Foggy golden circle trip with Beth

Hi All,

I'm a little behind the times now, but I shall endevour to catch up. We are nearly at the end of our season of visitors now. Caitlin and Rosamund left this morning and are hopefully nearly back in London.

Anyway, my sister, Beth, arrived on Thursday 15th Jan to Delhi and I went up to meet her. Impressively, we both arrived on time. Delhi and surrounds are plagued with fog in Dec and Jan which often delays a lot of flights I'm told.

As Beth's trip was something of a whistlestop tour, we got straight onto the sightseeing that afternoon with a trip to the Red Fort before a fairly early drinks and dinner in Connought place and a much needed early night. The following day we hired a car and driver for a day of sightseeing. We went to Humayun's tomb, Qutb Minar and Jama Masjid. Unfortunately, the Lotus temple was closed for some reason, so we could only have a look through the fence. India Gate was also closed off because of Barack Obama's visit (even though it was a week and a half later!). I won't bore you with all those places as I can't say they have changed since we visited them the 1st time. Although the fog did add another dimension!

Isa Khan's tomb in the clearing fog (part of the Humayun's tomb complex)

Beth at Humayun's tomb

 We did manage to squeeze in an extra sight that we haven't been to before; Swaminarayan Akshardham, which is a new temple, built in 2005 for the Swaminarayan sect of Hinduism. Unfortunately, you are not allowed to take pictures inside the temple, so one from the road will have to do! Beth and I were a little boring and opted for just wondering around deciding to give the boat ride through history, the animatronics and IMAX a miss. Although slightly like a religious version of Disney world, it is a very impressively temple, both in size and in terms of carvings. It is nice to know that those sorts of skills haven't been lost.

Swaminarayan Akshardham from afar

After a hard day of sightseeing, we headed back to the hotel for a well earned break, and to wait for Ben who flew up to join us after work that night. Unfortunately, his flight was delayed by fog, but he made it before the restaurant at the hotel shut for some yummy pizza.

No rest for the wicked I'm afraid and we were on the 6am train to Agra the next morning. Although somewhat tired, the first class carriage would have been pretty swish in it's day, and it didn't exactly break the bank!

Agra, was suffering with fog even more so than Delhi but we ploughed on with seeing the sights, deciding to get a guide and a driver for the day. First stop was Agra Fort which is pretty huge, although it was difficult to get a good idea of scale as with the poor visibility.

Agra Fort

Then on to the 'Mini Taj', the tomb of Itmad-ud-Daulah a fairly impressive monument in itself. Although it doesn't have quite the scale of some of the other garden tombs, the inside is beautifully painted and it is a peaceful escape from the madness!

The 'Mini taj'

The inside of the 'mini Taj'

Then finally on to a glimpse of a ghostly Taj Mahal from the Mehtab Bagh, or moonlight gardens, which are on the banks of the Yamuna river, opposite the Taj Mahal. The story goes that Shah Jahan, who built the Taj Mahal, had great plans to build a twin for Taj Mahal on this side of the river for himself, but in black. The prohibitive cost (and the fact that he was imprisoned by his son) meant that it didn't get any further than this!  

A ghostly Taj Mahal from across the river

So, by about 3pm the fog had finally cleared enough to make visiting the Taj worth while! It is certainly an amazing sight and well worth the trip. Although, as our luck would have it, the reflecting pools were empty as they being cleaned for the arrival of Barack Obama the following week. Needless to say, empty blue pools are not very attractive, so we spent a while trying to hide them in the photos! And to top it off, he ended up cutting his trip short (although I agree it was probably right for him to go to Saudi on the death of King Abdullah) and never made it to the Taj Mahal! 

Just to prove we were there! 

The sun starts to set and the fog thickens again

The early start and busy day of sightseeing wiped us out so, after what turned out to be quite a smart dinner at a TripAdvisor recommended restaurant on the main road, we headed back to our guesthouse and to bed!

The next day we were off to Jaipur via Fatehpur Sikri. The latter is about an hours drive from Agra and was another Mughal capital for a while. This time for emperor Akbar. Again, a very impressive town/fort/palace, although I have to say, these things start to get a little bit samey after a while! It did have a Pachisi court though, which is a square marked out for a human sized board game, similar to Ludo, where people served as the playing pieces.

