Our month-long trip in 2024 was a fortunate opportunity to undertake a reconnaisance of India, or at least a bit of India. We had never been to the country before and had no sense of how our travel would need to be planned – logistics, roads, traffic, accomodation, money, SIM, and so on. We had a week’s business in Rajasthan, and chose to arrive early and leave late, to give us around three weeks to explore. We thought that we would restrict our exploration to Rajasthan, as well as two or three days in Delhi each way, and this proved to be a wise decision.
Overview of the trip:
We arrived in Delhi and spent two days there, staying in a BnB, which proved to be located very well for access to several of the places we wanted to see.
We flew to Jodhpur, on IndiGo (an airline of which we had never heard, and which we found has over 300 aircraft and makes around 2000 flights a day!). It’s an hour’s flight and was efficient (although Delhi’s airport security inspection left a lot be be desired). We then spent two days in Jodhpur, enjoying new experiences in food, music, street markets, and many other aspects.
To get to Barmer, our business destination, we took a car with a driver; the trip took around 4 hours and gave us insight into the intervening rural area, in this desert landscape. We stayed in Barmer for a week, which is apparently very unusual, in fact our presence there was viewed as surprising, since it’s not a tourist destination. This actually gave us an opportunity for an “authentic” experience, meeting local artisans, weavers, woodworkers, and others, and seeing temples rarely visited by foreigners.
At the end of the week we headed for Jaisalmer, known as more of a desert town, with a huge fort, and access to camel rides, among other attractions. To get there we hired a car with driver, Bhati, to travel not only to Jaisalmer but also to take us from there to Mount Abu, via Jalore, then to Kumbhalgarh Fort via Ranakpur Jain Temple, then on to Udaipur. This was the most practical way to manage logistics around the west of Rajasthan and proved to work out well.
From Udaipur we took the Vande Bharat express train to Jaipur, which proved to be very comfortable and efficient, with lots of food during the six hour trip.
In Jaipur we visited, among other attractions, Amber Fort, which was perhaps the most impressive of the many forts we had seen so far. We also took a car with driver to Ranthambore National Park, in the hope of seeing some wildlife – we were pleased to see chital, nilgai, sambar, langur monkeys, a tiger, and a sloth bear!
From Jaipur we took a Delhi-based car with driver to return to Delhi for three days before heading home, via Istanbul, where we had a twentytwo hour stopover, giving us the opportunity to do a little exploring of the city.
A few statistics:
Travel Days – 29
Days in India – 26
Travel by road – 2664 km
Travel by rail – 454 km
Travel by air (within South Asia) – 476 km
We’ll follow up with a post soon describing some of our encounters and travel on this trip.
Reflections:
Getting around – we found the internal flight with IndiGo to be efficient and a reasonable cost. The process of getting through inspections at Delhi airport was demanding and frustrating, the attitude of the staff was less than acceptable. Hence it took a while and left us less than happy by the time we boarded the flight.
The train from Udaipur to Jaipur was excellent - tea and biccies with the Times of India on departure, breakfast after half an hour, soup at Ajmer, lunch at 1245h, icecream afterwards; USD 58 for two, all food included, for a 6-1/2 hour train journey in “executive class” (reclining seats, air-conditioned).
Intercity roads were varied – the Delhi-Mumbai Expressway is good, and curiously empty, until close to Delhi. The roads west of Jodhpur were generally good, sometimes four lane, sometimes two lane, and without much traffic. It seems reasonable to consider driving ourselves next year, with appropriate care (no night driving for example), at least in terms of travel outside cities.
Driving in the cities is clearly a challenge, although a balanced mix of defensive skills and confidence appear to make this viable. The only real concern is that once you reach the old city centres access with a vehicle is impossible, owing to narrow “streets” hence getting from city centre to city centre involves parking outside and taking tuktuks; not a big concern really. The other option would be to stay outside the old centre of each city in a BnB or hotel with parking, and take tuktuks into the centre.
Tuktuks – convenient, noisy, cheap – a good way to get around in the cities.
Delhi Metro – inexpensive, efficient, we used the metro one day to get to and from Qutub Minar and it was a very good means to do so.
The overall plan:
So, here’s the planning board, and the “dots” to join. As can be seen, there is a huge variety of places of interest, and it seems inevitable that we’ll have to focus.
Watch this space…
Alan and Marce
Photos may be used for non-commercial purposes with credit to alanymarce@gmail.com
