North India Trip

This is a nice tour I'm doing in July around north India. I know, it's quite long but I'm very excited. I've been planning this trip for a long time and now finally it is getting closer. I just had a weekend booking train tickets, buses, best routes, etc.

This is the map:

To start I will take a plane from Chennai to Kolkata. In Kolkata I'll meet one of my best friends who is waiting for me there. We'll be one day in Kolkata, people say it's not that amazing place but you can see real India in a glance. Then we will head to the north east: Darjeeling. It's a small town with this magnificent view of the Himalayas, some time to relax and enjoy the cold weather and have some tea.

After Darjeeling we will go trough all Bihar State reaching Patna at 4am. Here we will have to wait for the first bus of the morning to then go to Gaya and Bodh Gaya. Two amazing religious places. The only reason to choose those places was Bodh Gaya is the most important of the main four pilgrimage sites related to the life of Gautama Buddha, the other three being Kushinagar,Lumbini, and Sarnath.

After Bodh Gaya the next stop will be Varanasi, a city situated on the banks of the River Ganges in the Uttar Pradesh state, regarded as holy by Hindus, Buddhists, and Jains. It is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world (1200-1000 BC) and probably the oldest of India. Here we'll have two more guesses for the trip.

After seeing how is life along River Ganges it's time to have some exotic cultural delight and go to Kajhurao. This town has the largest group of medieval Hindu and Jain temples, famous for their erotic sculpture, all about the Kamasutra.

Oh yeah, Oh yeah... Time to go to Agra to finally see the Taj Mahal.

After the Taj Mahal and some fortresses in Agra and around it. At this point one friend coming from London is joining us. It's time to go back to civilization, in this case the capital of the country: New Delhi. In the big city there are hundreds of things to do, hopefully there will be some friends over there to have fun on saturday night.

After spending a weekend in Delhi it is time to take a bus and go to Manali, a beautiful Himalayan town. It's a place full of extreme sports so the first thing to do in Manali is going to do paragliding. Manali is known for its shiny gompas or Buddhist monasteries. With the highest concentration of Tibetan refugees in the entire Kullu valle.

After Manali, We are heading to Dharamshala, the centre of the Tibetan exile world in India. Following the 1959 Tibetan uprising there was an influx of Tibetan refugees who followed the Dalai Lama.

Next place in the list is Amritsar, near to Pakistan border and known for it's magnificent golden temple.

After seeing this stunning temple and going to the Pakistan Border to see the India-Pakistan border ceremony, we are taking the train that goes directly from Amritsar to Jaipur with a 872 Km distance. We will be taking the train at 2:00pm and reaching next day to Jaipur in the morning. Also popularly known as the Pink City, is the capital and largest city of Rajasthan. This is when the semi-desert and desert lands of Rajasthan start.

We will be two days in Jaipur to go to the next cities Udaipur, also known as the City of Lakes and Jodhpur, also referred to as the Blue City due to the blue-painted houses around the Mehrangarh Fort.

I don't know if we can really do a Safari in Jaisalmer because the high temperatures, still we are going to this city and see if we can do a Safari at night time:

Finally we are going to the world famous shrine of Karni Mata in the town of Deshnoke 30 km south from Bikaner. Karni Mata is worshiped as an incarnation of Goddess Durga. This temple is famous for rats which can be seen everywhere inside.

And this is it... I will be reaching Delhi next day, travel to Chennai and then heading home after six months staying in India. I hope you liked the tour and if you are interested just let me know!.

Cheers,