“If you reject the food, ignore the customs, fear the religion and avoid the people, you might better stay at home.” – James Michener
Now things get fun, I can get the maps out, the guide books, scour the internet and get stuck in. Upon further research I discover India is a really big country, more so than I realised. Your modern map is actually rather distorted – the need to put a round surface (the earth) onto a flat one (your piece of paper) The outcome gives you this stretched perspective. This is what’s known as Mercator projection [1]. For an accurate and scaled view of the earth we use the lesser known and seen Gall-Peters projection [2].
There we go,
Noticed everything looks much more compact, but this is accurate and gives you an appreciation of how big Africa, Australia and South America is, and just how small Greenland, the US and us Brits are – we could fit our little island into the bottom fifth of India.
So with the map in front of me, and a rather (perhaps overly) comprehensive Lonely Planet guide. Where to go, where to go? Traveling differs from a summer holiday as traveling comes with this urge to move, moving through a country is certainly a fulfilling experience even at home. So with that in mind it would not be 3 weeks in Delhi.
So where would it be 3 weeks of? Waiting for my embrace, laid before me is Delhi’s Red Fort, The Taj Mahal, the mountainous region of the Darjeeling, the backwaters of Kerala, the desserts of Rajasthan, the Bollywood scene in Mumbai, The burning Ghats of Varanasi? This, I think you will agree, will take some careful consideration. I would need another lifetime to see all that India offers let alone less than a month. A month sounds like a long time, But it creates its own restrictions and Limitations. When your in a country 3.8 million Km2 (Compared to 130 000Km2 here in England) a journey between towns and cities, using my preferred methods of transport at least, can be one of days rather than hours. This means you can only get so far away from where you start. The journey, ideally has to follow a progression from my port of arrival, to as many places as I hope to see in the most efficient manner without criss-crossing the country, eventually bringing me back to where I started. Nice and easy then….
Now at this point it’s easy to wonder off to my local STA Travel, Hand over my money and get them to book me on a tour and be done with it. Let the planning be someone else’s problem! The planning is the daunting bit surely? They’ll make sure I see all the best stuff right? Book my hotel, book my transport, tell me where to eat, tell me who to talk to – or who not to talk to. Quickly the idea becomes less appealing. I don’t knock the companies nor the people that use them. But STA, I shan’t be needing your services on this occasion.
That means every last detail will be up to me, Whilst daunting it’s also really liberating – Besides, The internet is a wonderful and amazing resource which makes the role of places like STA argubaly redundant. A website called Indiamike.com had been an absolute gem of a find and major resource which has helped me no end in finalising and fine tuning my plans, if you need help these guys are the experts. I also use TripAdvisor, Matador (For inspiration) and of course plain old Google mixed with a bit of curiosity.
The plan is to travel like your average middle class Indian citizen, using India’s public transport to get around the north of the country. This includes (As far as I can work out) Tuk Tuk’s, Buses, Private cars, airplanes, motorbikes, trains and, if I’m lucky – Camel. But this is all hearsay, no doubt India with throw me some curve balls. After much Deliberation I have come to the following decision*
- Delhi (The nations busy capital)
- Jaisalmer (Located to the far west, quite close to Pakistan actually – But we’ll ignore that for now)
- Jodhpur (The Blue City, Temples, forts and palaces)
- Udaipur (Mentioned in Rudyard Kipling’s Jungle Book And the setting for 007′s Octopussy)
- Varanasi (The spiritual heart of India, and one of the oldest cities in the world)
- Agra (Home of the Taj Mahal….and not much else apparently)
- Delhi (This is the bit where I fly back)
*Itinerary subject to change, this is after all – India
My original plan was to go east, towards Varanasi, Darjeeling and perhaps Nepal. I abandoned this for a couple of reasons. Mainly I think I was going all that way because I’m a Wes Anderson fan and not much else.
I’m really pleased with what I’ve come up with, I’ll mainly be in the state of Rajasthan, The name comes from the Rajput warrior clan present in Rajasthan who, for more than 1000 years have controlled this corner of India.
I can’t really say much else about it at the moment, from talking to people and hearing their stories I have to keep my plans loose, go with the flow and be prepared to turn left when I thought I was going right. A thing to bear in mind where ever you go, Is that a foreign country is not there to make you feel comfortable, it exists to make it own people comfortable. If you can embrace that, even a little bit -You’ll be fine.
