and off to the NP. We knew we’d be in a 6-person vehicle but we had no idea with whom. The first morning we ended up with 3 other people – a couple from the UK and Abeget, an Indian from Cupertino who works for EA Entertainment Arts.

The safari vehicles have no top; they are completely open air. Khem Villas provided a wool blanket with hot water bottle, 2 bottles of water and 2 sandwiches. We laughed when we read this but, when we hit the road, the blanket with the hot water bottle came in mighty handy!

The driver drove fast, making our heads and faces even colder. First stop was at the main gate of the National Park so the hawkers could try to sell hats and gloves and fleeces. For some reason, they didn’t bother Abaget!

The park is divided into zones and each vehicle is assigned a zone never to be violated by entering another zone! Zone 2 was ours with the road following along the bottom of the hill with the Ranthambore Fort which is high and VERY large. Pictures can’t do it justice.

The walls of Ranthambore Fort

A tiger paw print in the road.

Victory! We saw two tiger “cubs”. This guy is only about 18 months old.

The tigers blend into the background quite well.

Hawkeye spotting! A lady in a passing vehicle in the National Park saw Mark’s shirt and said “GO Hawks!”

This lake was full of birds and Sambar deer during the afternoon safari

Our afternoon National Park Guide. She is the ONLY female guide in the National Park.

Naturalists are freelance and work on a rotation basis. She tried really hard to find a tiger for us in the afternoon but to no avail.

These sambars had some afternoon delight.

The birds were spectacular even if the tigers are in hiding.

The guide spotted two owls nestled in the tree.

Fruit bats hanging around in the trees!

Agra and the Taj Mahal

This day did not start off well! Susan woke up at 3 AM with nausea and suffered the effects of food poisoning for 5 hours while Mark slept through the whole thing. He couldn’t have helped much, anyway. The Costco version of Immodium and some Indian anti-nausea meds helped!

We had our own driver for this whole India adventure; this gave us the flexibility to put off leaving Delhi for Agra until 11:30 AM while Susan recovered a bit.

The smog was so bad it obscured some of the Taj Mahal. I wondered if Corel has a smog cleaning tool for photo editing?

The air quality was Hazardous as we drove to Agra on the freeway. After arriving in Agra and meeting our guide at the hotel, we told him we’d pass on any tours today and meet him at 8 tomorrow morning for the Taj.

The Taj Mahal was built as a love story – you can find the story here – and the building is beautiful in every way you’ve heard described. We lucked out because the cleaning of the Taj has just been completed and the scaffolding was gone! They still have to clean the dome but that’s a project for another year.

Mark and Susan at the Taj Mahal. Our guide did well with the cameras, thank heavens! Our selfie skills are severely lacking.

No crowds at 8 AM so no lines for security. Speaking of security … every monument we went to had some sort of security. Our bags were at least checked. Regardless of the security, men and women go through separate lines all the time. Since non-Indian visitors pay a much higher price for admission tickets, we also use separate admission lines. The non-Indian visitors get the faster lines thanks to paying 10-20 times the price that an Indian citizen pays.

Different lines for “high value” ticket holders. Translation – foreigners who pay WAY higher admission prices!

Taj reflected. If you look really carefully, the dome is a different color because it hasn’t been cleaned yet.

The fountains at the Taj don’t turn on until about 9. This made for a nice reflection in the pools. The crowds hadn’t descended on the Taj yet, either.

Tomb of I’timād-ud-Daulah is a Mughal mausoleum often regraded as a draft of the Taj Mahal.

The Itamad uh Dualah, also known as the Baby Taj , is a smaller, delicate building on the river with very few visitors and a lovely western toilet! Somehow, an unwritten rule seemed to be that international visitors also were charged more for the toilets – 20 rupees versus 10 rupees. If the toilet was clean and western, I was happy!

Driving/Riding in India

Camels, cows, elephants, goats, sheep, trash, shrines, dogs, motor scooters, motorcycles, cars, trucks, push carts, bicycles … you name it, you probably find it on the roads of India. Throw in a few – or not so few – people along the way and the picture gets more complete.

DIsclaimer: Many of these pictures were taken from the car as we moved along.

Bicycles, auto-Rickshaw, people, and motorcycles all share the road.

A few goats along the way. I like the spotted one.

Autorickshaws in India are the same thing as tuk-tuks in Thailand. Bicycle powered ones are just called “rickshaws”.

