Where in the World: India Slideshow

what do i want to say about india oh india defies explanation it's so diverse it's so rich it's it is a uh sensory overload of experiences uh so let's uh let's dive right in here here's of course a map of india that gives you a sense of uh you know the subcontinent there i think this is an image that would be familiar to everybody this however is northern india it's kind of hard to see things but you see new delhi up in the north rajasthan is to the west the left side of the screen and we see all the way out to the right rather small but at about if this were a clock face a little bit past three o'clock there is varanasi um this basically encompasses the imprint tours india tour we begin in delhi we finish in varanasi and we include rajasthan and a couple of other stops so india is full of wonders full of cool experiences and i've decided that the best way to give you all a sense of exactly uh what india is like i'm i'm going to just show you about 50 images in succession not particularly stopping to discuss any of them there'll be some interesting things that you'll be curious about but of course i'll circle back to those when i get to that portion of the tour to talk about the specifics this is just my idea of getting giving you a feeling a visceral sense of how india comes at you in all your senses right so this this image right here is a picture of me talking to a couple of fellows there i put this picture in because i wanted to see what i looked like 30 years ago and i still had brown hair and 30 pounds less weight meringar fort in jodhpur this is jaisalmer fort out in the tar desert this is amber fort outside of jaipur so there's there's all kinds of forts tombs the uh the holy city of varanasi with the bathing gods temples hindu temples jain temples buddhist temples sikh temples mosques right uh astrological observatories palaces these are this is a hoveley palace out in the desert and then the details right this you know this is a country that you need to have your eyes open at all times because the details are amazing colorful everywhere you turn fabulous details fun things riding on the backs of elephants you know touristy things of course and a photographer's playground absolutely spectacular and then there's the colors of india everywhere you look there is a richness of colors colors and textures laundry and then there's the street life of india i mean yes you're gonna stumble across somebody uh a snake charmer on the sidewalk looking for uh some coins and every endeavor that can be done you'll find on the sidewalks i love this shot to the old and the new a bicycle rickshaw there and a guy on his cell phone of course the scenes like that are less and less unusual this guy's ironing you know that's his job ironing on the sidewalk this is a sidewalk hair cutter and you see behind him there's a tailor i've seen dentists operating on the sidewalk not that i would let one of them touch my teeth but you never know beds on the sidewalk the ubiquitous pan you know the betel nut chew that so many indian men indulge in a little pan vendor here he's got his set up on the sidewalk people selling food political announcements out on the street you might stumble upon upon a wedding in your travels in india this is a rajasthani wedding party again the colors kids on their way to school somebody wants you to ride their elephant the ubiquitous tuk-tuks right the little three-wheeled motorized transport that you see absolutely everywhere in asia uh sort of an indian staple and you can see that each individual person tries to style his in a unique way when you're out on the road there's as much creativity and color as there is anywhere else in india this is just on the back of our tour bus this is one of the long distance trucks all decorated and nice but you'll also see as i said about the sidewalks in the cities you'll also see every endeavor known to man out on the highways in the streets this is a big pile of dried dung that's used for fuel being carted down the street manpower ox power this is not a great photograph but look at that folks there's three people who have hitched a ride just on the fenders of a big long distance truck um this guy's probably going 50 miles an hour down the highway i mean you are going to see everything under the sun when you go to india and then there are the indian people themselves the faces this is a sadhu right a holy man who you know wants money to have his picture taken but look at these faces and by the way as i flash through all these faces these pictures that i've taken over the years do any of these people look like they were offended to have their picture taken indian people are friendly and engaging right okay i want to shift gears a little bit because i also think it's very very important to in my introduction to the country to not just focus on the amazing rich diversity of experiences and the upside of india i want you to know there's a downside as well india is really for for real veteran travelers right in every other country that i go to i encourage people who want to travel independently and i'll help them if i can but india is a country that i really think even for the most experienced travelers going on a tour is a good way to go whether it's with imprint tours with sarah with me with or with some other con outfit india needs some insulation between you and the culture because there is a downside to india you're gonna see scenes like this everywhere you go just garbage piled upon the streets sacred cows right bigger children uh just you know here's a you see there's a pig back there in the background yes you're probably going to have to use a squat toilet at some point on your travels in india by the way if these things put you off then i really want you to to consider carefully whether uh whether india is a good destination for you um beggars now there's beggars in almost every country but in india when you've got a billion point two people there's a huge huge swath of the population that is abjectly poor and so you you see far more of this it's rather relentless everywhere you go there's somebody who's asking for a handout here's a couple little bigger kids um you're gonna see stray animals that are just living on the street