rcs720

My husband and I will be traveling to India June 22-July 8th for a June30-July1 wedding in Jaipur. We just found out about the wedding this week and booked our tickets last night into and out of Delhi. Neither of us have ever been to India and we are feeling quite overwhelmed at what our best options are for the time that we have. We are both young (late 20s), adventurous -- want to see the must-do sites but get tired of spending ALL day looking at temples, etc., and active.

Please help me figure out where to get started. I am extremely excited for this trip but am just feeling overwhelmed at where to start.

Thank you!

rcs720

Ok -- I have spent all day reading and looking at options and have several ideas (my travel books aren't scheduled to deliver until tomorrow so I am devouring internet information!)

Potential Itinerary:

Delhi (don't arrive until 10:30pm)
Delhi
Delhi
Agra
Agra
Ranthambhore
Jaipur
Jaipur
Jaipur (three days for the wedding...)
Jodhpur
At this point we would LOVE to do a camel safari of sorts for maybe two nights where we camp in the dunes. Does anyone have any suggestions for this?
Jaisalmer
Train to Delhi
Delhi

I know that the weather will be over the top hot and that this is not the ideal time of year but we are locked into the July 1st wedding date and would never imagine missing the wedding of my husband's best friend.

Also -- In Jaipur we will be staying with the family of the groom but does anyone have suggestions for places to stay in other locations (I am noting previous recommendations and slowly working through all of your amazing posts!) We are NOT at all high-maintenance and would like to stay on a relatively low budget. We don't need private bathrooms or western style but at this time of year we probably DO need AC.

Thank you!

lcuy

The weather will be very hot, but you'll be okay if you dress in light clothes (no jeans!) and don't be ashamed to take an umbrella for shade and rain.

I'm not sure what day it is when you arrive in Delhi (june 22? 23?) but it appears you will be in Agra on a Friday, when the Taj Mahal is closed. Instead of three nights in Delhi at the start, you might take the train to Agra on the morning after your second night, then add in an extra day at Ranthambore. You really need two nights so you can go on a couple of game rides. Ranthambore park closes on June 30, so you can't really move that around much. I would recommend the train for getting to RNP as the drive from Agra to RNP is about 6 hours of really bad road.

After the wedding, I would choose either Jaisalmer or Jodhpur, not both, and keep in mind that while the heat in your first cities will be "over the top heat", in the desert it wlll "brutally over the top"! You might consider taking a sleeper train (with AC berth...tix are very cheap) from Jaipur to Varanasi or Hardiwar as opposed to a desert campout.

Keep in mind that transportation is prone to all sorts of delays in India, so build in time to allow for that.

Have fun planning!

ileen

My most valuable advice for you for traveling in India during the hottest part of the year is to wear light-weight clothes, seek shade always and most importantly keep drinking water. Coke and Pepsi and other such drinks are readily available. Try not to use ice and make sure the glass/container is very clean.

It is very dry in India in summer and thus dehydration is a huge problem for travelers.
In Delhi you can find safe drinking water in bottles easily. In other places, sometimes the good quality water is not available easily.
Thus, I also advise you to take a water bottle from home and keep it filled while you are out and about. You can purchase larger water bottles when you find some and then store them in your hotel or carry one in your day bag as you are sightseeing.
Ice is also not always sanitary, thus try your best not to ask for ice at small restaurants. Your best bet in this hot weather is to eat safely at the best resaurants or the 5-star hotel restaurants.
A good friend of mine who travelled independenly a few months ago has told me that she carried Pepto-Bismol in tablet form and ate one each day to keep her digestive system in order. Please read the label and make sure it is okay for you. But in the hot weather it is very easy to catch something and get sick.
Lastly, remember to take hand sanitizer in your purse and use it very, very often. It will help in keeping you healthy.
Lastly, many places will not have toilet paper or paper towels so carry a small supply in your purse, so you have some if needed.
A wedding in India is always filled with fun events and is so colorful. I know you will have a great time. Take tons of photographs. Many ceremonies often take place before the actual wedding ceremony, so keep your camera handy all the time.
Have a safe trip.

Jaya

Don't overload your itinerary. The heat will drain you of energy.

Cicerone

It’s so wonderful that you have been invited to a wedding, and it is quite special to me that you have been invited to stay with the groom’s family, as you will get to experience the warmth of Indian hospitality as well as a chance to see many of the events from a very up-close perspective (i.e., the horse -- or perhaps elephant--that the groom will ride to the wedding, etc). If you are invited to things like the bride’s bangle ceremony that is quite special too. And of course fantastic food! Do not be surprised if the wedding is at some weird time like 6 am or 8:37 pm, the time is most likely set by the astrologer (who probably also chose the mid-week date for the wedding.) If you can wear a sari to the wedding I would predict that you will make a big hit. (Perhaps you can get your husband to wear traditional clothes as well.) You might want to arrive early in Jaipur to take some time to shop for a sari; I am quite sure that the women of the groom’s family would love the opportunity to take you sari shopping. A salwar kameez or “Punjabi suit” (i.e., loose pants and long tunic) would also be appropriate if you prefer that to a sari (there is an art to wearing one that I think you have learn from an early age).

