Tag: delhi

Delhi; Agra; Jaipur

I meant “a” museum in my last post. After an exciting adventure finding the International Tourist Bureau at New Delhi train station, I got very lucky and snagged a 3AC ticket to Agra on the 5:30 a.m. Punjab Mail train. After the requisite rip-off taxi at 4:30 a.m., I hope to be rid of travel-planning-scammers for the rest of the trip.

Later that day, I did pretty well on the transport front–prepaid tuktuk (trishaw, autorickshaw, whatever…) to Humayun’s tomb, tourist-police-assisted metered auto from there to the Gandhi memorial (which I can’t spell from memory, but the one where he was shot and not the one where he was cremated), and not-too-bad auto from there to Connaught Place where I caught the Metro back.

I ran into a London-based Danish financial analyst in my section of the train: we talked for a while about economic doom and decided to split a car and driver when we got to Agra. I also got to get rid of my Oyster card, which had about L 5 left on it after I fled the terrifying queues at the Heathrow Tube ticket windows.

After dropping bags at my guesthouse, we set off for Fatehpur Sikri. The “city” itself was not quite as impressive to me as I’d been led to believe, but the mosque next to it was delightful. The touts there were not: they were easily on par with the best (?) of Delhi’s, except without any shoe-soiling.

The Agra fort was very nice, especially in contrast to the Red Fort in Delhi (which just doesn’t have that much of it left).

The Taj Mahal, despite our heat and exhaustion by the time we reached it, was… the Taj Mahal. There’s a picture to prove that I was there, but this computer doesn’t have any exposed USB ports, so it may have to wait.

I had a fan room at the guest house — terrible mistake. Sweltering. A clever way to increase sales of car travel? Probably. It worked on me — I have an (AIRCON) car and driver for the next 13 days or so.

Set off for Jaipur this morning, arriving around 1:30. Ended up paying for a huge room to get aircon tonight (smaller aircon room tomorrow will average out the price to more what I was looking for, in the Rs. 750 neighborhood). After late lunch, I went out to Nahargarh Fort (which is much more impressive as a lookout than as a fort–it’s been let go). Because almost all of the attractions close by 5 or so, I came back to the hotel afterward. I hope to hit the city hard tomorrow morning.

After Jaipur, it’s looking like Bundi, Udaipur, Jodhpur, Jaisalmer,
Jaipur (again, maybe, to break the trip), Pushkar, and back to Delhi
with a few forts on the way.

London; Delhi

Internet access has been less prolific and less air conditioned than I’d hoped, so far, so this will be in blurb form. I’ll do my best to update my location in identi.ca as frequently as possible, though.

My hotel in London was ideally located for the O2 arena and not much else–about 10 minutes’ walk from the nearest tube stop. Somehow, it never rained while I was on that walk. Other than a couple cloudbursts, I managed to time the rain well.

I enjoyed the normal museums but also got to see my first West End show courtesy of the Ms: Arcadia. Enjoyable–I’m told not as funny as some productions, but I didn’t mind seeing it played straight (and playing into my mental biases about England).

I was saved from a middle seat and about a half hour of checkin line at LHR on my way to Dubai, ending up in Exit Class thanks to dumb luck. Emirates’s In-Flight Entertainment is, like Cathay’s, sensational. I probably don’t need to bother mentioning how backward United’s was on a 767.

Caught Frost/Nixon on the flight to Dubai, finally.

Dubai airport is awfully lively at 4 a.m.

Delhi is 9:30 ahead of EDT. No SIM card yet — if I’m going to be ripped off I might as well wait for Rajasthan (I’ll be there longer, and by waiting I’ll avoid roaming charges).

So far in Delhi, I’ve been coping about as well as I expected with touts (not flipping out… yet), about as well as I expected with the heat (dripping, all day), and much worse than I expected with travel agents. I’ve been a bad bargainer and walked out pretty frequently. I really need a hotel-based agent (so I know the transport will show up) I can trust (not trying to shoehorn me into an all-inclusive minivan tour by inflating prices for everything else).

After working on my jetlag, today I’ve managed to see the Red Fort and Jama Masjid (both near my hotel). Tomorrow I’ll probably try for some museums before an overpriced departure for Agra on Monday morning.

Hopefully I can get a lot of sight-seeing done early tomorrow — with no noon day gun to reprimand me, I was suffering the heat with all the mad dogs and Englishmen in Delhi.