or dying on the street uh power brownouts you know are a part of life over there in india and this last shot before we actually uh jump into the tour itinerary itself um i think is a really important one if anybody tuned in on monday when we had chatan on the coffee chat he talked about the fact that indian people will stare at you but what i think didn't get said is how relentless the staring is this is a picture of the my wife at the time and i sat down at an outdoor restaurant to have lunch and within seconds we had this crowd of people and the the problem is is that indian people because they've grown up in a culture where there's not much in the way of privacy and personal space they don't feel like it's rude to stare you can be standing on a bus shoulder to shoulder with someone and you turn and you their nose is six inches from yours and they don't turn away um you've got to put yourself in your in those shoes um to understand how unnerving that is we grow up we're small children we're staring at somebody and our mothers say honey honey don't stare don't stare that's that's the way we're raised but in india that's not the case the staring the begging the pandering the touts on the sidewalk trying to get you to come into their shop eating their restaurants it's pretty relentless so you've got to be ready to compartmentalize that that's such a key thing about india you got to be ready to compartmentalize uh and in that way set aside the negative and focus on the positive okay enough said for introduction i know that was long thanks for your patience everybody um we start the tour in delhi uh you know northern india it's the capital it's got the big international airport and it's a giant megalopolis right it says north of 20 million people pollution is a problem there in terms of what we do the sites and whatnot this is india gate this is uh left over from the british presence in india on the first afternoon we get started fairly early usually on an imprint tour we're starting at about five or six in the evening but in india there's so much to see and do we want to get a jump on the sightseeing so we're starting in the early afternoon going out little photo stop at india gate and then this is the red fort um very importantly i've chosen to leave the red fort out of the imprint itinerary and the reason is is that a vast majority of tourists who come to india visit just three cities sorry cities um delhi agra for the taj mahal and jaipur they call it the golden triangle in india and therefore the uh hassle factor as i've talked about before already is very very high in those three places the pla you know delhi is the place where tourists arrive it's their first experience and so the hassle factor around the red fort is extraordinarily high as the number one tourist site in the city very very high hassle factor and because we visit what are in my opinion much better fort experiences later on in the tour we skipped the red fort but of course we encourage independence people usually arrive a day before the tour starts in delhi to get acclimated time wise time zone wise and uh visiting the red fort by by hiring a a tuk tuk and going to see it by yourself is easily possible but it's it's an impressive uh building the other very very impressive building nearby is the jama mashid right the friday mosque also something that i've opted to leave out of the tour itinerary something that you might want to do ahead of time if you come on one of our tours similar reasons but also because women are very badly treated in this mosque and i would hate to start off on the first day of a tour having people have a bad experience of islam so the first time i went to india with the group i took them to the jama mashid it was a very very negative experience when i blogged about it i called it a holy unholy experience so um i wanted to show those images because they are the sort of top two sites in delhi but what i choose is to see sort of the second tier of sites as a group this is the kitab manar catavinar is a big well it's the tallest stone minaret um in the world um it's uh uh was built about 800 years ago around 1200 a.d um and it's part of the uh the kumat al-islam mosque complex which was delhi's first mosques and one of the uh one of the first mosques in all of india it's spectacular it's kind of off the beaten track a little bit don't get me wrong there's plenty of tourists that come and visit the catawba but again this this spectacular tall building it's 240 feet high and almost 50 feet in diameter that gives you a sense of scale but the details are impressive as well here's the the remains of the mosque there that are on site after this we go and have dinner on our first night with a indian family where we can ask questions and learn what life is like in an indian middle class home the following morning we're going to be heading off to rajasthan on a late morning flight but we start the morning at humayun's tomb humayun was the grandfather of shah jahan shah jahan of taj mahal fame so this was his grandfather and you can see in building his own tomb that already the mughal architectural style is beginning to develop that will culminate in that gorgeous building of the taj mahal so this is humayun's tomb i love visiting first thing in the morning because you'll notice there's no people in these pictures even today as tourism has exploded in india in the last 20 years since probably some of these photos were taken by going first thing in the morning you really avoid the crowds and that is a key element of the way we set up our tours in india and that is to mitigate the issue of crowds that hassle factor that i've talked about but you can see this is a beautiful tomb complex uh great first big bang site to kick off the tour um we did we do leave delhi at that point but i want to show you a couple more images because there's still plenty of things to see in delhi and lots to see before the tour starts if you want to go early this is ashkar dam temple and it's only about 40 years old this is a very modern temple but they're still making it's one of the things i love about india it's not just this historic past that makes them a fascinating culture i mean they've got their their contemporary culture is also uh very