<p>Daughter has travel itinerary for next fall and is trying to put together a list of potential options in each country for weekend sidetrips. She’ll be living in Bangalore in India and may try to link up meet up with a college friend for a weekend.</p>
<p>So far, she’s come up with:</p>
<p>a) a weekend trip to Agra (flying Banglore to Delhi and train to Agra). Grandpa is pushing hard for this. Not sure how feasible this one is – maybe a three-day weekend? Other option is to stay an extra week, but that gets complicated changing group-rate flights to the US.</p>
<p>b) a Euro beach weekend in Goa (looks easy from Bangalore).</p>
<p>Do you have any “must-see” sidetrips to recommend? Mumbai? Suggestions?</p>
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<p>Also looking for one-week vacation ideas from Buenos Aires, Argentina. Santiago is high on the list, but her program strongly discourages leaving the “host” country because it’s a nightmare if visa problems prevent a timely return!</p>
<p>I would definitely recommend seeing the Taj - you can’t go all the way to India and not see it - no one is ever disappointed! Goa is beautiful - some of the nicest beaches I’ve seen, but a beach is a beach, if it is a choice between the Agra and Goa - definitely go to Agra. Mumbai is fun but congested, noisy and crowded. There are a lot of historical sights - The Afghan Church, Chor Bazaar, Gateway to India and a walk along Marine Drive are a few things I like to do. If she goes to Agra and time permits she should try to go to Rajasthan - soooo amazing!!!</p>
<p>Kerala…Incredibly interesting…Also on the southwest coast. It’s really interesting in that they invested in economic development before economic growth. Which led to some of the highest literacy rates (beating some American states) and lowest infant mortality rates in the entire country, despite the fact that they did not experience the same economic boom as the rest of India.</p>
<p>OK, help me out with some logistics. She’s going to be 2000 miles from Agra. There are direct flights from Bangalore to Delhi. There are trains from Delhi to Agra. How does one connect the dots – from the airport in Delhi to the train station in Delhi? Hotels suitable for college girls in Agra?</p>
<p>Is this a feasible three-day weekend trip? Four-day weekend?</p>
<p>Grandpa is pushing Agra hard. He said just take the train…until D told him she’d already checked the schedules and it’s a 30 hour train ride each way!</p>
<p>It’s been many, many years since I was in there, but I think that train travel is a very valuable way to experience India.</p>
<p>Travel with a male companion, and take something other than the fanciest class (ie, other than first class air-conditioned).</p>
<p>Also, she should consider visiting a hill station, such as Darjeeling, Simla or Mussoorie. The view of the mountains is amazing, and if she goes during the hot season, the cool breezes are a delightful relief.</p>
<p>I’m sending you a PM. Basically - you should call me. I have tons of suggestions.</p>
<p>(I’ll be in India in August, working with the land reform organization of Dalits - leadership training, and some external planning.) There are some amazing things much closer to Bangalore.</p>
<p>Don’t need a male companion. My d. (17) traveled across India on second-class trains last summer, and had a blast.</p>
<p>(By the way, if she does Agra, 20 minutes away, with a great, inexpensive little hotel, is one of the world’s greatest bird sanctuaries - Bharatpur. I like it better than the Taj myself (but I’ve been too many times.))</p>
<p>You can fly from Bangalore (a beautiful city by the way) to Delhi and take the train to Agra and return by train to Delhi the same day. There are lots of great hotels in Delhi. I don’t know about getting from Delhi airport to the train station but I don’t think it is that complicated. There are lots of India tourism web sites that you should look at.
As far as hill stations go, if she is already in Bangalore, Ootacumund (Ooty) in Tamil Nadu is pretty close and definitely worth a visit.
