Rajasthan Adventure Part 1 from Squeezy on Vimeo.
The first 7 days of my trip to Rajasthan in January 2009. We did the GAP Adventures tour: Rajasthan Adventure.
This video covers: Old Delhi, Jodhpur, Ranakpur and Udaipur.
Today I said goodbye to our new friends and hopped in a cab. During the 45 minute long trip I realized that I didn't feel sad to be leaving India. We saw some brilliant stuff, were visited by the evil bug Delhi Belly more times than was reasonable and made new friends. I just haven't been moved or touched by this country in a good way.
The photos will be stunning - even with my hideous über zit... I tried to avoid being in photos with good reason. My video should be an improvement on previous efforts. But I feel as though India didn't really like us.
So when will we return to India? Not anytime soon. We've been twice now to very different areas and I can't in all honesty say that I loved it. There are too many other cool and exciting places to go.
The flight. Oh Cathay Pacific may you rise up and conquer all inferior airlines so that they too may offer the wonderous economy service that you do. The plane we had was a new one with new seats that were very comfortable. Very, very, very comfy. The food was ok, neuter offensive nor sublime; except the cheesecake that wasn't. Poor Mike the not cheese cake was covered in passionfruit - not his thing really.
So now it's after midnight, local time, in Hong Kong and I'm watching a landscape of shiny twinkling buildings go by from the bus. It brilliant to be somewhere new and exciting again.
Delhi or Mumbai. Everything that I didn't like about Mumbai one year ago- I find that I don't like the same things in Delhi. Over crowded everything, dirty, polluted, over zealously persistent touts, sad street little urchins and beggars.
I'm looking forward to the overnight train ride tonight.
Fortunately I've already been through the massive culture shock so I'm quite blasé and accepting. I'm enjoying myself much more this time.
Today we went to Gurudwara Sisganj ( a Sikh temple) then Jama Masjid (a murgal Muslim Mosque ). Both were interesting and beautiful in their own ways.
Sadly our tour guide then wanted us to go to the same place for lunch that we'd been to dinner last night.
tbc... the story explaining the title will be added shortly
We were lucky to land this morning, a thick fog was covering Delhi airport. The pilot said the visibility was only 75 meters and that the taxiing into the terminal would be slow. He wasn't joking, it felt like we spent an hour or so creeping on the runway but was really only 30 minutes. I say we are lucky for 2 reasons. 1 when we alighted from the plane and the cabin door was open, we both looked out through the pilots windscreen and couldn't see much. So thanks to the pilot for a bumpy but safe landing. 2. The local news this morning is reporting that many planes were diverted or delayed. We must have just snuck in! The telling thing about the fog at 2am this morning was that even our taxi driver slowed down and drove with his hazards on. From this I take the fog was really bad.
We met a few people from our tour group over breakfast, which was nice. We get to meet everyone else tonight. Fingers crossed it's a good group.
