Touring Rajasthan – Part 1

I have lived in the US for the past several years now. I visit India roughly once a year, but vacations are always short, and I don’t venture outside Chennai. Mostly, I fall sick by the end of the first week, and recover just in time to catch my return flight 🙂 Hey, got to keep your immune system strong!

Anyway, so this time I decided to do a longer 3 week vacation, and I have badly been wanting to visit many places in India. Primarily hikes in the Northern part of the country, but there’s so much to see in India. And these days, it is not hard to find other like minded people doing similar activities. Long distance bicycling, hiking and even Ironmans have become fairly mainstream – which is great!

After some looking around, I decided November is as good a month to visit Rajasthan as any. Originally, I also wanted to fit in Delhi and Agra into the plan, but after some pondering, I decided to skip Agra for another time. While I was researching Rajasthan, Agra, and Delhi, I got into the history of the Mughals, the Rajputs …etc. Fascinating. I’m sure some of this was learnt in school – but I don’t remember it ever be as engaging as when you can look things up online, replete with visuals, neutral accounts, web forums with amazing discussions …etc. Anyway, it was good to revisit some of the history – this is also important to understand the significance of the many historic places, and help in narrowing down on the places of significance to visit.

Tour guides make for fantastic places to start, but after speaking to a friend of mine, who had visited Rajasthan recently, I decided to start broadly, on the logistics, and then narrow down on what to see around places. Within city transport, either with Taxis, local buses, or cabs could all be decided later. (I like to make detailed plans to a fault 🙂 )

Anyway, when it comes to broad planning, Google Maps is a great resource. I decided I would book my transport, and accommodations first. Google Maps also does a decent job of showing you things to do in a place. Even better, the Google Trips App on Android! (downloads local data)

I have mostly had good experiences on Indian Railways – so I decided I would take trains wherever possible – and also if possible, take late night trains – that way,  would get to spend the day time in cities, and get to sleep in trains. That’s one of the great things about trains – you can go from point A to B while sleeping 🙂

Also, I have never traveled by anything other than Sleeper Class in the past whenever I have booked tickets for myself. AC tickets prior to 2011 for me, did not seem like a wise way to spend money. In spite of my parents recommending traveling by AC many times, I had doggedly refused to do so – always taking Sleeper trains even in the middle of summer. My grandfather used to work for Indian railways, and back when I was a little kid, we have traveled by AC trains of course – but I have a very faint recollection of it.

While we are on firsts, here’s another – I have never taken a single local/domestic flight in India. 🙂

Booking tickets:

I was able to pay on Yatra with my Paypal account, where I chose to pay with Paypal credit, to avoid any foreign transaction fees. I operate a couple of accounts in India, and have debit cards of them. However, this is how ancient my accounts are – one of my debit cards does not have a CVV code on it. And, the other insists on sending an OTP. Now, my mom’s number is the number registered – and it would all work fine, if she wasn’t visiting the US herself. 🙂 She was still getting messages, but the bloody websites timed out faster than she could send me the OTP code. Dang! Thankfully, even IRCTC allows you to use an International Credit Card to make transactions – which was wonderful. At this point, at the risk of sounding like I have become accustomed to the USD, and INR seems cheap to me, train tickets in India even in 2AC is ridiculously cheap! And I don’t mean that in the sense of, oh it was only $15 – I mean it in the sense of – wow, it was only Rs. 1000 or 1500. Having visited Chennai the last several times, and feeling like a poor person when I saw others pay Rs. 300 for movie tickets, I felt like the Railways is really operating things for cheap here! A night’s lodging and travel for Rs. 1000 !! What ?!!

Anyway, after some very preliminary, planning, here’s what I came up with

Day 1-> Fly from Chennai to Jaipur (unfortunately, the earliest cheapest option only landed in Jaipur after noon.)

Day 2-> Jaipur. Take a night train to Jaisalmer. (As of this writing, both my 2A and 1A tickets are waitlisted, although the 1A ticket is WL1 – so I am feeling reasonably confident, I’ll get a seat on the train.)