I agree about Kerala, though I’ve never been I have heard it is beautiful and not to be missed.</p>
<p>“Kerala…Incredibly interesting…Also on the southwest coast. It’s really interesting in that they invested in economic development before economic growth. Which led to some of the highest literacy rates (beating some American states) and lowest infant mortality rates in the entire country, despite the fact that they did not experience the same economic boom as the rest of India.”</p>
<p>Yup - first elected communist government in the world, and incredibly successful, though now the parties see-saw widely. But the pattern was set in the 1950s.</p>
<p>ID, she should fly from Bangalore to New Delhi, then take a train to Agra, see Taj Mahal and travel by bus/train(?) to Jaipur and Udaipur. It can be done in 4 days if she flies into ND and then flies out of Udaipur. (The temples at Ranakpur, near Udaipur, are gorgeous). 1 night Agra, 1 night jaipur, and 2 nights Udaipur.</p>
<p>I would not even consider Mumbai or Goa. Mumbai is gross, and Goa is disappointing.</p>
<p>Kerala was also known to be a matrilineal culture - which some thought had even more influence on literacy than either the early Christian missionaries (why many people from Kerala have names like Thomas) or the Communist government.</p>
<p>The trains are wonderful in India. Good toast and tea, remnants of the colonial system. At least so it was 24 years ago when I spent 3 months travelling alone through the country writing an article on the then-unknown Indian film industry…</p>
<p>If she is interested in visiting Kerala, it is beautiful. The backwaters, and the river boats, quite a fascinating lifestyle. There are Snake boat races on July 10 and Aug.12 in different villages. Also July 17 is a huge Elephant festival in Thrissur, and Aug.27 is Onam.</p>
<p>Ooty, Coonoor and Coorg are gorgeous hillstations, tea plantations etc.</p>
<p>Our friends went to Cochin City, Munnar and Periyar game sanctuary last summer and were raving about it.</p>
<p>Bangalore does get some of the S/W monsoons in July.</p>
<p>I was just in Delhi and Bangalore a few weeks ago. The flight from Bangalore to Delhi takes about 2.5-3 hours. There is a new high speed train that goes from Delhi to Agra and cuts the travel time down tremendously. But the train leaves early in the morning from Delhi. </p>
<p>She could fly from BLR to DEL and then spend the night. Take the AM train to Agra, arrive by lunchtime and then spend the day at the Taj, have dinner then take the evening train back to Delhi. She’d then have to spend the night again in Delhi before taking the next morning flight back to Bangalore. Total this means if she left BLR friday night, she’d be back in BLR on sunday afternoon – definitely possible within a weekend.</p>
<p>Ooty is nice, but somewhat over-rated. It will be hard to get there from BLR. Suggest that Mysore may be an easier weekend trip for her instead (still within Karnataka). About 3 hours by car, via new highway.</p>
<p>That helps a lot on the feasibility of the Delhi/Agra trip. It’s one thing to look up general travel options on the internet, but difficult to get a feel for times and real-world logistics.</p>
<p>My guess is that she’ll probably get an up-close look at the Mysore highway. One of the case-studies on last year’s trip was three days of sleeping on coconut farms and villages that are being disrupted by that project – to get the other side of the development story to complement discussions with government and business leaders.</p>
<p>The weekend trips will have to be planned on the fly. She’ll be living with an Indian family in Bangalore and they will likely have their own weekend excursions planned for her. Otherwise, it will be impromptu trips made with fellow students who she won’t meet until September. By the time they get to Bangalore in mid-November, her group will have already travelled to Buenos Aires, Beijing, and Shanghai – so who the heck knows what a fun weekend will look like!</p>
<p>It’ll definitely be a “play it by ear” situation. She’s thinking that it would be good to have some options in the back of her mind.</p>
<p>Kerala was also known to be a matrilineal culture - which some thought had even more influence on literacy than either the early Christian missionaries (why many people from Kerala have names like Thomas."</p>
<p>St. Thomas Christians in Kerala claim their descent from Thomas who, after the scene of the Resurrection, traveled to Kerala in the 1st Century A.D. I guess you could call him an “early Christian missionary”. The “official” school of thought says he came by boat from Alexandria, after the death of Jesus. The “unofficial” school of thought says he traveled with Mary Magdalene, who died in what is now Pakistan (in a town still called Marieh), and Jesus, who returned to Srinagar, where, about 6 km. outside of town, his tomb lies to this day (look up “Rozabal”). The Portuguese and then the British were pretty shocked when they arrived.</p>
<p>Literacy rates in Kerala took off in the 1950s. There were indeed matrilineal communities in Kerala for a very long time - most of them, however, have now died off, mostly due to urbanization.</p>
<p>A must-see would be the thousand-year-old temple carvings at Ellora in central Maharashtra (the state in which Mumbai is located) and the equally ancient Buddhist cave monastery in Ajanta, in the same state. These sites are outside the city of Aurangabad, which receives thousands of foreign visitors and travellers every year. Aurangabad is well-set up for tourists, with accomodation easily available. There are flights from all the major cities, Bangalore included, to Aurangabad, so it’s fairly easily accessible.</p>
<p>Ellora and Ajanta are the underexposed gems of Indian architecture/tourism. I’d go as far as to say that they blew me away a lot more than the Taj did. She should <em>definitely</em> visit these places - it’ll be completely worth it.</p>
<p>ID,
I live in Bangalore. PM me if you have any queries whatsoever about the place.</p>
<p>Also, Kerala is the most beautiful place on earth. I’m actually from Allepey, Kerala and I can tell you that the backwaters there are more beautiful than any of Venice’s canals.</p>
<p>Seconding Ellora and Ajanta. They were the single most spectacular site I saw in India - site, not people, culture, etc. To me way cooler than the Taj.</p>
The “official” school of thought says he came by boat from Alexandria, after the death of Jesus. The “unofficial” school of thought says he traveled with Mary Magdalene, who died in what is now Pakistan (in a town still called Marieh), and Jesus, who returned to Srinagar, where, about 6 km. outside of town, his tomb lies to this day (look up “Rozabal”). The Portuguese and then the British were pretty shocked when they arrived.</p>