interesting this is the beer birla mandir a hindu temple i love it it's like sort of a confectionary uh and then the baha'i lotus temple these are three other temples that you might visit on your own uh before the tour starts okay uh back to a map here just to show you our route from delhi we fly to udaipur that would be a awfully long train or bus ride so we choose to fly this long section and then work our way back up north and east but at some point or at some point or another on the tour we usually jump on a train and this is the sort of uh comfort level that you can expect on a train and by the way a train is one of those places if you're in a second class or first class car where it's kind of a safe zone for engaging uh middle class indians right when you're on the street you're being approached by poor lower class indians that see you as a dollar sign that see you as somebody to sell something to or or make some sort of profit from but when you're on a second or first class train car you can be pretty sure that all the indians on on board with you don't want something for from you and that's the perfect time to engage them strike up a conversation here's a family that i got to know on about a five hour train ride up to amritsar uh many years ago and it was delightful they invited me to come home for lunch i felt very safe doing so this is a place and and and like i said this is on a tour uh sarah or chatan or i are always going to be able to tell you when you're in a place where it's absolutely great to reach out and try to rub elbows with the locals and when you want to sort of keep that protective insulation for yourself okay i love udaipur i think that the sites in udaipur are just beautiful this is udaipur city palace there are many many many palaces in india and just like with the red fort and the jama mashid in delhi we won't take you to every single palace and every stop on the tour but this is in my opinion the best palace experience to be had in india of course we have a guided tour this is what it looks like from lake pichola this is one of the inner courtyards some of the artwork here it's it's just a really fascinating palace experience chittan our intrepid guide our intrepid tour manager will give you a guided tour for those of you who've been tuning in to chittan this week and in previous episodes um you know that he's incredibly knowledgeable and you can just imagine what kind of a great tour you'd have with chatem then we do a classic tourist thing we take a sunset cruise on lake pachola they've got these little tourist boats we usually have a group big enough that we have our own little private boat and as dusk falls and the light begins to light up the udaipur water line you can see what a charming enchanting place this is just beautiful architecture several gots coming down to the water here's a shot with the city palace in the background and the lake is dominated by two floating palaces that's just a descriptive phrasing for uh palaces that have been built on little islands out in the lake this one has been uh converted into a high-end luxury hotel back in 1990 93 my first trip to india we actually spent a couple hundred bucks and indulged in staying one night out on this fabulous floating hotel i think oh by the way udaipur is prominently featured in the james bond movie octopussy and i think that this or i i know that this floating palace was the uh the uh private uh property of uh the the bond girl who features prominently in that movie there's a little swimming pool there and of course as as part of the the lake cruise you actually get to get off and wander around on the second little floating palace island here you can see looking back toward the city photo ops everywhere and then one last uh sort of james bond site i guess you'd say this is the monsoon palace this is where louis jordan who was uh the the bad guy in that movie uh this was his his domain uh and this is an abandoned palace up on the hill you can take it took took up to see it um i got my slides in reverse order here this is the view back down to the city from the monsoon palace okay ready to move on from udaipur we go overland by coach up to jodhpur halfway between uh udaipur and jodhpur is uh i think maybe the most spectacular jain temple in rajasthan this is ranakpur just this beautiful temple uh jane temple jane jainism is an offshoot of hinduism so very very similar but beautiful carved marble temple we stop visit the temple have lunch here and then continue on to jodhpur as beautiful as this pal sorry this temple is from the outside it's even more impressive with the carved marble interior look at the details there this is the domed roof that you saw from the exterior beautifully intricately carved i don't even know how a carver can carve marble down to this sort of fine detail without it you know shattering at every point my first time there back in 1993 we were befriended by a priest he took us down into his his private little sanctuary where he did his prayers and he sort of gave us a guided tour of the of the temple we were there in the evening when they had uh a temple ceremony with bells and drums it was a a very transcendent experience and my for those of you who have traveled with me in the past you know my my definition of transcendent is fairly fairly loose i don't mean anything too terribly spiritual by that but just any time i have an experience in my travels where i feel like whatever is eternal in me is touched i define that as a transcendent experience and by that definition the interior of ronic port in the evening with music and incense and candles uh certainly fits the bill little rajasthani girl again you know does anybody look like they don't want to engage you or don't want their picture taken not at all but jodhpur is our goal on that day and the signature site in jodhpur is mighty marin garfurt still owned by the family that built it uh 300 years ago let me check my notes to make sure about that 500 years ago this this great fort was was started and of course every fort in india actually includes a palace as well right i mean these were you know the rich rulers of the region who uh um who who built this so of course it's not just a fort it's got a palace inside this one's really good um