Jaipur, 1st of September 19:30

Sitting in our fine hotel in Jaipur, capital city of Rajasthan. We have been here since yesterday and will leave for Pushkar tomorrow. Our travel route has changed a bit, so we were in Agra already yesterday and have seen the Taj Mahal. What an experience! Having heard and read so much about it and how beautiful it is, we were wondering how great it actually would be. But it was even more beautiful and special then we could imagine. Such a great peace of art and architecture! Symmetric, majestic and dreamlike. You just have to see it yourself to understand, the pictures doesn't earn up to what it really looked like. Iris immediately had to think about the fairytale or the picture of Soria Moria slott by Asbjornsen & Moe. It looked like something unreal or artificial standing in front of us. We were there a little after 6 in the morning, very early, but the Taj has its own colour at sunrise and it is not that crowded in the morning. Unfortunately its still end of rain season and cloudy, so the special effect of the sunrise we didn't see, but still it is worth going early. We had a private guide coming with us, this is very normal here in India, having a private guide. Almost every couple or family we saw had their own guide. Funny to see, this would never happen back home;-) So tip to you all, visit the Taj Mahal once in your life! ☺

We already mentioned private guide, we also have a private driver at the moment…we would also think it is crazy if we heard it before we left. But to buy train tickets here you need at least 72 hours before departure, and when we wanted to book by a tourist agent it was even 4-5 days to wait. We really wanted to leave Delhi, so we heard out other options. And that was booking a package were we had our own driver for the first 5 days, to Agra, Jaipur and Pushkar. From there we have train towards Rishikesh and we have a train back to Delhi 4 days later. The last night in a hotel in Delhi is also included in this deal. So this package includes: 6 hotel nights with breakfast, 5 days private driver, guide to the Taj Mahal and train tickets, and this all for 260 euro pp. This is a good deal, the guy from Kilroy also confirmed this. Important to know always bargain about this kind of packages or say that you think it is to expensive, they will drop the price a bit or/and give a complementary hotel night.
The driver we have is our private and drives us were we want whenever we want, this is a rather unusual luxury to have but also really nice and its very safe. He drives us to good and cheap places to eat, knows all the cities and places worth seeing, and he gives us a lot of good tips.

We are enjoying this luxury a lot and its perfect for now and the places we are seeing here. But we also look forward to go to Rishikesh on our own and have some days without planed hotel and a driver to make appointments with.

We will tell you some info also about the hotels we are staying. Can be good information for those of you who plan an India trip in the future. But that will come in a next blog report ☺

The city Jaipur is also called the pink city. The old part of the city is painted in a kind of pink and there is a nice walking tour in the Lonely Planet and that is one of the activities we did today. The tour was not only through tourist places, but also through bazaars/streets for locals. Lots of cows, shops, traffic and not so many tourists (which surprises us, we could count them on two hands). In the afternoon we went to the beautiful Amber Fort, which used to be a big army fort in the middle of the mountains. It is clear to us that the former Indian emperors had, liked to or just did spend a lot of money on remarkable buildings, monuments or palaces like a palace in the middle of the water just as a summerhouse.

We are looking forward to go to Pushkar and Rishikesh, because they are both smaller, relaxer and known for their hippie/yoga culture. This also means no meat and alcohol for the last week in India. Hopefully we will pickup a lot from this culture and come back as relax hippies ready to join the über relax culture of Bali ;-)

Kisses


photo's will come later

New Delhi 28/8-10 23.00

What a city! There’s much of everything, people, smells, cars, horns, dogs and sounds! It’s hot, moisture and dusty, were sweating all day long, the air conditioning (AC) in the different places gives us poor Dutch/Norwegians some cooling down. Had a guide today that told us that he was in Copenhagen once in the summer with nice weather, for him it was a cold vacation with 25 degrees!!

Yesterday we arrived here at Shivish hotel in the night local time. We gat picked up at the airport, this was included in our starting package from Kilroy. One city tour, pickup from airport and two nights at this hotel. From tomorrow we will travel outside Delhi. The flight was very very nice, we had personal TV screens, nice Indian food and good service. We are flying with Jet airways almost our whole trip, to Bali and back. So this was a good start
The hotel lays in an area with lots of hotels, it’s in the old part of Delhi and its still a dirty and chaotic area, but from what we have seen today probably whole Delhi is. They are renovating the streets here, so probably it will look better and be less holes in the road in the future.

Today we have had our city tour with a private driver and a guide. Lots of the city and the spots to see we viewed from the car while the guide was telling about the history. It’s nice to see that this culture is so open towards religion, all kind of temples are practically speaking laying next to each other. The Sikhs, Muslims and Hindu people are living peacefully in the same city and also among each other. The guide took us to a place to have lunch, a relatively expensive place we found out, but the food was really nice! We have seen a few temples from close by. On our bear feet, most places it’s not allowed to take pictures. At the Bahapur temple we have some nice pictures from outside. This was really magnificent architecture and a beautiful temple shaped as a lotus flower. It’s build for all people, no matter colour, race, nationality, language or religion. People come there to find peace, meditation and prayer. Inside you can sit and just be quite, it was a really nice experience, we could come here more often. It’s a way of thinking towards religion that speaks to us very much. The karma philosophy and respect is clearly very important to people here, WE LOVE IT! Delhi although is touristic so we look forward to travel and experience more of India.

Tonight we have made our travelling plan for the coming 12 days in India. Tomorrow we are leaving Delhi towards Pushkar in Rajastan and after that to Jaipur also in Rajastan. From Jaipur we are travelling to Agra to visit the Taj Mahal witch excites us From Agra we will take a train to Haridwar, from there Rishikesh is our goal, this place we heard so much about and only positive things, so here we will stay for 3 days and learn yoga;-) The last night we will sleep in Delhi again and then we are flying to Singapore and Bali.

kisses

ps. photo's did not work out this time