You will need a visa for India, and you might want to start on that now as it will take a few weeks to obtain it, see https://indiavisa.travisaoutsourcing.com/homepage. Make sure all your innociulations are up to date, including Tetanus, Polio and Hepatitus.

You seem to be aware of the heat issues. By late June generally the monsoon will most likely have broken, so Delhi may actually be quite rainy and streets can be flooded. This may slow you down a bit in your sightseeing in Delhi, but generally should be OK. There are many good museums if you really get downpours. Rajasthan would be quite hot, and depending on when your visit would take place, would have a bit of rain, more in July than June (but nothing near the torrents you will get other places). But overcast skies may be a relief to you from the sun. If you don’t already have it, I would suggest you get a copy of Alexander Frater’s book <i>Chasing the Monsoon</i>, which you may find interesting and informative for a trip to India during the monsoon. As you are going to Jaipur, I would also recommend that you read Gayatri Devi’s book, <i>A Princess Remembers</i>.

You have just over 2 weeks, your itin appears to be 7 places in 16 nights (which includes the 2-night camel trek), for which you are committed to at least 2 nights in Jaipur. That is a good bit of moving around even in the cool winter months. It is physically doable, but quite rushed, IMO, and the heat and rain will not help matters. I might do 4 places with that schedule in order to give more time in each and allow travel time. Rains may slow things like trains and planes down, and slow drive times as well, so you may not in fact have as much time in each place as you planned. You may also find that the groom’s relatives may want you to stay on longer in Jaipur, or you may get invited by guests at the wedding to go other interesting places, so if you can keep a flexible schedule, that may help. (You may want to find out more about the exact wedding plans, as it would not be unusual for the ceremony to be at one time or even on one day, and the wedding dinner to be later that day or even the next day. There are also usually dinners and events leading up to the actual wedding; you may be expected to attend these. Understanding what you are expected to attend will avoid misunderstanding later, esp. if you plan to leave Jaipur on the evening of July 1, which could be the night of the wedding dinner.)

Usually the first thing I would suggest to take out would be Jaislemer as it is the most isolated and hardest to get to; it’s 6-7 hours by car or train from Jodhpur and then a 17-hour night train to Delhi, (there are sometimes flights into Jaislemer but as the airport is an air force one, it is my understanding that these flights are often cancelled and given current events in Pakistan, I would not be confident that this airport is open to commercial flights currently, but check Kingfisher and Indian Air which both sometimes fly). The other reason to perhaps consider dropping Jaislemer is that while certainly interesting, it is another Mughal city with an ancient fort, and by that point you may have felt you have seen enough of those given your comment above (you won’t in fact visit a lot of Hindu temples with your itin, but will see a good number of Mughal ruins.) Personally I would want more time in Delhi, but in the rain perhaps just that short time is OK.

I see that someone has noted to you that the Taj Mahal is closed on Fridays, so you would need to work your itin out around that. My other comment is that I heartily second the comment that you should NOT plan to drive between Agra and Ranthambore. It looks doable on the map but it is in fact a dirt road for a lot of the way, is full of pot holes and is the most bone-crunching, spine -twisting road I have experienced in almost 20 years in Asia, and of the 5 hours or so it takes, about 3 are really bad. There is a train you can take which takes about 3.5 hours and is far preferable to the drive.

I agree that with a June 30 closing date for the Ranthambore park and with the wedding date, you don’t have a lot of time and may need to rework the itin. You could even go to Ranthambore first by taking a train from Delhi directly to Ranthambore, which takes 4 hours. You could then either train from Ranthambore to Agra, and then drive to Jaipur, or just go right to Jaipur and save Agra for the end of the trip (there is an overnight train from Jodphur). Note that for Ranthambore there are only two game drives a day, one around sunrise and one in the late afternoon and each lasts around 3 hours, so you need to time your itin around that and also try to get in a sufficient number of game drives. So IMO it’s hard to go for one night, as this would mean only 2 game drives (arrive the night before, do two drives the next day and depart late that evening by train for elsewhere) which is a <i>lot</i> of traveling for 2 game drives on which you may see no wildlife other than birds. I can’t stress enough that while they can certainly be interesting, game drives are <i>nothing</i> like those in Africa, not sure if you have been there, but you cannot expect to see the number and type of wildlife you see in Africa on a game drive in Ranthambore. They are very different experiences. You may of course be lucky and see tiger, but you just as well may not. The more drives you do, the more you have the chance of seeing, but it will be hot.

