Tuesday, January 16, 2007

Restarting The Engines

For the moment I can’t do much more than wipe the dust off this blog, after 4 weeks away I’ve got some catching up to do. It’s been an intense journey in India, and at times a little overwhelming as we tried to navigate our way through narrow streets filled with cows, goats, dogs, people, bicycles, bicycle rickshaws, motorised rickshaws, cars and more cows. Highlights of the trip included the desert city of Jaisalmer in Rajahstan, a wonderfully relaxing few days in Goa at New Year, the small town of Hampi - once a large city and capital of a Hindu kingdom, and the pilgrims bathing in the Ganges at Vanarasi (Benares). If I ever manage to wade my way through hundreds of digital photos I may post a small selection here. In the meantime I have some reading to do, and I will probably be writing something about ETA in the next day or two.

4 comments:

Tom said...

Good to see you back. Glad you enjoyed India. The wife and I are planning to spend next Christmas out there.

Graeme said...

Hi Tom, do go to India - my only advice would be to look for a good mixture of places, the cities can be quite stressful and I am not sure we got the balance quite right. Also, I may be wrong but I suspect you are not the sort of person who is impressed by whether the 89th Maharajah of Jaipur is a "jolly good polo player", or whether his grandfather managed to have tea in London with Lord and Lady Wotsit. If I'm right about that then don't base your trip just around Rajahstan, it depends on the time you go for but I found the relaxation period by the beach much more necessary than some other journies I have done.

Anonymous said...

Thanks, man. I have actually been for Christmas before. I've got a lot of family out there (through my step-mum). We'll probably end up spending more time in Hyderabad ('India's cleanest city') but I'd like the missus to see Udaipur which I remember was very pretty.

Graeme said...

Well in that case I shouldn't need to tell you what to see, although I found Jaisalmer more enchanting than Udaipur - maybe it was just because the Udaipur temples played music at 5 o'clock in the morning. What you say about Hyderabad is interesting, maybe thats why the guy we met from there in Jaipur told us not to go to Benares - "it is a very dirty city", he said.