Tour of India, part 1

Ms S was here for almost two weeks, and just left for home two days ago. I met her in New Delhi and we traveled through Agra, Jaipur, Udaipur, Mumbai, and Cochin before settling in Chennai. for a few days. I'll try to give you a decent summary without too much boring detail. Including links to photo albums by city, which may be boring.

We met in Delhi the Saturday evening, 13 Nov. She arrived first, met the driver from our hotel, and waited until I arrived. It was a late arrival so we had some tea and caught up, then called it a day. We got up on Sunday, had breakfast at the hotel, and were off to visit sights: Qutb Minar, Lotus Temple, lunch at a nice garden restaurant, Humayun's Tomb, and a drive around the buildings of the capitol. We made a stop at the India Gate, which had a busy park surrounding it. This was when we set a trend of being stopped by children who wanted us to take their photos and to practice their English on us. It was very sweet and came to be a daily occurrence for us on this trip.

Our hotel in Delhi was Shanti Home, a boutique hotel with nice Indian decor. We found this, and all our hotels, on tripadvisor.com and were not disappointed. Each was small, with very personal attention and good, local food.

Photos from Delhi: http://picasaweb.google.com/jennifer.raybourn/1DelhiShantiHome#

We woke up the next day fully intending to visit the Taj Mahal. We had hired a driver with a company I am familiar with to take us there and then on to Jaipur. After two hours in the car, stuck  in traffic jams, creeping down really rough roads, Ms S succumbed. After pulling off the road a few times we realized we had to stop for the day. Luckily, there was a familiar hotel just down the road which we checked in to. It is a nice business hotel and had a pretty room. So while Ms S slept off her misery I watched TV and read. By dinner time she was feeling better so we made plans to continue our trip the next day,

Tuesday morning we were up and out by 6:30 AM. This was the right time to beat traffic, which soon gave way to a fairly desolate 2-4 lane road. We ended up in Agra about 4 hours later and headed straight to the Taj Mahal. We were surprised by the grittiness of Agra, the heart of the India tourism trade. Then we had to fight off touts and "guides" in the parking lot. But once we entered the gates the beauty of the Taj Mahal left it all behind.

Our visit lasted perhaps 2 hours. We wanted a little lunch before we got back on the road to Jaipur, so I asked the driver to take us to the Oberoi hotel, whose signs I had seen on the road. Wow. The hotel is gorgeous and has an awesome view of the Taj Mahal. We joked that we could have just gone straight to the hotel and skipped the rest.

Photos from Ms S's sick day and Agra:  http://picasaweb.google.com/jennifer.raybourn/2Agra#

After that we were off to Jaipur. To be continued.