you uh we get you an audio guide for your tour of mirengar4 and the reason is is that the the voice of the audio guide is the current maharaja of jodhpur the owner of this palace fortress can't improve on that so we go ahead and get everybody the audio guides for the interior tour jodhpur is known as the blue city and here's a photograph that shows you exactly why this is the view from up on the ramparts of the fortress looking down into the old city of jodhpur as a matter of fact many of you will already know but for those of you don't um chittan on saturday evening um is going to be with our where in the world week is going to be doing a virtual tour jodhpur chatan's home is jodhpur he's going to start up on the hill with the fort and then walk down and and give you sort of a virtual walking tour of the blue city there signature clock tower and the next few images are all of uh just from from photographing and wanderings in that old city of jodhpur friendly family wants to show off their kids quite sure that i was invited into a home while i was wandering around with my camera here street vendors by the way i think that this guy's job is making popsicle sticks of course i'm trying to be funny here but i don't really know what the sticks are for but he's making them by hand and that's what he does for a living all day long is take bamboo and cut it up into little sticks that get used for something the one thing that has not changed in india is is that everything is inexpensive because the labor force is inexpensive it's an almost inexhaustible labor force because with a billion 200 million citizens there's always going to be somebody who's willing to do any job no matter how how how menial it might be um this is the uh umed bahuan palace that's been converted into a luxury hotel and now on from jodhpur to pushkar now pushcar is the home of a very very famous festival the push car camel the history here is that push cars on the eastern edge of the great tar desert and over the centuries the nomads would gather once a year to buy and sell trade cattle and uh and camels right a very very important part of the nomadic uh economy is owning good camels so they would come together and of course over time it evolved into a big party like gatherings like that would always uh inevitably inevitably end up so today when you arrive they still have this original function you see camps all over the hills around pushkar with camels all um tied up around the camps but then it has evolved right and you've got a western style midway with carnival rides and by the way i've i've included this picture not only because of the colors but because the crowds right i mean a push car fare is going to be even more crowded than than the rest of india but crowds are you know i don't want to i don't want to beat this to to a pulp but uh but crowds are something you're gonna have to deal with right and and and not the same western sense of personal space and politeness you get jostled you get your feet stepped on you get bumped nobody says sorry or excuse me because that's all they would be doing all day long in their culture is if if they had to be polite and say excuse me they'd never get anywhere right so it is a tough transition for westerners um there's a a stadium there and um we always time the tours so that we're there for a very important day of the push car fair i believe my fall november 5th departure coming up this fall that i'll be running uh will be there for the closing no sorry for the opening day ceremonies of the fair and then sarah's tour that's scheduled for uh october of 2022 um we've got her scheduled to be there for the closing ceremony day here this if you haven't figured this out that's a camel right all comparisoned and and uh dressed up in a fancy cart here's a whole row of camels and there there you can see the the grandstands in the background and as westerners by the way they'll clear out a space for us so we can sit in the shade on nice soft pads and whatnot and enjoy the pageantry here's a little close-up of the camel i mean this this is what you travel for right the pageantry of this pushcar fair is exactly why we travel these two guys were participants in the the mustache and beard contest here's one of the winners there were these performing troops i i'm guessing this is hanuman the the the monkey god who's an important uh positive character in their ramanyana right there their hindu epic of good versus evil i can't tell you what what this girl is meant to be other than it's spectacular and of course beyond the official uh entertainments of and and pageantry of the fair there it will it attracts all kinds of buskers right so you're going to see people doing magic and swallowing swords and having performing monkeys and here's this little bitty girl on the tightrope right so everywhere you go there's big circles of people you stop you watch for a while you toss it through a few coins and a hat it's great fun um i love this this was the closing out of the final days events the very last event of the fair and it was 350 rajasthani women all in their red sarees doing a synchronized bollywood dance and you you can see here they're not professionals but it was really amazing and and by the way notice the close-up photograph that i got because as a westerner i was allowed i'm a an honored guest in their culture and i was allowed to walk out right out onto the parade grounds and and get in there and take my photographs you can actually see uh if i could use oops sorry i didn't know that would happen um you guys can't see my cursor okay uh top right hand corner there's another western traveler taking pictures that's not somebody with a press pass that's just some traveler like me who was bold enough to walk out and ask if they could take pictures push car itself is beautiful lots of whitewashed houses uh bathing dots around this is one of the sacred lakes of hindu i i forget exactly why somebody was someone of the hindu pantheon was born here out of the waters but the experience of the town itself is is not equal to the fair but pushkar would be a worthwhile visit uh even if it weren't for the push car fair um one time when i was there there was a rajasthani wedding coming through so they're they're going through