I know that overnight camel treks are available from Jodhpur but don’t have reccos for outfitters, as I have only done short 3-4 hour day/evening treks and booked through my hotel, but perhaps others here will or check Lonely Planet guidebooks or post on the Thorn Tree Post section of lonelyplanet.com. (A few hours is about my limit for sitting on a camel.) You should also be able to arrange camel treks from Jaipur so you may be able to fit that into the itin more easily. While I admire your pluck in going for two nights, make sure you are comfortable with the heat before you commit to two nights. You might also want to arrange your itin to do a trek atnigth and esp during full moon when you can ride at night which would be interesting and cooler. Check sunrisesunset.com for moon phases.

For hotels, a very useful website is http://sawdays.co.uk/, click on the book for India. You can also buy the book, <i>Special Places to Stay India</i>, but the website will give you a very long list of hotels to start with. A lot of these hotels are in the budget range, and all seem interesting and several, like the Imperial in Delhi, are outstanding (but it ‘s not a budget hotel by any means). There is a small Indian chain called Neemrama which operates a number of unique hotels in palaces and other old buildings and could be something to consider if you want a different experience. Go to http://www.neemranahotels.com. As you want AC, you are probably going to have to stay in more 4 star international-standard hotels in any event, as 2 and 3 star hotels are unlikely to have it; and you also will want to stay someplace with a reliable back-up generator to power that air-con, as rolling brown outs are an everyday (or every hour) occurrence in India, especially in the hot season. With the level of hotel which has air con roms, you won’t be sharing a bathroom. But see what the book says about air con even in the more budget hotels (just be wary of electrical failures). In Delhi you may like the Park, good location and fun vibe (I think of it as a young persons hotel, see http://www.theparkhotels.com). From a quick look at Sawdays, Ratan Villas in Jodphur looks interesting, see http://www.ratanvilas.com/ also check places like tripadvisor.com for reviews. (I like the Taj hotel there myself.) You may want to splurge at a certain point on a really good hotel like one of the Amans in Ranthambore or in the desert (http://www.amanresorts.com/), or one of the Oberois in Agra or elsewhere ((http://www.oberoihotels.com), although the Gateway in Agra is perfectly nice and has good Taj views for quite a bit less (www.tajhotels.com). But at luxury hotels in summer (and in the current economy) you should find good rates.

To throw out some ideas which may completely change your itin, I have been recommending recently to people traveling to India in the hot season that they consider places in the cooler regions of India like Ladakh. You can do trekking and hikes there and may find the cooler temps more bearable (mid day temps can still be hot, but mornings and evenings are cool and nights can be cold), other outdoor pursuits like rafting are available to the best of my knowledge. They also do not have the rains as the mountains block the monsoon. It’s Tibetan Buddhist, so is quite a different atmosphere from Hindu Rajasthan. You can fly from Delhi and can probably arrange to transit from Jopdhour or Jaipur via a change in Delhi. Hill stations like Darjeeling and Shimla are also cooler, but will be quite rainy and so may not be ideal from an activyt or scenic standpoint (hard to see the Himalaya through the clouds).

Or if you want a beach consider the south east coast, areas like Pondicerry and environs. You can fly to Chennai and then hire a car and driver (quite inexpensive). It will be hot, not as hot as the north, and at beaches who cares, and this is not touristed compared to Rajasthan, lots of little fishing villages and some of the colourful temples you may be thinking of. You may get a little rain and overcast skies, but no deluges. (The west coast beach areas like Goa and Kerala would be rainier.) You would have to give up parts of your Rajasthan itin for this or spend more time overall on the trip.

Also I would point, and as mentioned above, you are not going to Varanasi, which you may find extremely interesting, although quite hot. This is a city revered by Hindus and is a place you may not want to miss unless you think you will go back to India at some point. Haridwar has also been menteioned, my personal preference in that area would be Rikisesh as it is much smaller and more walkaalbe and manageable. Neither Haridwar nor Rikisesh will really be any cooler than Rajstahn, maybe by a few degrees, but not much, and both will be quite rainy, more so than Rajasthan, see weather websites. I think Rikisesh is quite charming (in the Indian way) but have not been there in the monsoon so can’t say if I would enjoy it as much; the evening aarti in poring rain may lose some of its magic perhaps. I believe that the Kanwar Mela is celebrated in Hardiwar in June/July which would either be something to attend as it would be interesting or possibly something to aovid as like 2-3 million deveotees also will be in attendance. Do some reading on both if the area interests you.

rcs720

Wow Everyone -- thank you!!!

I am absorbing everything and will try to re-post some new ideas in the next day or two.