The Buland Darwaza, was also a highlight. Known as the 'Gateway of Magnificence' in English it was just that. One of the gates into the Mosque part of Fatehpur Sikri it is 54m high (from the bottom of the steps on the outside) and very impressive. For me, it was made even better for the fact that going out of the gate there was a little herd of goats on the steps below all wearing woolly jumpers! Hopefully Beth has a picture of them; if so, I will add it when I get it.

Ben and I at the centre of the Pachisi board

The Buland Darwaza from the inside

Then on again to Jaipur airport to drop Ben off and let him head back to work for a rest after his frantically busy weekend! It quickly became clear that we were going to be really early for his flight and after some extremely frustrating to-ing and fro-ing with the driver and various of his bosses on the phone we came up with a plan. It is really infuriating when you have a guidebook and google maps which suggest a good option for stopping on route, but instead of saying that they don't know where the place is, and helpfully suggesting another option, the driver and his company insist that you are wrong and the place you want to go is 50km off the route and you must go where they want to take you!

Anyway, quite a nice garden, a temple in the cliff with lots of monkeys and a very cross Ben later, we dropped Ben at the airport having ended up with a reasonably good afternoon.

I'm not sure that it is quite right to feed monkey's roti as they did at the monkey temple, but it made for some quite nice photos!

He seemed to like it anyway!

Beth and I then enjoyed a nice couple of days of sight seeing in Jaipur (once we had managed to persuade our driver that we did not want to be taken shopping and after the first couple of places we just wanted to go around on our own and not have a guide!). I won't go into details as it was pretty much the same itinerary as with Jane and Dennis. But we did ride an elephant up to Amber Palace, see the photographic evidence below. I have to say, although quite fun, it was really quite uncomfortable. I don't really feel the need to repeat the experience!

Arriving in the courtyard of the Amber Palace

I headed back to Bangalore on the Tuesday evening and Beth was delivered to Delhi airport for a quick sleep before her flight home. Then a day of washing, cleaning and a quick cookery class before my parents arrived on Thursday morning! 

All in all, a whistlestop tour of the golden triangle, but a good one. For me it was nice to experience completely different weather from before, and I did get to see some added extras from previous trips, not least Agra and the Taj Mahal of course, and to spend some time with my sister. 

I shall be back soon with an update on my parents visit!

xKathryn

Temples of the Western plateau

Hi everyone,

Sorry for not writing for a while, our season of visitors is now in full swing!

So, having had New Year and a weekend not doing much we decided another trip was in order for the following weekend.

On Saturday morning we headed off to the Western plateau of Karnataka, about a 4 hour drive from Bangalore. En route, the first stop was Shravanabelagola, a small town with one attraction, a statue of Gommateshvara. I'm not sure it is a deity so to speak, but it he is part of the basis of the Jain faith. Anyway, this statue is said to be the tallest monolithic statue in the world and is 17m tall. 

He certainly is pretty tall! He is positioned on top of a hill next to the town with steps carved all the way up the hill. The book said 700 steps, but I don't think it was anywhere near that, although there were quite a few. 

On the way up

Gommateshvara

The only slight disappointment was that we were under the impression he was just stood on the top of the hill, so you could see him from miles around. But he is actually in a quite high walled temple, so you can only see his head poking out the top and not from that far away. But still pretty impressive!

From there we moved on to Halebid and Belur, both of which are temple towns.  The temples are fairly similar with loads of impressive carvings.

Ben and the Nandi Bull at Halebid

The carvings that covered the outside of the Halebid temple

The columns inside the Halebid temple

One of 4 dancers, one of the things to see in the Belur temple

The elephants at Belur, apparently 644 elephants surround the bottom of  the temple, and they are all different!

After all those sights we headed to our hotel in Hassan for the night. Our efforts to be adventurous at the restaurant proved a little misjudged. I suspect that a Kashmiri nann is a little different if you actually go to Kashmir! 

Nann topped with jam and pineapple, not quite what I was expecting!

Since then we've been pretty busy really, hence the delay in the blog. The following week there was a public holiday for Makara Sankranti (harvest festival). In pretty typical Indian fashion, Ben's company decided on the Monday to change the holiday for the Wednesday to the Thursday so they were in line with all the schools etc. Forward planning does not come naturally! 

Fortunately we were able to keep our plans and Ben just worked on the Thursday instead. We had a good tour of a local winery with an excellent tasting and lunch included. We thought it had a vague nod to the harvest festival about it!

Then no rest for the wicked as I headed up to Delhi to meet Beth (my sister) on the Thursday. 

But more about that next time. 

xKathryn