From Khajuraho to Agra was the first daytime trip by train. Thankfully, I suppose, it was very uneventful and arrived in Agra pretty much to time. My first impressions of Agra were not good. I arrived at dusk and all I could see were clouds of dust and pollution and smoke. My throat was already burning by the time the tuk-tuk driver dropped me off at my hotel, the Coral Court Homestay. One positive thing was the fact that he was…
From looking at the map, the short hop from Orchha to Khajuraho should be very straightforward but it isn’t. There are few trains and no direct buses. The guy at the hotel said the best bet was the 7.30am train. Not totally surprising but I got to the train station in plenty of time to find it deserted. Even at 7.30 there were only a few hopeful travellers looking wistfully up the railway line. At 8.30, I managed to buy…
It was fairly straightforward to get 2 buses back to Indore and I arrived in plenty of time to get another overnight train. And shock, horror, this one left on time and I got a good night’s sleep! In fact the only delay was right at the end of the trip but I arrived safe and sound in Jhansi at 11.30am. Jhansi was a bit strange, mainly because it was election time and so all the shops were closed and…
Most of the time I like to take local transport as it’s usually fairly reliable and you get a much better experience of the land and the people. Also, the bus and train stations are a great opportunity to people watch. However, I had been told that the only way to get to Maheshwar from Mandu was to get a series of slow buses so I decided to splash out a bit (800Rs) and get a taxi for the fairly…
So I emerged from the tortuous 14 hour overnight bus trip in Indore. Although the bus disgorged its passengers in an unremarkable side street, a helpful autorickshaw driver was immediately on hand to take me to the Gangwal bus station where I could get a bus to Dhar and from there another bus to Mandu. I arrived at Gangwal just in time to be ushered onto the Dhar bus which was due to depart almost immediately. However, I did manage…
After Varanasi I headed south into Madhya Pradesh. On the map about 400kms away, metaphorically a million miles. I left at 10.30 on the overnight train from bustling, noisy Varanasi train station and arrived deep in the Indian countryside at Umaria station at 8.30 the following morning. I was met by a bunch of auto-rickshaw drivers and one took me to the nearby bus station. I say bus station but it was just a dusty open space with a few…
Varanasi is said to be one of the oldest cities in the world, one of the most sacred to Hindus and one of the most colourful and fascinating cities on Earth. That’s some intro. But it is also one of the noisiest places on Earth. Once out of the train station I was assailed by an army of autorickshaw drivers and soon one of them was weaving me and the rickshaw in and out of some of the most crazy…
Lucknow was the first stop on my latest month long sojourn to India (Feb 17). For this trip I was to concentrate on the heart of India and just two states: its most populous, Uttar Pradesh, and its second largest, Madhya Pradesh. I’d chosen Lucknow to start because it was a bit off the tourist trail so I wouldn’t get any hassle but it had plenty to keep me interested and it would be a fairly gentle introduction to India…
As I had a few days spare on my Indian holiday, I decided to book an overnight trip to the Sundarbans. It was possibly the best decision I made all holiday. I did a bit of research and decided to go on a tour with tourdesundarbans.com and they were fantastic. December and January are their peak months when their tours get packed but at the end of February it was only me, Yogish, an Indian guy from Mumbai and two Canadians Jake…
After a few days at the seaside it was time for another flight and a complete change of pace. Like Chennai, Hyderabad and Vizag, Bhubaneswar had a modern airport with cheap flights everywhere, so I booked on another Indigo flight, this time to Kolkata. 1500Rs for an hour flight was pretty good I thought. I wasn’t sure about Kolkata. I had visions of poverty, pollution, traffic congestion and all that goes with a huge Indian city of 14 million people….