Category: India
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To the Land of the Kings 6: Thar Desert
No trip to Jaisalmer is complete without riding a camel through the Thar Desert’s sand dunes. It’s a popular activity and numerous outfits organize overnight camel-riding tours, but trips can also take multiple days and even weeks. To be clear, it’s not the Sahara or the Empty Quarter. The Thar Desert is mostly arid scrubland…
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To the Land of the Kings 5: Jaisalmer
Going further by train to the northwestern region of Rajasthan and the surroundings give way to a more barren landscape. The train stops at Jaisalmer, the last city before the road stretches west to the border with Pakistan, and while there is a sense of being far-flung (it’s a 7-hour trip from Jodhpur), it’s far…
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To the Land of the Kings 4: Jodhpur
There are no direct trains between Udaipur and Jodhpur, my next stop, so I ride a bus, leaving Udaipur just before dawn and arriving in Jodhpur in the early afternoon without any major hitch. But as soon as I ride the autorickshaw to the old city, the din of India’s streets greet me again. The…
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To the Land of the Kings 3: Udaipur
My next destination is Udaipur, where I arrive by train the next day at around noon. I eventually reach my accommodation for the next two nights, the Lal Ghat Guesthouse, which sits on a scenic spot on the east bank of the lake. It’s not my original choice, actually, but the one I booked doesn’t…
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To the Land of the Kings 2: Amber
Eleven kilometers north of Jaipur lies Amber, a low-key town with less the hustle of its more famous neighbor. It does have the one sight that trumps perhaps all of Jaipur’s: the Amber Fort. Nestled atop an arid hill, the fort combines Mughal and Rajasthani architecture and the golden color of its sandstone fortress make…
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To the Land of the Kings 1: Jaipur
After a couple of days in Agra, I head to Jaipur, the third corner of the traveler-favorite Golden Triangle. As the capital of Rajasthan, the city naturally then makes for an ideal gateway to the rest of the state. Rajasthan, literally “Land of the Kings,” is India’s largest state and its most stylish and exuberant.…
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Agra: Up Close with the Taj Mahal
Early the next morning I board a train to Agra, the former capital of the Mughal Empire but is more well known as the site of the Taj Mahal, one of the world’s most popular mausoleum. I arrive in the city just after noon. An autorickshaw takes me to my hostel just south of the…
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A Day in Delhi
7:00 a.m. It’s a new day in Delhi. I’ve been here in the Indian capital for about 18 hours now and so far, so good. It’s my first trip abroad after a lengthy battle with a liver infection, and while some might say it isn’t a good idea to be traveling while I might still…
The Tourist Gaze 