town um singing and playing music and she's got a cup there right and and everybody then puts money in the cup for for the bride and she's got the elaborately handed hands here there's her little bride gift vessel for collecting money and that group of people was followed by this sort of outrageously decorated music cart right this is uh not live music but actually if it was a wealthy family they would have hired a live band to come along with their little uh private procession people who don't have that much disposable income will then hire one of these music carts where they've got recorded music and they this comes along after the little procession of people um again i want to make sure you understand that there's always going to be someone like this woman who is um trying to get me to give her money for for something you know some little trinket or some sort of begging always part of the experience of course on the tour we'll talk about how best to deal with that i've by the way i've done my best to make sure that all of the map slides that i have up here are more or less of the same scale and more or less of the same more or less the same scale to give you a sense of how far we go on on a given day and you can see here's your little visual marker the new deli is uh up at the top to the right of center that's we'll use that as a marker going forward so this is just our travel day from push car to jaipur it's about a half day driving and on the way um we make a couple of stops um but before i pull away from that i've got a question from evelyn baker that asking is there a chance to ride a camel and the answer is absolutely yes that's something that can be arranged but i do have to say evelyn if that experience of riding a camel is something that's important to you the morocco tour is the one where we have that truly magical experience uh out on camelback so but but yes absolutely at the push car fair it would be so easy for us to arrange for you to have a camel ride absolutely thanks for your question okay i mentioned we make a stop on our way between pushkar and jaipur it's the town of ashmr this is not a great photograph because it's taken through a window but this is the red temple in ashmir it's another jain temple and it's like a giant indoor diorama here's the better shot here you see all the windows in the background there that's that's where you walk around take your pictures but every picture has to be taken through a window right because they've got it all completely glassed off but this is a a a giant model if you will of the hindu cosmos with the the meru the sacred mountain in the middle and then the sacred seas all around it's just another i'm going to use the word spectacular example of the diversity here right you know you can visit 15 temples and it's a completely different experience every time as opposed to i mean i love thailand don't get me wrong but after a while after you've seen half a dozen eight temples in thailand they start to feel the same not so in india travel 100 miles get a completely new set of architecture the destination on this day was um oh by the way i should back up you know evelyn had a great question about writing the camel uh if you want to use the chat function on the uh on the facebook page to to make a comment or ask questions of me that i can address live here please feel free to do that i should have said that up front um jaipur this is jaipur they call it the pink city i'm a tiny little bit colorblind but this looks a little bit more orange to me but anyway the the old city walls are this uh pinkish color known as the pink city uh probably the signature landmark here is the hawa mahal the palace of the winds the hawa mahal is one of those that is not very interesting inside so all we will do is fill it facilitate a really good photo opportunity we'll stop here at the hawaiian hall on the way out to something outside of jaipur in the morning when the sun is just right for a nice photograph i i believe that the hawa mahal was on the front cover of the lonely planet india book a few years ago um jaipur has a very interesting city palace it's not one that we include on the tour but of course on every imprint tour we do our best to pack in our tour activities in the morning and give you as many free afternoons as possible you'll definitely have lots of free time in jaipur so if you want to see one more palace you can come and see the jaipur city palace i mean they're all impressive they're all worthwhile what i choose to do instead is something that's more unique this is the jantar mantar it's about 300 years old and this was an eight an early 18th century um astronomical observatory right this is for measuring the movement of the stars and the skies only it's just a vast vast scale if you look over at three o'clock on the right side of the picture you see some people standing in front of that one structure that gives you a sense of scale here these are immense those are those are pigeons up there again for a little sense of scale and you see two people in the bottom right hand corner again to give you a sense of scale here and you can see there's a there's a big fort on the hill in the background there we'll go visit that in a moment i just think this is fascinating this these giant measuring instruments that are of gargantuan scale all right uh the signature destination site of jaipur is amber fort amer fort palace like i said before you never just you see very few forts that are a single purpose right there's there's a fortress and then there's a palace inside this is an exceptional experience so we definitely include it um by the way when i took this particular picture uh it was a very very poor monsoon that year and so the that's usually a lake there at the foot of amber palace um amber but but spelled like amber a-m-b-e-r so this is this spectacular limestone fortress palace it's about a 20-minute drive outside of jaipur and you can see that you can you can ride an elephant up the ramp we used to include the elephant ride up uh on the tour but um we've we've stopped doing this out of concern for the elephants themselves and uh there are other places in the world where we know that elephants are well cared for that's a different story altogether but now we