January 2009
13 posts
Delhi to Siliguri Summary
Delhi
Arrived early in morning after a train ride with a nice Sikh family that featured a schoolteacher mom and a dad who looked like Ali G. He wore a skull and crossbones doorag, camo pants, and a SWAT TEAM shirt. He was also a partner in a company that represents Marshalls in purchasing bathroom accessories, and does $3M in business with the US. They gave us some snacks, including Gajak,...
Rajasthan Summary
Keeping a daily journal of our trip got a bit cumbersome and boring, so here’s an overview of the trip post-hoc. This posting summarizes Rajasthan. I’ll do the rest of the trip later, and then post in greater detail regarding the most interesting topics in the coming days.
Jaipur
Albert Museum is neat. You get a sense for how old India is when you stand in front of an unprotected...
Youtube is (one part of) the next Google
This article in the NYT, inspired in part by This blog post by Alex Iskold made me think about the future of search.
Both pieces speak for a growing group of children that increasingly depend on video, not text, for their information consumption. Neither piece cites studies for this, but there is no doubt that video will play an important role in the future of learning/entertainment.
Now that...
In Jodhpur: a marketplace, a mindgame, and some...
When we got to Jodhpur, we had two hours before it got dark. The RTDC (Rajasthan Tourism Development Corporation) itinerary suggested spending a bit of time at the Sojati gate and Clocktower, near an open-air marketplace. Saje (our driver) doesn’t know Jodhpur well, and met a guide at a restaurant, but we declined the extra fee since we didn’t know if the guy was good or had...
Jaipur to Jodhpur by way of Ajmer Jain Temple
(Note: we spent a day in Jaipur as well, but I’ll document that in a big summary of the entire trip)
We’re now driving from Jaipur to Jodhpur on NH-8, a one-lane (in each direction) highway with no divider. This means that every minute or so, Saje passes a bunch of slower trucks, and the rest of the time, he is riding both lanes to see oncoming traffic so that he can judge his next...
Rajasthani Forts
I wanted to condense everything about forts/rulers in Rajasthan that I can remember into one entry because it would get repetitive after the third city.
Rajasthan is to the west of Delhi - the farther west you go, the more desert-like it gets, but we didn’t go as far west as Jaisalmer, which is in the desert. The state of Rajasthan was originally ruled in sections by various Rajas...
An Afternoon in Jaipur
Upon arriving in Jaipur, we saw many elephants with everything painted (and I do mean everything, and I didn’t know those things were so large:)), camels, and a few monkeys. Traffic in the city was crazier but still managed to flow nicely. We caught a glimpse of Amber (pronounced Amer) fort from the road, and then Saje took us to a restaurant for lunch.
Lunch protocol is interesting. ...
Driving to Delhi from Jodhpur
We slept in Delhi on the first night, and it was a bit chillier than we expected (we had to use the blankets we got from Air India, which are very pretty) instead of the thinner sheets we got from the hotel. It was still warm overall, and we
discovered that this is as cold as it gets in Delhi—-something equivalent to a cooler spring day in Boston. The fog is apparently not smog. For...
We're Back!
Though a little jetlagged, we’re all back. Sorry for the lack of liveness to the blog updates—-it wound up being quite difficult to access the internet at the hotels we were staying at, and A.J. and I once even tried to find a cybercafe at night to no avail (after wandering Udaipur in the dark for an hour).
I have some diary-style content queued up, but decided that keeping a...
Our First Night Venture
We decided to venture out into Connaught Place for dinner upon arrival. It was dark by then,
so we broke our first rule, which is going out at night. In retrospect, the experience was not
as scary as it was culture shock. We learned many things quickly:
Stray dogs are the stray cats of India. On our trip so far, Meredith has seen 1 cat,
but we’ve all seen hundreds of dogs. They walk...
A night in Delhi
As the plane landed, it was still light out. Along the runway, we saw many one-story buildings and
trucks with people standing on top watching the plane land. I say this because most airports in
the US will not allow people so close for fear of someone shooting a plane down.
Upon landing, we exchanged money and got a taxi from the taxi stand. When possible,
you do not get a taxi on the street...
Happily in Udaipur
Sorry for lack of update. It’s surprisingly hard to get an internet connection in our hotels, and getting a cybercafe is harder than you think if you’re traveling all day. A.J. and I made two attempts at night (one took over an hour) and turned back without luck.
Either way - we’re happy and taking it easy in Udaipur before taking a train back to Delhi tonight.
I’ve...
Plane Ride
Our flight here was on Air India, which seems to make people who have flown it
before wince. They either claim that the bathrooms are dirty, the service is
not good, or that the only saving grace is the food.
At least on our flight, every bad thing I’ve heard was incorrect. The flight was as
comfortable as a 14-hour flight could be, the service was awesome, fast, and frequent,
and they...