Ajanta Ellora

We hadn’t done a driving holiday yet (though we had been to Pune in the car), so we were on the lookout for an opportune time and a destination. The time appeared in form of Gandhi Jayanti on a Tuesday – the last long weekend of the year. And for a while I had been itching to visit Aurangabad – to see the Ajanta and Ellora caves. They are supposed to be one of India’s foremost historical treasures, among India’s first World Heritage sites, and so close to Bombay. I had never seen them – the wife had seen them as a kid a long time ago.

Aurangabad is 365 km from Bombay, but there is no direct highway to it. Preliminary searches suggested taking the NH3 via Nasik was better than the NH222 via Malshej Ghat. And by the results from Google searches, it seemed like not too many people from Bombay took the road route to Ajanta Ellora – maybe they preferred the trains (there is a Shatabdi to Aurangabad). Travel websites like www.bcmtouring.com had a few travelogues which confirmed for us that this was a doable drive for one person. We were toying with the idea of asking someone else to join us, but then decided to keep it just for the two of us.

Read More

Khajuraho

We did a Bandhavgarh National Park + Khajuraho trip over the Republic day weekend. The travelog for Bandhavgarh can be found here

After another hearty breakfast, we bid adieu to the Tiger Den resort at Bandhavgarh and started for Khajuraho (230 km away) at about 8 am. We figured we should reach Khajuraho by 12.30 pm – accounting for the not-so-fast MP highways. What we didn’t account for was the difference in standards of service between the Shining India (Bombay/Delhi/Bangalore) and the interior of India. Our only black mark on the trip was our driver. He just couldn’t wait to solve some crisis back home in Jabalpur, and he would be on the phone every 15 min for the first 2 hours of the trip – and keep searching for mobile signal on his cell phone the rest of time (because we were in a forest area) – all the while driving.

Read More

Bandhavgarh National Park

When we first drove through Bandhavgarh National Park, all we saw were the godawful roads inside the sanctuary. It was a neverending series of potholes which even backward Africans would refuse to acknowledge as a road. At 9 pm in the night, after 2 hours of traveling in the car from Katni station over Madhya Pradesh’s not-so-good roads, immediately after a 21 hour train journey from Mumbai, we were at the end of our lines – just hoping the journey would get over soon. However the road conditions ensured that the last 15km stretch took us an hour to finish.

Only once we reached Tala gate and found our surprisingly plush resort that we heaved a sigh of relief and attacked the homely food with gusto. January in Central India is quite cold and the entire place was covered in mist. However, our cottages were equipped with serious-looking room heaters and the warm service of the staff of Tiger Den Resort soon made us at ease. After the meal, the smiles were back on our faces and we retired early to get up in time for our first tiger safari

Read More

Hampi, Pattadakal and Aihole

Large and diverse as our country is, it can claim to only 28 odd UNESCO world heritage sites. Hampi and Pattadakal are both on that exclusive list. The capital of the 15th century Vijaynagar empire, Hampi had a small but bright existence in India’s vast history (compared to some of our cities which span several millennia), with its rise and decline spanning scarcely 200 years. Yet in this small time, it became one of the biggest city in the world at its time, with half a million inhabitants, as traveler Nicholas Conti recorded during his visit to Hampi in 1420.

Hampi’s fortunes were linked to the Vijaynagar kingdom, which flourished between 1350 and 1565. They built their capital near present day Hospet in Northern Karnataka (10km from away) in a hostile-looking rocky landscape flanking the Tungabhadra river. Honestly, if I were looking for a spot to build my new capital, I’d have chosen someplace else, but the rocky landscape did provide natural defensive structures. The landscape can be best described as low lying hills completely covered with ochre colored rocks (granite) – much like sprinkles covering a cake.

Read More

Udaipur & Mount Abu

Rajasthan is probably the most famous tourist destination in India along with Goa and it requires no introduction whatsoever. We spent a pleasant 5 days in Udaipur and Mount Abu in the beginning of March, just before the summer heat set in.

Mount Abu is an old-fashioned British-era hill station – one of the great honeymoon destinations for your parents’ generation, but quite rundown now. The only redeeming factor of Mount Abu are the wondrous Dilwara temples, which in our opinion is one of the most beautiful temples in India (and we have quite a few of those in India). Their plain and boring exterior hides a magnificently carved white-marble temple inside. Sadly, photography isn’t allowed inside the temples. We stayed overnight at the Jaipur House, which is the erstwhile Maharaja of Jaipur’s summer palace.

Read More