we instead of riding up on the elephants uh up to camera fort um we we take we take the road up with with uh jeeps but they are fun to see no doubt about it you get up all the way on top this huge courtyard you see that big giant uh wall that snakes up the hillside in the background there and then we have a our guided tour of the palace complex palace gardens this this is a good palace experience definitely details really fabulous details and before we leave here we stay and have our dinner in the restaurant that's actually in the palace which is really a lovely lovely experience um and um up above amer is jaigarh fort right so you can you can just look out any of the windows up the hill and there's another spectacular fort uh up on the next hill up this is a the view from jaigarh back down to to ammer and there's a really good shot where you can see the the fortification walls that spread out over the hills and the big tank at the bottom right that would be filled with water under normal circumstances okay time to move on from jaipur our next stop is agra agra needs no explanation that's where we're going to see the taj mahal but of course this is india you can't drive 50 miles without passing by some other fabulous thing to stop and see this is the chambiori stepwell this is a feature of rajasthan there's actually a lot of them down in the gujarat but these were wells that were built and they're just these beautiful structures that served a a fundamentally utilitarian purpose and that was to gain access to the water table which is quite deep in in in this part of desert india so we stopped here for half an hour 45 minutes i believe the last time we stopped there there was somebody making bangles by hand i took a little video of it there's just every single day there is something that marks it as special and there's more before we get all the way into agra we have to stop at uh fattapur sikri that poor secret was was founded in 1571 by akbar i might have my my family tree uh mixed up a little bit but i believe akbar is the great grandfather of shah jahan and the father of humayun whose tomb we saw back in delhi he built a capital city here at fatima sikri and then immediately abandon it apparently they didn't take the energy or the time to find out whether there was um enough of a good water source and it gets almost immediately abandoned i mean within a single lifetime this capital city is built and then abandoned so it's this ghost town out in the middle of nowhere very evocative i love this shot akbar used to have his throne there on top of this pedestal and you see there are the four little bridges out to the corners and in each corner there would be like a christian priest and in the other corner an islamic imam and in the other corner a sikh sadhu and in the other corner a hindu sadhu and he would debate and because he was a very open-minded liberal progressive thinking ruler he would have them all you know share their wisdom and and religious knowledge and he would sit in the middle uh sort of like uh king arthur's round table idea right that he was equidistant from everybody so as not to put one above the other fascinating i think but the whole experience is uh is good and like i said the fact that it's completely abandoned just makes adds a level of fascination here oh and and the mosque here is a much better experience of a mosque than that one in uh than the one back in delhi okay i've got another question here actually let's look at let's have something like that on the screen while i answer this question um how's the air quality in northern india your beautiful pictures look very clear with blue sky i spent three weeks in southern india in pune which is down by uh bombay on a business trip in january 2020 there were some really bad pollution days they burned lots of open fires on the streets uh yeah joyce thanks for your question that's a good one um and i don't want to mislead you yeah it's uh when we choose to go in november october and november because of the push car fare but it's also a tough time of the year in india because they they do have that uh practice of burning their crop fields at the end of every growing season and so they're quite often are hazy days um and i i don't mean to be misleading by showing only pictures of when i've been in india at other times of the year and the sky is clearer um delhi is as bad as anywhere i've ever been deli cairo you know you you get off the airplane at the delhi airport the indira gandhi international airport and the sky is yellow i'm i i don't want to mislead anybody at all it's deli is really badly polluted but the rest of india the rest of the places we stop uh it's it's just the issue of occasionally having haze not so much pollution but delhi is polluted to be sure okay taj mahal i mean this is sort of the pinnacle of most people's experience uh you know what what can i add to what's been said about the taj mahal anything that i might say uh would pale in comparison i do like what the indian mystic poet uh wrote he said the taj mahal is like a teardrop on the cheek of eternity amazing beautiful place and like always the details are as impressive as the overall picture we won't see the taj mahal without people you know a lot of these pictures are from 1993. um but of course we're going to go we're going to have a good experience there i mentioned the details this is the a close-up shot of the petradora right the inlaid stone artwork of the interior and those are actual precious and semi-precious stones that are embedded in the carved marble and we will always stop and ask one of the guards inside they always carry a flashlight and for a tip they'll put the flashlight on the the embedded semi-precious stone and you see it glow from within right if it's really a ruby or an emerald or a sapphire or something very very impressive um i only have one photo to share today of the uh the fort there in agra but i i think it's an important one um because of the history here right shah jahan who who built the taj mahal as a tomb for his beloved wife mumtaz mahal who dies in childbirth after i think it was her 15th child or something like that he was crushed he really loved her he had many wives but she was his favorite so he builds the taj mahal for her