Day 3,4 -> Jaisalmer. Take a night train from Jaisalmer to Jodhpur.

Day 5,6 -> Jodhpur. Take a night bus (unfortunately, there was no train) to Udaipur

Day 7,8 -> Udaipur. Take a night train to Ajmer.

Day 9 -> Ajmer/Pushkar. (I know a day is probably not enough). Take a train from Ajmer to New Delhi.

Day 10 -> New Delhi. Take a night flight to Chennai.

Other things:

It looked to me like, I would need a place to take a shower in Ajmer. Instead of booking a hotel, I just booked a retiring room in the railway station. Now, after the fact, I learnt that 1AC has showers! and the delta I would have paid would have been the same as booking a retiring room. Well, you learn something every day. 🙂

At New Delhi, I booked  lounge for I believe < Rs. 200. Apparently, it is another 150-200 Rs for a shower, but I think that’s ok. I could also go without showers if need be – I mean, when I go multi-day backpacking, I just carry wet wipes with me, and towel myself down.

Now, onto some micro-planning on things to do/see.

Oh shit, I am running late

So, I had a flight to catch this last Friday morning at 7:35 in the morning. Spring (not that there is such a season in Phoenix AFAIK) break meant the University was closed for a week, and I thought it might be a good idea to visit my sister.

So, I had decided that starting from my place at 6:00 am, should be good enough. It would take ten minutes to the rail station by walk, a five minute wait for the train. The train would take fifteen minutes to reach the station. From there, the airport shuttle would tale ten minutes including the wait time. There is hardly any queue for security checks in Phoenix, so the boarding pass and security should not take more than five minutes put together. That added up to 45 minutes. All going fine, I should have been at the Gate with plenty of time to spare.

The trouble started the previous night. After a late project meeting, I came home only at around 1:30 am in the morning. By the time, I had packed, and decided to go to sleep, it was 3:00 am in the morning already. Generally, if I don’t sleep by 3:00 am for a 7:35 flight, I don’t sleep. Last time over, I watched three movies back to back to stay awake, and managed to board the flight. This time over though, I had not slept well in a few days, and I was not able to keep myself awake. After all, I should be able to wake up I thought – I had set my alarm, had called my brother in London to wake me up, my brother in law in California to wake me up. See, I even had a backup, and a backup for the backup. 😀

So, I get a call in the morning at 5:30 am from my brother, asking me to wake up, and wishing me a happy journey. Little did he know that immediately after he hung up, I was not able to so much as lift my head from the pillow. So, I continued sleeping. What happened for the next hour I have no idea of. I did not hear the alarms. I did not hear my brother in law’s three calls. Finally, for some reason, I woke up at 6:30 am and checked my clock. Shit!!!!  In the next eight minutes, I was able to shake myself out of sleep, managed to finish my morning bathroom duties, brush my teeth, get dressed and get the hell out of the house. I walked as fast as I could towards the rail station. I was constantly wishing that I didn’t see a train leave just as I was approaching the station. As soon as I reached the rail station, I tried hurriedly to get myself a ticket from the vending machine. And what do you know, it will not accept any of my cards. I am not ashamed of saying this, but I generally do not carry any cash with me. None at all. Thankfully, this morning I had a 5 dollar bill in my bag. I quickly bought myself a one ride ticket, and was hoping the train would be in the station any minute. It was 6:50 am already, and I was panicking. The train arrived somewhere in the next few minutes, and took an eternity to reach the airport. When I checked the time on reaching the airport, it was 7:15 already. I was hoping I would still be able to make it. After all, it should only take another 15 minutes tops to reach the gate. And even then, I would have 5 minutes left. Now, see this is called cutting it very very fine. If you were in certain businesses, this would be a remarkable skill to have. Not when you are trying to board a plane, I am afraid.

