What I did for the last month
So here it is, finally some info for you all about what I did this past month on my big trip. In the interest of getting SOMETHING out about this adventure, I’ve tried to limit myself on this post, giving only the summary of what happened. There’s a whole lot more to tell, but given that it’s taken me this long to complete even the summary of the trip, I don’t think I’m going to be able to go back and write all the details that I had initially wanted/planned to – I’m already way behind on writing about everything that has happened since I’ve returned to Dehradun. Seems that for me, the excitement of life never stops, and while I’m certainly not complaining about it, there are times when I wish it would slow down just a little bit to let me catch up. Oh well…
However, part of the reason for the delay is that I’ve spent hours (more than I want to count) processing the photos I took (yes, all 1200 of them) but I can finally say that it’s done, and I’ve posted some highlights for you all to see. A picture is supposedly worth 1000 words, so in a sense the “word-count” from the photos makes up for the details I haven’t written (and given how long my entries are, that may not be a bad thing…). As much as I love shooting in RAW format (for the flexibility it gives you in post-processing, it truly is amazing!), having to go through so many photos to do the post-processing takes a few minutes for each photo, and when you have 654 to do (thankfully I shot some in JPEG), it takes awhile, and then there’s all the Photoshop work to remove all the artifacts caused by dirt on the lens/sensor (unfortunately I had several bad ones for awhile). As much as I think it’s worth doing, I don’t want to see any more colour levels plots, dynamic range histograms, exposure, contrast, luminosity, or white balance sliders for a long time… If I wasn’t such a perfectionist I’d just shot JPEG as, if you shot it right, you can’t tell the difference, but although I’d like to think I have good composition skills, I’m still certainly an amateur when it comes to the technicalities of capturing my scene (I rarely leave the ‘Program’ mode on the settings dial of my camera) and in many cases, the tweaks allowed by shooting RAW let me get the photos I framed rather than the photos I took.
So here come the stories – in summary. In the interests of really summarizing things for those in a time crunch, I’ve also given each location a rating on a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 being a place that I survived, but didn’t really like, while 5 is a place that I absolutely loved and really want to go back to. It’s an easy way to quickly see what I though of the various places, and figure out what you should read first. For those with a bit more time, just start at the top and go on through, places are listed in the order I visited them so you’ll get the full story in the proper order. So without further ado…
- Agra
I arrived in Agra at night and so although my hotel had a “Taj view”, I couldn’t see it when I arrived. However, I got up early and went to the Taj right when it opened at 6:30am, which was incredible. The sunrise wasn’t quite as impressive as I had expected, but the fact that I was there so early meant that there weren’t many other visitors and so I could truly appreciate it without being distracted/annoyed by the thousands of people who swamp this amazing place every day. Even though it’s so hyped up, it lives up to its reputation, though I found I wasn’t as impressed when I was right up close to it, a lot of the majesty is in the architecture and if you just look at a little piece of it without being able to see the whole, it’s not quite the same. After the Taj, I walked over to Agra Fort and explored there. It is very similar to the Red Fort in Delhi (which I’ve already seen) so wasn’t quite so amazing, but still had some really nice parts and a little unique flair. The views of the Taj from afar were neat, it’s amazing how it completely dominates the Agra skyline. Next was a wander through the old bazar of Agra which was neat, after being in uber-touristy places all morning it was nice to retreat into typical India where people aren’t constantly trying to get you to buy something or take their rickshaw. The final stop of the day was Akbar’s tomb outside the city, a quiet, beautiful building with some amazing grounds filled with deer and monkeys (very tame so neat to watch). All in all a good place, and to be honest it was a better experience than I expected because though the tourists and touts were certainly present, they weren’t quite as omnipresent as I was lead to believe, and I found it was certainly possible to relax and enjoy Agra a bit. That being said, one day there was enough for me… - Fatehpur Sikri
Bussed out from Agra in the morning with two guys I met at the hotel in Agra, and we spent the day together exploring this old abandoned city. The main attraction was the huge entranceway (42m high) and nearby mosque which were nice, but again very similar to Red/Agra Fort and so not exactly new. However, the ruined palace section next-door was interesting as it was mostly all open and you could just wander around at your leisure/interest. There wasn’t much information available about the various parts, but apparently little is known about the city so it didn’t matter to much, and made it a little more fun to explore and try to imagine what it would have been like 400 years ago when it was occupied. After about 2 hours I had my fill, and since I’d only spent about 4 hours at the place (but alloted myself an entire day), I retreated back to the bus stand to wait for a bus on to Bharatpur. The bus stand was at the entrance to the little bazar of the associated town, a narrow, crowded, fly-infested filth-hole, but there was a nice hotel/restaurant nearby where I sat on the roof and watched it all from afar – a much nicer experience. Eventually the bus arrived, and though it wasn’t luxury by any means, the scenery was amazing, seeing a beautiful orange sunset over the bright yellow mustard fields of eastern Rajasthan. - Bharatpur