and he did intend to have a black mirror image taj mahal built on the other side of the yuma river for his own tomb but long before any of those things could take place he was toppled from the throne by his son who was a a muslim and a religious zealot and um arangabad i believe was his name imprisons shah jahan in agra fort within sight of the taj mahal that's why i put this image in here that's that's me standing at a window of the agra fort with that view of the taj mahal that shah jahan would have had uh for the last 20 25 years of his life as he lived in uh in prison if you will plenty of other things to see in in in agra this is the tomb of akbar at sekandra again an easy took to ride out on your free time if you want to go out and see this again the inlaid details are as impressive as the overall view all right next stop on the tour is um uh but on the uh as always you know that's too far to drive without stumbling across some other spectacular site so i want to stop and show you orcha on the way by the way just in terms of logistics when we leave agra we take a train in the morning we go about four hours on the train we get picked up by coach and we visit orcha orcha was the capital of the bundella dynasty so the there's a fort here and then some temples and cha trees which are our funerary monuments uh cenotaphs is another word for chauchi and so these are all about 500 years old this is kind of this is a quick stop we stop and and see the fort see you know see the cha trees from a distance and then have a little bit quick lunch before heading on further south to uh kajrajo but when i was there in i think in 2010 with the group my first group we just happened to be there when there was a local festival right it was a festival that celebrated women they were all coming from the countryside to go to the temples there in in orchard to celebrate and they all had their finest beautiful saris on and it was just it was one of those serendipitous experiences that i can't promise to you on the tour um but uh the the city got flooded with color right this is just a bunch of women from the countryside having their lunch by the river and um they were arriving in in trucks in track on the back of tractors any any vehicle they could get a hold of that they could squeeze people into they were all piled in and heading into orchard for the day and again look at those faces right look big smiling faces people waving engaging you india is a friendly place but the destination is kajraho some of the most beautiful hindu temples in all of india beautifully preserved because these are um actually a thousand to eleven hundred years old these are really really old temples really beautiful um i'm gonna use the word discovered in 1830 even though that's really a misnomer the the british a british archaeologist was taken to them by the locals i mean of course they were never lost by the locals right but from a western perspective nobody had seen images of kajrajo prior to the 19th century and when they found them they created quite a stir the the the real signature element of kashwaho temples is the exterior sculpting right the the bow relief sculpting around the temple and uh what created a store remember the 1830s you're talking about victorian england and victorian morals and much of the exterior decoration of this temple we would probably call erotic the fact is it was not erotic a thousand years ago hindus a thousand years ago and even to this day consider the sexual act to be an act of transcendence right of of it's it's the closest you get to to true communing with the gods and in that there's tremendous power and power of protection so by depicting people in all kinds of kama sutra poses of of of intercourse you are uh uh putting symbols of protection around this this sacred sacred place um but it's you know it's it's pretty graphic but not every uh statue on casuarajo is is quote unquote erotic uh this is one of the opsaras i love this one can you see she's removing a thorn from the bottom of her foot i mean it's an everyday everyday scene and then you know elephants and and warriors here's ganesha the elephant-headed god the remover of obstacles very popular in indian culture more elephants and soldiers here so it's you know it's not all um erotica but absolutely a spectacular stop on the tour um i love this picture because you know i showed you the picture of all the garbage in delhi uh so they've got a real problem but they're trying right they're trying to educate the next generations this is a garbage can that says please use me in both hindi and english love it also you see the temples in the background here this is a just a restaurant that i love to frequent because of this tree house right there's a tree house there with table and benches about eight people can sit out there and have a cold beer at the end of a hot day of temple viewing uh just good fun there's one of the temples before we move on to the last stop on the tour by the way this tour is 14 days long we fly this this shows the road route right but we fly from kajrajo to varanasi varanasi is the most sacred city for hindus it's right on the river ganges ganga is how they pronounce the name of the river there the the excuse me the river ganga and this is at once in the same time one of the worst sort of armpits of india but also this super sacred place i mean you you if you've got a pulse you pick up on the spiritual vibe of this place and the way that you experience it in the classic way is a sunset or a sunrise a boat trip on the ganges right you hire a little boat somebody rows you around it's quiet and and the only noises are coming from from the banks and you are able to then at dusk see the bathing dots right the gots are just a series of steps that come down to the river the sun sets off on the other side of the river uh so we will do this as a group right we'll be into in a couple of larger boats not just two or three of us but all of us together in a boat or two and we'll be road up and down the gang the ganga and we'll stop to observe uh rt rt is the ceremonial bidding of good night to the river ganga right they consider the ganga almost like a living spiritual you know god-like being and so there's this whole ceremony of the priests and