One Month India Itinerary/Advice Needed
 

Hello,

I have a itinerary I would like to run by a few of you and get some advice. This will be my first time in India. I will be traveling in mid Oct to mid Nov

Dehli. Oct 14th - 17th
Agra. 17th - 18th
- 18th - 19th grace period for travel time
Jodhpur. 19th - 22nd
Jaisalmer. 22nd - 25th
- 25th - 26th grace period for travel time
Udaipur. 26th - 29th
Bundi. 29th - Nov 1st
Orchha. 1st - 2nd
Khajuraho. 2nd - 4th
Varanasi. 4th - 8th
fly to
Goa. 8th - 11th
Mumbai. 11th - 13th

My flight is already booked Dehli in/Mumbai out... so that what's going on with the end there...

What I am mostly concerned about are the travel times and the duration of stay...

I think everyone will ask why Varanasi for four nights? I am starting to ask why four nights and not add a day to Jaisalmer. Alright made bookings...but they are cancellable so let me know your opinions. It will help out a lot.

Give me some advice... Please and thank you!

Z

With the exception of Agra I've been to every place you intend to visit. How are you intending to get between all of these places? Travel times can be long and difficult in India. For nearly all of these transitions you are going to need to add in grace time for travel and plan on wasting a day to get nearly anywhere.

What are you planning to do in Goa? Go to the beach? Unless you have a really strong reason for wanting to go to Goa, I'd eliminate it completely.

I am not a huge fan of Khajuraho and really liked Orchha much better. Perhaps switch a day over from Khajuraho to Orchha.

I've now spent 4 months total in India, and the one place I regret not having been able to visit is Amritsar. If you eliminated Goa you could add that in and take a flight from Delhi to there and then back through Delhi to continue on to Agra.

It's good that you are leaving some travel time, but you need to lay this out on a calendar with estimated travel times for all moves.

You can find train schedules (and buy tickets, which you SHOULD do ahead of time) on cleartrip.com. Can't help with drive times, except that they will be long, and probably longer than you are told.

While Amritsar is certainly worth seeing, nothing wrong with visiting Goa, provided you spend some time other than at the beach (e.g. Panaji, spice plantation, Hindu temples, Old Goa) and you pick a less developed beach (there's no such thing as an undeveloped beach in Goa, if you want that you need to go further south). I would allocate no more than one full day for Khajuraho, but that is likely to mean two nights.

Otherwise that is a pretty standard itinerary.

I concur that one full day touring in Khajuraho is adequate and I would fly from there to Varanasi rather than drive. There may also be a train. We spent a night in Orccha which everyone seems to love, but left our hotel a day early as we were tired of the begging and not thrilled with accommodations. Instead we spent the time in Gwalior which is rarely visited and which has so many unique things to see. I highly recommend an overnight there. IMO 3 nights in Jodpur, which I enjoyed, can be cut to 2 nights. The dust is quite bad there and my husband's asthma flares up. Don't miss it though...I thought it was very interesting. Three nights in Varanasi should be fine. You will either love it or hate it. For us it was our most memorable place in India. It is a photographer's dream.

Agree with Julies re Goa, not that impressed with the beaches either.

Spent two nights in Agra to catch sunrise and sunset and was happy that we did that.