First of all – we were very glad to take the challenge and to visit India. As you’ve seen above there was a bit of a cultural shock here and there, but it is worth seeing how does 1/5 of world population live. I wasn’t however prepared for the mixed pictures that India provided – an ultimate richness of former kings and current magnats contrasted with an ultimate and helpless poverty. Probably it is good start at Goa / Mumbai and then continue to a more contrasted places up north (Agra & Old Delhi as the extreme examples).
Another pretty heavy surprise was the
level of the “investment” into their sightseeing spots. While a few palaces are under constant construction to keep them alive, vast majority of places (forts, old mosques, etc) are just falling apart because of lack of any maintenance work. We had a strong feeling that India is a bit overusing their “sightseeing spots” resource without a proper investment level. You know – like this wild coal exploration all over the world without caring about environment. This probably won’t impact Indian tourist overnight – don’t worry – there will be lot’s of things to see 10,20 or 50 years from now, but it won’t stay forever. Question is if we want to keep some of those forever? Today we heard the best description for that: “
destroyed by nature” – I love it so much, that I decided to use it as for trip’s name.
Mosquitoes – my biggest fear. Get some DEET and forget about it. I’m eaten alive anywhere close to the lake side, got bitten three times only in India.
Safety – we heard many worrisome stories before we even thought about going to India. I must admit that we didn’t have any bad experience during our trip. Common-sense needed – avoid dark places, don’t walk alone (especially if you’re a female), don’t expose too much of money publicly. If you keep a low profile and have some local person (guide/driver) you will most likely avoid any troubles. Indians are really warm, not always helpful but always smiling and doing their best to get a smile from a foreigner.
As mentioned before, when you have a limited amount of time you want to maximize the outcome. This needs to be done by combining air/rail transport as well as working with “local” agencies.
When it comes to the transportation I already covered driving in India. Time for some notes
on air transport - we have experienced three different domestic airlines down here: Jet, Kingfisher and IndiGO.
Jet: Udaipur-Mumbai
Kingfisher: Mumbai-Goa, Bangalore-New Delhi
IndiGO: Cochin-Bangalore
Not sure if we were just lucky, but the service was just flawless – like in other places in the world. Pretty new airplanes, steady flight and an exceptional service onboard. All airports were clean, effective with ground crews being helpful – things like check-in, carrying the luggage was mostly done by them. It was kind of a stupid feeling to be 100% honest, but so be it. Half of those flights were purchased 48hs in advance, but prices were still decent.
Trains - In India we planned for 3 overnight trips – our travel agency did their best to secure 3-tier AC coach and we were good to go. Our first (and only …) trip started and Margao (Goa) and ended at Cochin. ~850kms took 12hs, which is well known to us, as Polish railways back 20 years ago (as well as now: WAW-GDN, 350km, 6h). We were pretty realistic about it and didn’t have too high expectations. Clean sheet and blanket was provided, we had considerate fellow-travelers (they patiently waited for me to finish reading before turning off the light) and we were good to have a good sleep. We were well aware of the “Indian Standard Time”, so we were not worried when our train was late by one hour – nobody seemed to be surprised at the station (apart from a group of Germans and Israelis waiting with us at the platform). Few tiny things made me a little worried about that solution:
- Indians tend to be pretty loud and move around pretty intensively – I used my earplugs and eyes-cover to fall asleep. But I wasn’t too sure about all our belongings.
- Almost all tourists travelled with a huge number of small bags, backpacks and boxes – we had a pretty big problem to convince them to rearrange storage to fit everything
- Bed length – I’m 190cm tall (not an extreme, right?) and the bed seems to be few inches too short to stretch.
The last one killed my sleep really and taking into account the first problem we decided to move back to air for longer distances.
Don’t get me wrong – train is a great mean to travel within India, but you need to be aware of above. I hate to make this comparison, but we’re all humans: back three years ago we have used trains in China as a main transportation on both short (45mins) and long haul routes (26hs). Beds were short as well (if not shorter) but there was less “crowd” during the night and just a bit more discipline with bags. That helped
The other explanation is, that I’m just getting older?
I think the most important factor is a
good “local” agency that links all items of your trip together. You can’t say really “local Indian” as different people need to guide/help you and there should be one that synchronizes all those activities. We had luck to have such a “guardian angel” who was able to propose a very decent itinerary well ahead (6 months) and change in live when we asked for it. Those things like rearranging our Mumbai setup due to the emergency, switching houseboat trip details or moving all train logistics into flights (along with guides, pickups, etc). Very prompt all the time, responsive in mornings / late evenings.
Don’t want to advertise here, so PM me if you’d like to have their details.
Well, that’s all folks, I definitely encourage you to see India if you haven’t seen it so far. Just be prepared and open-minded!
mfk