Kaledo Ghana National Park was the reason for putting Bharatpur on my itenerary. Though I’ve never really been that interested in bird-watching, the park (a 29 square-km marsh) was supposed to be one of the best places in Asia for seeing both astounding diversity and quantity of birdlife, and I was passing by just slightly before peak season, so it seemed hard to pass over. Though the park wasn’t at all what I expected (fields flooded with a foot of water, with clumps of trees containing the bird colonies and raised paths dividing the marsh into four rougly equal quadrants), the (huge, noisy, bustling) flock of painted storks was pretty impressive, and the rest of the time I spent exploring the back paths on a rattletrap bike, a nice (but somewhat painful) adventure. All in all it was a good day, and by the end I’d come to realize that bird-watching can be fun and interesting, but one day was enough for me so I pushed on to Deeg a day early. Read the full story in “Birds and Dust”. - Deeg
- Jodhpur
- Jaisalmer
- Jaipur
- Chittorgarh
- Udaipur
- Ranakpur
- Dhrangdhra
This was quite an adventure, with lots of highs and lows, but overall a good time in an incredible place, the Little Rann of Kutch – a salt desert in Gujarat. I’d taken some time to start writing about this while on the road, and given all that happened, a summary wouldn’t do it justice, so you can read the whole story in the separate entry, “Salt of the Earth”. - Veraval
- Diu
- Palitana
- Lothal
For a world-class historic site, Lothal was a huge disappointment. The effort required to get there (2 different busses, finally getting dropped off at a random intersection in the middle of the Gujarat countryside and having to take the one motorcycle rickshaw at the corner the final 10km) was the first indication that it might not be that amazing, but even then it got worse. Admittedly the museam was closed the day I was there, but the ruins themselves screamed of neglect and cried out for at least a little interpretation, but the small rusted ASI signs only pointed out the obvious – dimensions etc. You’d think the ruins of a 4000 year old city would be impressive, but I left thoroughly disappointed after half an hour, having spent most of my time trying to figure out what was actually real, and what was – as the gate sign explained – “recent reconstruction to better display what the city would have been like”. A case study in improper archeology and government inefficiency, read it all in “Everything can’t be amazing”. - Ahmedabad
Due to the route I’d chosen and fact that the city is the state’s transportation hub, I stopped in Ahmedabad 3 times during my travels in Gujarat. However, my first and third visits were both just layovers, arriving at 4am on an overnight train and waiting in the station’s waiting room (a large plain concrete box with horrid acoustics, containing some unfomfortable wooden chairs/couches and lots of loud, chatty Indians – not the kind of place I wanted to be at that time of morning, but I didn’t have any options) until my next train. For this reason, my first visit to the city wasn’t very enjoyable, and that impression stuck with me the on subsequent visits. On the second stop (after Lothal), I had some time in the evening to explore a bit and so I wandered down the main bazar from the train station to the river, seeing what there was to see (and because the thought of spending more time in the waiting room was not at all attractive). The street was narrow and crowded, lined with millions of shops selling everything imaginable just like everywhere else in India, but here I was somewhat surprised by the cleanliness and order of the chaos. All in all, Ahmedabad seemed like a nice enough place, but there wasn’t anything really special about it, and so soon enough I got tired of the crowds and retreated back to the train station waiting room. As I explain in this entry, “Everything can’t be amazing”. - Bhuj
Given all the hype in the guidebook about how amazing Bhuj is, I was a little disappointed with the city. The bazar had some neat things, but I’d seen nicer, similar items in Rajasthan, and the city seemed like most other Indian cities. However, I think that my opinion was influenced by the fact that I’d been on the road for a month at that point (and was getting tired) and had seen so many amazing things, that it would have taken a lot to impress me at that point. Judge for yourself, I managed to write this story out in full (combined with the later adventures in the Kutch countryside) in “Kutch – Beyond Belief”. - Dholavira
Dholovira, the ruins of an enormous 4000 year old city lying out on the furthest tip of an island out in the Great Rann of Kutch (in winter, a salt desert), was simply awe-inspiring. However, the trip out there and back (500+km by motorcycle with a random guy I met in Bhuj) was just as amazing, and together provided the perfect final stop for my adventure. Read the details in “Kutch – Beyond Belief”.
All in all, it was a wonderful time, but as I said before, even traveling gets tiring after awhile and so by the time my month was up, I was ready to get back to Dehradun. As one final summary, I’ve also (finally) gotten around to inputting all the GPS points I took along the trip at the various places I visited, and using some new nifty features I built into my Travelog plugin, have generated a map of where I went for you.
While it looks like a large area (and certain is), when you compare where I went to the size of the entire country and think of how much I found in just that little bit, it makes you realize how much there is to see and do here in India. And on all those long train trips with the Lonely Planet as my only book, I’ve already got a good start at planning trips to cover the rest of the country, if I ever find the time for it!
This is the online home of one Shane Warner, my place to attempt to tell some of my stories, as well as just spout off whatever comes to mind.
