Seeing India from DEL
 

First of all, I know this is terribly open-ended, but... I'll be in based in DEL for the next four months or so (Oct to Feb), and would like to experience as much of India as possible during that time. I'm thus trying to work out what places I could reasonably visit during...

...a standard weekend (Fri evening-Sun evening)
...a long 3/4-day weekend
...if I take an entire week off

I have essentially no prior experience of India, and my interests are wide-ranging but I have soft spots for diving, good food and spectacular temples. A few places on a very rough to-do list are:

- Goa
- Agra (Taj Mahal)
- Kathmandu (I know, it's not India, but it's not that far...)
- Ellora/Ajanta caves
- Lakshadweep islands
- Varanasi (Benares)

I'd like to exclude the deep south (Kerala/Karnataka/Tamil Nadu) from the equation for now, both because it's far from Delhi and because I may have a chance to visit Bangalore in the future.

Any ideas would be much appreciated. @:-)

Agra can be done in a long day trip from DEL. Jaipur is a good weekend trip too. You can combine the two for a 3-4 day trip by car. Kathmandu if it is safe can be a long weekend.

Most every place is reachable by air from here and you could do on a weekend. However, be ready for flight delays. In Dec and Jan there is a lot of fog in Delhi and you will have even more flight delays and maybe some cancellations.

There is also a lot to see and experience in Delhi.

Sometimes it is cheaper to fly to Bangkok than it is to places farther south like Goa

Goa and many other places in India have gotten a lot cheaper to get to as a result of low cost carriers in India. For airfares on the cheap, Spice, Go and Deccan should be checked out. It will really make a lot of 3 day trips possible and affordable.

I'd suggest a Rajasthan trip (Udaipur, Jaipur, etc.) either early on or late into your stay this time. It could be anywhere from 3 days to a week.

I also suggest Agra and Fatehpur Sikri. Could be done in 1.5 days.

Good point on the new low cost carriers. The only problem with them is they don't have a lot of flexibility if they cancel flights or have mechanical problems. They are getting a lot better though. I was just in Goa this last week for a night and I was an hour late leaving Delhi and over two hours late getting back. These flights were on Jet and Sahara--the best private carriers. I saw that on Wed night over 50 flights had problems in Delhi. 1700 passengers had to divert to other airports--and this can happen on any of them.

Thanks for the ideas! I think my biggest problem is going to be Christmas: plan A was to visit Goa, but the flights and hotels are (unsurprisingly) pretty much booked up. Any ideas for an unconventional but memorable short trip around then? It would probably just be me and a friend.

I did this when i was in India for a month, i did just weekend trips.

1. Ajmer by train for the Camel Fair (are you there in November?)
2. I took Air Deccan and did an agressive one day trip to Amritsar and saw the golden temple, oddly no flight issues, everything was smooth
3. Weekend in Delhi
4. One night to Agra, i hired a driver for like $150 for 2 people and stayed the the hilton on a good deal.

My pictures for it are on atwood.smugmug.com

Chris

Depends really. If you are up for cold weather, you can go to beautiful places like: Dalhousie, Kullu, Dehradoon, and many more hill stations in the state of Himachal Pradesh. The trip from Delhi shouldn't take a lot of time (at least for HP). For Dalhousie, you are probably looking at a 3-4 day trip.

Warm weather, you might want to check out places like Munnar, Cochin in Kerala. Or you can go see the southernmost tip of India, ala Kanyakumari. Munnar is a very nice place to check out. My brother and my sister-in-law went there after their marriage and they really really enjoyed it. Also, you can go check out Pondicherry (I believe it's been renamed now). But that's another place similar to Goa with nice beaches. Great place.

Also, Rajasthan is also an option. Go check out Mt. Abu, Jaipur, Udaipur. Very nice cities.

There are other options too. You can go to Mumbai, but doubt there is much to do around christmas time.

I was about to suggest Varanasi and just noticed it's in your OP. I went there on my first visit to India years ago (as a backpacking holidaymaker) and really enjoyed it.

I second Fatehpur Sikri. I went there almost by mistake on the same first visit and was very impressed by it. GUWonder will no doubt correct me if I'm wrong :D but IIRC, the mosque there is apparently a copy of one of the major mosques in Mecca.

What do I look like, an architectural analyst? :D I'm looking to be corrected myself :D, but everything I've looked at in Fatehpur Sikri -- at least the stuff I was told was from around Mughal Emperor Akbar's time -- had design features that wouldn't exist in Mecca unless brought over from India or Central Asia during or after the Mughal period. I'd be curious to find out more about which of the major mosques in Mecca it copied or which major mosque in Mecca is a copy .... if any. :D

You mean you're not? ;) I thought you were our resident India expert (or at least I've used your knowledge that way in the past) ;)

Re: Fatehpur Sikri, it was 7 years ago when I was there and I can't remember if it was in a guidebook where I read about the similarity to Mecca or if it was a guide there who told me. If it was a guide there, ignore anything I posted on the subject because (s)he was probably just trying to impress me :D

I'm unlikely to visit Mecca so I didn't really consider whether the statement could be true but now that you mention it, Fatehpur Sikri didn't look like the pictures of Mecca I've seen on TV... It was still a very impressive place though so I'd still recommend it to the OP.

I checked and it was a guidebook. The Lonely Planet for India (7th edition which was current when I was at Fatehpur Sikri) says:

which is suitably vague and could mean that the author spoke to the same guide at Fatehpur Sikri that I did ;)

It could be the base design during Akbar's time -- when this was most all done -- was a copy of a mosque in Mecca, just with Persian and Indian influences/elements added sufficient that it would no longer be considered an actual copy upon completion. Persian and Indian influences are the ones to both be expected and to be seen there -- especially given the dynamics in play in Akbar and Jehangir's courts. [For example of ties and influences: Akbar's son Selim/Jehangir had an ethnic Persian wife of quite some historical note -- a widow he married who came to be known as Noor Jehan, light of the world -- and waged battle to win her husband's release from rebels who kidnapped him. She, the child of refugees, was de facto ruler for a good part of her husband's rule and was the de facto sovereign for a period of time -- as her husband had, since youth, a bit too much fondness for alcohol and was not a stranger to opium, something she may even have encouraged to consolidate power on her family's behalf.]

It's probably safest to say something like it was based (perhaps largely) on a design of a mosque in Mecca .... which was quite common as hajji-architects had quite the influence. I'm still curious to find out after which mosque in Mecca the Fatehpur Sikri mosque design was based.

Thanks

Haze getaway from DEL
 

I'm currently looking for a weekend escape from Delhi to some interesting place which has no haze and at least less pollution, and option one was Goa -- but the terrible timeslots at Dabolim for civil aviation mean that the last flight departing DEL leaves around 3 PM, which makes it impossible to work and fly out on Friday. :td: Himalayan air sounded nice and refreshing, but Kathmandu's haze/pollution appears to be, if anything, worse than DEL in wintertime. Any other ideas?

I spent three great days in Leh. It's a 45 minute flight from Delhi and an entirely different culture.

I was under the impression Ladakh is chilly, misty and generally rather miserable this time of year?