you know with with music with with uh with drums with symbols uh incense and then of course they've all got these lit uh not torches but uh lamps this is this is what you travel for i mean this this is a really special experience to be able to experience and i believe that uh our guest on coffee chat on wednesday uh chris coleman probably talked about arty um up in rishikesh where she had gone to study yoga so this this takes place all over india but this one in varanasi is the most famous one these are the gods probably yeah that's got to be early morning right before there's too many people out and this is another separate experience right i mean you see you see the sort of formal you know gathering of crowds for the for the rt but in the morning what you see is very very individual it's people coming down to the river to have their ablutions their their sacred cleansing right it's um it's very personalized it's it's you know and and by the way if if this makes you feel a little bit voyeuristic remember that there there really is no such thing in india there's there's no real sense or concept of privacy there um but for us it feels a little bit like we're lookie-loos here but it really is a fabulous experience to just paddle along quietly and seeing these devout people coming down to bathe in the river and then they'll go to a temple somewhere for whatever whatever their purpose was if you are a devout hindu and you have the means you want to at the end of your life come to varanasi and have your remains crement cremated here it's just more shots of of what you see from the from the ganges and this is a shot from the distance uh i'm sorry not quite there yet i thought this was the burning gun oh this is an important shot you would think that once you're out on the river in a boat that you would escape any sort of beggars touts or people trying to sell things but no they are creative this woman has paddled out and this is from 20 years ago she'd rigged up a car battery and a television and she's selling dvds right she's selling i think they're pretty much music videos is what they were but this is just to show you that that even out on the river you're not going to escape that hassle factor that i have talked about i do need to say this about the hassle factor every time i go back to india it's less uh you know being being with someone like chatan who knows the ins and outs who will sort of lead interference for us uh you know we now stay in all heritage property hotels uh you know which are all former palaces that have been converted to hotels uh the hassle factor is definitely going down year by year in india as as as that country becomes more and more prosperous and there's some sort of prosperity that's that's ticked uh trickling down to even the lower classes um it's getting better getting better every time but you do need to be ready for it uh here's the shot i i started to prematurely talk about this is you can see a little bit of smoke there this is one of the burning gods right where people have uh brought their their their deceased loved ones to have their bodies cremated and the ashes dumped in the holy ganga river you're not supposed to take pictures so these are uh black market photographs right and we get off right here so that everybody can have a close-up view uh and then go visit a temple and have a little walking tour you know this being a sacred place you're going to run into lots of the sadhus whether or not these guys are genuinely genuine holy men or whether they've just figured out this is a good way to make a living by posing for photographs and then getting a handout and by the way as in terms of just a practical bit of advice you you have to count on paying for taking their photograph and you need to establish a price beforehand right then there's then there's no misunderstandings here's vendors uh selling uh flowers that are part of the you know people will toss flowers out under the ganga as part of their religious practice even the laundry is beautiful this is one of the places where you might still see dobie wallace right people doing laundry by hand that's that's a disappearing art in india i know that i've gone over time here but we're down to our very very last stop just outside of varanasi is sarnat sarnat is a very sacred place for buddhists this was the place where the buddha after receiving enlightenment in what is today nepal gave his first public speech or his first public sermon so it's a very very important pilgrimage destination for buddhists this is this great buddhist stupa here and then every buddhist nation in the world has built a temple here this is a thai temple those of you who've been to thailand will recognize some of the lines there of architecture this is this is inside the the thai uh temple this is a tibetan buddhist temple uh beautiful inlaid ceiling here's a gorgeous mandala um you know these are just representative photographs right there are dozens and dozens of temples and and because it's outside of varanasi we make a a morning's visit here to sarnath and then bus everybody out to the airport and varanasi is a city of about five million people so it's got a very very good uh airport and we we basically end the tour at the airport um it's very easy to get a domestic flight back to delhi or to start your journey home right there from varanasi so we we finish up there with sarnath and then on to uh to the airport there where we finish up okay i'm i'm finished talking about india i just want to check to see if there have been any more questions that came in no there has not so i thank you for tuning in to see a little bit about our india tour again to repeat um i have a departure that i will be um escorting on november 6th of this year fingers crossed that the covid situation is all fully resolved and we're back to traveling by then and then sarah is going to be taking her group to india with chatan uh i believe that start date is october 27th of 2022. you can check that on our website either sarah's adventures with sarah.net or on the imprint website imprinttours.com and i do thank you for your attention and your questions and uh get out there and travel and travel with intent

2021-03-11 03:48

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