Introduction

This is indeed India!

The land of dreams and romance, of fabulous wealth and fabulous poverty, of splendour and rags, of palaces and hovels, of famine and pestilence, of genii and giants and Aladdin lamps, of tigers and elephants, the cobra and the jungle, the country of hundred nations and a hundred tongues, of a thousand religions and two million gods, cradle of the human race, birthplace of human speech, mother of history, grandmother of legend, great-grandmother of traditions, whose yesterday’s bear date with the mouldering antiquities of the rest of the nations - the one sole country under the sun that is endowed with an imperishable interest for alien prince and alien peasant, for lettered and ignorant, wise and fool, rich and poor, bond and free, the one land that all men desire to see, and having seen once, by even a glimpse, would not give that glimpse for the shows of all the rest of the world combined.

~~~ Mark Twain

Welcome to a journal of our recent trip to London and India which we made in February 2012.  We spent two days on either end of our trip in London visiting with our son Peter.   The India trip was organized through a tour company in Calgary called Civilized Adventures.  There were eight of us on the tour plus the tour company owner, Denell Falk.   An Indian tour company, Incentive Destinations in Delhi, worked with Civilized Adventures and organized the logistics of the trip.  They hired a full time guide, Sandhya Harendra from Bangalore, who traveled with our group.  She was a wealth of information, told marvelous stories, was our front line person and made our travel run smoothly.  In brief, our journey took place in Northern India and began in Delhi on Feb 5th.  From there we flew to Varanasi on the eastern side of the state of Uttar Pradesh.  On the next leg of our journey we visited a number of places in northern Madhya Pradesh state.  We then flew to Jodhpur in central Rajasthan state, from there we headed east and eventually arrived in Jaipur.  The last leg of our trip took in Agra and finally back to Delhi departing Feb 25th. We traveled by bus, train and plane as well as simpler modes of local transportation.  Much of our journey was by bus piloted by a bus driver and an assistant that helped the driver navigate the constant chaos on the roads.  At each of the sites we had a local specialized guide which enhanced the experience.  It was late spring in Northern India, so the nights were cool and the days were warm +18 to +20 C but not hot.  Late in our trip we had some hotter days up to +27 C.  The land was very dry and dusty; we did not have any rain on our entire trip.   

We are hopeful that we have stated the facts correctly in this blog ... India is very complex  ... we feel that we have truly only had a glimpse of India. 

“The more you know, the less you understand”   ~~~ Proverb quote

A view of our journey (in red; click on image to enlarge)