wj1

Woo hoo! We now have our award tickets to India for next February and are thrilled. For the last few months I have been reading all of your trip reports and advice (lcuy, agtoau, Craig, rhkkmk, BostonHarbor, Cicerone, and others) which have completely whetted our appetite (and make us feel like we already know you!)

My husband and I will be following your advice to use a local agency, particularly for a car and driver. However, I want to put together a probable itinerary first. Unfortunately, in spite of two guide books and having read all your trip reports, I’m still finding it difficult to figure out which places we should see in order to give us a bit of a variety in a huge country. It seems with just a few exceptions, they all have forts, palaces, temples and mosques and I can’t decide which of those places I want to see, or I guess more importantly, why.

Here’s what I know so far. We will be arriving in Delhi late on a Thursday night (night 1) and our return flight will be from Delhi on night 15. We live in LA which would have made it a terribly long flight, but our award tickets are in Business class and we will have an overnight in CDG. So our sleep deprivation, hopefully, will not be as bad as it could have been. We also know that we want to go to Agra and Varanasi. Initially, I had been thinking of Jaipur but now I’m not so sure because I started thinking that maybe we were staying in big cities only. We do know that we want to stay in Rajasthan but are otherwise completely open. Do you have any itinerary suggestions? Any place off the well traveled tourist route to which we might deviate to break things up a bit? I can tell you that we like to travel a bit slowly and don’t want to pick up and move every day or every other day. Also, we are not interested in taking any overnight trains to save time. The only other thing I can think of is that based on some suggestions here on Fodors, I probably would like to stay in a place early in the trip where I can buy/have made some clothes to wear on the trip.

I’m really looking forward to hearing your thoughts. Thanks in advance.

LynnieD

Jealous.

rhkkmk

we also like the slow pace and thus, as you know from my report, in 11 days we really only did the golden triangle.....with your 15 days i think you could add Varanasi...we used only the car, but you might want to fly to Var. as i think it is far...??

we used castle and king and were very happy.....

there are lots of small town places you can see in between the cities if going by car....that is a reason in my mind for travelling by car....

speaking of car, make sure you have an SUV....the toyota qualis is perfect...

on your last nite on the way back to delhi or on your first nite out of delhi, stay at the neemrana fort palace hotel.....i suggest 2 nites actually....fantastic...

book some of your own hotels as you will save money....we did well with the sheratons in agra and jaipur...

CFW

Cingratulations! Great feeling to get the tickets you want using reward miles! Now you can enjoy the planning and anticipating a wonderful trip. For clothes shopping I found Delhi the best so you may want to stay there the first two days or so to get used to the time change, do some sightseeing, buy the clothes you want, and then head out for the rest of your trip. Varanasi is different from any place else you will visit, and Udaipur, with lake Pichola, is very different from other areas in Rajasthan which are located in desert areas. I think Udaipur, with the lake and a day or overnight trip to Ranakhpur to see the Jain temples are "not to be missed." Unfortunately we did not have enough time to go to Ranakhpur, and really regret it. We also liked Jodhpur because it was a relatively small, less crowded and clean city, easy to get around, and because of its location we were able to spend a day in the desert and do a camel ride. The fort there is many people's favorites although I personally liked the forts in Jaipur and Agra better -- although I don't really know why. If you are interested in camel safaris and seeing more of the desert you should also consider Jaisalmer. We didn't get there but there was a recent trip report that included Jaisalmer and also had great pictures. Other than the Taj, many people don't like Agra, but we spent two nights there and really enjoyed the other sights in and around Agra, especially Fatehpur Sikri, the Agra Fort, the Baby Taj, Akbar's tomb, and we liked having the time to go back to the Taj Mahal twice -- once at sunrise and again in late afternoon in full sun. All in all, I think no matter where you go you will find fascinating things to see and do.

wj1

Thanks everyone.

Here's what I have figured out so far:

3 nights at beginning of the trip in Delhi including the late night arrival.
1 night in Delhi at the end of the trip.
2 nights in Agra.
2 nights in Varanasi.

That leaves just 6 nights for "the rest." It's those last 6 nights that I can't sort out because there is so much I want to do in Rajasthan. What would you do? I figure we can do either 3 nights somewhere and 3 nights somewhere else, or 3-2-1. I'm not real keen on 2-2-2 as I'm concerned that will entail too much packing and traveling between towns. I'd love to hear your ideas.

lcuy

For a first trip, I would do a car w/driver trip to the golden triangle- Delhi, Agra, Jaipur, Delhi- fly to Varanasi, then spend several days in Delhi at the end.

The reason is that using the car and driver is an easy way to ease into India. Varanasi really will assault your senses, and I think you will get more out of it after acclimatizing to India first. Same with Delhi...after all your travel, Delhi will seem rather civilized and you'll be much more comfortable hailing autorickshaws, and you'll enjoy the sights and shopping in Delhi more.

Even these four cities will be taking you to a huge swath of India. It just isn't possible to see it all in one trip.

A lot of travel in India is just hard; hard to make connections, lack of reasonable accommodations, hard to avoid monsoon damage or winter fog, long distances,etc. You just have to go slowly.

I'm heading out on my fourth trip in May, and it will be a trip full of repeats. I'm taking my daughter, who has never been, so we have to go to the Taj Mahal (and I happen to like Agra). She wants to visit Varanasi, and I wanted to go back to Udaipur (I was sick the last time I was there, so didn't see much).

I would like to have gone to Orissa, Leh, Darjeeling, and Goa, but all of them presented their own difficulties in May. Guess I'll just have to go back another time to see them!

rhkkmk

lcuy presents a perfect trip...