So, I rush towards the Airport shuttle, and there is one waiting. I get on it, and wish that it would move. Wrong! There is no driver in it. I wait a full five minutes in agony, knowing that now it would be very very fine indeed. The driver gets in, and finally the shuttle moves. I reach the terminal in about seven minutes, hoping to get through security and run to the gate. This is when I am in for the second shock. As soon as I enter the terminal, I see swarms of people waiting in queues to check their luggage in. I am generally very composed, and it takes quite a bit to get me ruffled. Well, a combination of drowsiness, weariness, panic collectively achieve that. I stood frozen for almost a full minute. I finally managed to find the kiosk to get the boarding pass. Whaddayaknow!! There are four people in queue in front of me. It was 7:25 now. See, if there had been more people I would definitely have spoken to them, and made sure I got my boarding pass ahead of the others. But 4 is the kind of number that makes you wonder if its worth talking to people to get ahead of them. I mean, you might end up spending more time explaining the situation to them, than if you just waited your turn. I mean, what if someone wanted you to explain again, and worse still after all that trouble, would not let you go through ? So, I waited my turn cursing myself under the breath. The next shock was waiting for me in the form of a long queue in the security area. There were at least 15 people ahead of me. This time over, I was just bogged down. It was 7:28. I couldn’t possibly explain to 15 people that I was running late for my flight. So I waited, knowing that I was doomed.

I was finally done with the security screening and reached the gate at about 7:35, give or take 30 seconds. I asked the gentleman at the booth, if I had missed my flight, and he was only all too cheerful in replying that indeed I had. It was a moment of helplessness. I am sure there are a thousand things I could have done right to make sure I had been on that plane – something as simple as tell someone at the Southwest booth that they ask the person at the gate to wait just for a minute. Even Americans are not that punctual. But I hadn’t. Thankfully for me, the gentleman was able to find me a seat on the next plane that was to leave in an hour. I called my brother in law and told him I was going to be late.

Expeditions and Trekking

Adventure Trips:

If you are the adventurous type that can never get enough sitting indoors and doing your daily chores, then you must make efforts to try and get closer to nature. While traveling and sight seeing are equally good alternatives, nothing beats trekking and mountaineering. Last month me and some of my friends had gone on a trip to a coastal area nearby and it was a wonderful and refreshing experience. In spite of some of the difficulties involved in travel, the trip was worth the trouble and we felt rejuvenated.

Difficulties in planning:

So we planned another trip this month. When we were making travel plans, we found out that it was extremely difficult to find information about many things such as:

• Mode of travel.
• Accommodation.
• Food arrangements.
• Other information such as expected weather, known local risks…etc

Unless you have already been to the place in question or happen to know someone, it is very difficult to find the information you want. Even then, things might have changed from the last time you or the other person went there.

Answers:

Generally, me and my friends take the following approach when we plan out trips and so far, it has always been successful.

1. First we make plans as to where we want to go and what we plan to do there
2. That is followed by preliminary information collection such as how far this place is, what are the modes of transport available, how long it will take to go and come back…etc
3. This is followed by secondary information collection such as availability of accommodation nearby, cost of accommodation, etc. Also we find out the places of interest in and around the place by scouting other people’s blogs and other websites which are dedicated to this.
4. Now that we have a fair idea as to what we want to do and how we are going to do it, we make a budget allowing for all expenses and also some emergency fund.
5. In case the travel involves going abroad, then we need to make sure that we have the necessary documents such as Passports and Visas in hand and hence we need to apply for them before hand.
6. This is followed by making reservations for travel tickets and also hotels. When it comes to hotels and comparing hotel prices, it can be a challenge. Which is why, using a tool like Hotels Combined makes the whole process much easier. You can find hotels in major Indian cities like Bangalore, Delhi, Goa, Jaipur and Mumbai. It’s basically a comparison website which searches for hotel reservations all over the world. They also offer the lowest prices. Transactions with them are also safe.
7. Then we make the trip and make minor changes to plans we had already made taking into account the local conditions. This is done on the fly and your plan needs to be flexible to make room for changes.

Although, you might not always visit a major city, facilities are mostly not available in smaller places. This necessitates that you camp at a city in some hotel and then finish the travel in the nearby areas before moving to the next city.

Bon voyage.