This guy hung out at a busy intersection in Delhi.

Where does a cow cross the road? Anywhere she wants!

Camels are used for hauling wagons in the countryside.

She obviously needs her coffee in the morning. We saw this in Bundi, down the street from our hotel.

Baby camels are pretty cute! This group was walking down the road.

Staying within the lines on any road is completely optional as is going in only one direction on a divided highway. Want to turn across traffic? OK … just stick the nose of your car out and nudge your way across the road while blocking traffic.

Telling someone to “Blow Horn” seems pretty unnecessary! Blowing the horn must be a requirement on the driving test.

One day, we had a diversion (British for “detour”) at some point that took us through little villages that we never would have seen. The road was very bumpy, holey, cracked with a large sample of trash, shrines, cows in the road. The road took us through small villages where all the men seem to sit in groups outside of shops visiting and drinking coffee and tea, reading the newspapers, while the women do all the work.

Walking along the road and we have no idea where they were going.

This guy walked through the traffic lined up to pay tolls. He was selling snack food.

Taking grass of some sort to the animals. We never saw one tipped over but it has to happen!

An Indian countryside version of a bus. They were all going to the market town near them. Spelling was a problem!

Indian freeway. The trucks were taking gravel to a road works site. This is the clearest lane I ever saw!

This gives you some idea of the variety you see in the cities. This was Delhi.

Throw in a snake charmer or two on the sidewalks. The snakes are de-fanged.

Two weeks in India!

We know so many people from India and have heard so much about the country that India made the final list of places to visit on this trip. The Chief Travel Planner (Susan) decided she didn’t really want to try to figure out how to get around India so we did a bit of research on tours. We scratched the group tour idea and decided to go with a driver/guide combo.

After finally deciding on Audley, we gave them the places we wanted to visit, and Bryn put together the itinerary, booked drivers, hotels, and guides. We just showed up! Audley did a great job from start – meeting us at the Delhi airport – to end when the rep helped us navigate the lines that are the Delhi airport at midnight. Sonu, our driver, took care of us and didn’t freak us out on the roads at all. He knew the best places to stop for food and CLEAN bathrooms!

Sonu was our driver from arrival time in Delhi until we flew home. He’s from the Himalaya region of India and an amazingly good driver and nice person.

Along the way we saw Delhi, Agra, Jaipur, Jodhpur, Udaipur, Ranthambore National Park, Bundi, and Narlai. It was an adventure!

The first 3 days were in Delhi. Because it was National Day (Public holiday) AND the ASEAN conference was going on with leaders from all the ASEAN countries, security was tight with closed roads and many buildings closed. We saw many of the places from the outside that, normally, we could have visited.

Jama Masjid mosque in Delhi

This street was pretty normal with electric, phone, TV lines going in all directions.

The mosque was only about a block away and you can tell how smoggy the air was.

Air Quality Index – Unhealthy!

Electricity in Hotels

Love this string of outlets – controls for the fan, on/off switch and one outlet that was a bit loose. If you jiggled the plug JUST right, you got a connection.

Many hotels around the world are trying to cut down on electricity use. That’s a great idea! How do they do it? The room’s electricity only stays on when the key card is placed in the slot by the front door. Theoretically, this works great – EXCEPT when the key card controls ALL the power to the room and not just to the lights or TV or A/C.

In some hotels, the key cards also switch off power to the outlets which causes a major problem when trying to charge computers, Kindles, cameras, etc. while we’re out of the room!

Years ago, we figured out that there’s nothing magical about the HOTEL key card. We would leave other cards in the slot when we left so the outlets stayed on and our computers charged. We’d laugh and say “Powered by Qdoba” or “Powered by Body Shop”.

This trip we discovered 2 hotels in Thailand where we really had to use the key card! The key card had an RFID chip in to unlock the door and that same RFID chip turned on the electricity. At one hotel, the Bangkok transportation card with a RFID chip worked as a substitute but at another hotel, no substitute chipped card worked except for an ATM card.

Then there are the motion-sensored air-conditioners all over the world. I hate them! If no one moves, the A/C shuts off. Great! When we sleep, we want it COLD -as in about 62F or 18C – so having A/C on all night is important. We must not move enough in bed nor get out of bed often enough, because the A/C always shuts off and then I wake up and am very hot.

We have read a way around this – tie a balloon to a string and tape it near the A/C. That should be enough motion to keep the A/C/ running. We haven’t tried that trick!