Wednesday, July 21, 2010

Namaste from West-India!

Hello my friends. Namaste from North-West India. It took a while, but then again, an internet connection is not as common here as it is in other parts of the world. We landed July 11th in Delhi, just before we lost the soccer match against Spain. But my orange T-shirt symbolizes more then just the favorite color of the Dutch National team.
The next day represents the start of a 14 day tour throughout the desert land of Rajasthan, the north eastern province, visiting remote cities and villages like Mandawa, Bikaner, Jalsaimer, Osia, Jodhpur, Udaipur, Pushkar and Jaipur. It is very interesting to see the different cultures and landscapes. Especially sleeping in the tents in Osia was a really exciting adventure, complete with camelrides.

Now we are in Jaipur and tomorrow heading for the Tai Mahal in Agra.
See you soon!

Saturday, July 10, 2010

A Final to begin with

Namaskar to you all! Tomorrow morning the voyage to India starts by an early leave (05.00 am) from Heerlen to Dusseldorf in Germany and then (back) to Amsterdam. The KLM flight will bring us to New Delhi and we land just before the Worldcup final between Spain and Holland. We ll see about who wins, but no matter who wins, just change the color from orange to red or v.v. See you all back on the blog in India!

Sunday, June 20, 2010

Our team

Our initarary

Our journey starts July 11th from Dusseldorf (Germany) via Amsterdam to Delhi (arrival 22.50 pm). The next day the adventure starts by travelling to the golden city of Jaisalmer across the desert cities of Bikaner and Mandawa. We will make a safari on camels and sleep in tents. In Bikaner we go to the sandstone made fort palace and the temple of rats in Deshnok. Next turn weill be the isolate province of Shekawati, known by its colorful haveli's where we spent the night in Mandawa in authentic clay buildings.
In the second part of the journey 2 we travel through Rajasthan, the land of the maharadja's. We will see the desert cities Jaisalmer and Jodhpur (Meherangarh fort). Then to Udaipur at lake Pichola  (remember James Bond film Octopussy). In the end we visit Pushkar (Amber Fort) at the holy lake where we have some rest in restored palaces and again haveli's. In Jaipur we take some time off.
In chapter 3 of course we want to see the Taj Mahal in Agra. Besides the Taj we are on route from Jaipur to Agra visiting the monkey temple in Galta and the waterfront of Keoladeo Nationale Park in Bharatpur, also seeing Fatehpur Sikri, de deserted city.

In part 4 we leave by (night-)train Agra and go all the way to the east to Varanasi at the holy Ganges river where we spent several days watching bathing and meditating pelgrims.
Again with the train dwe travel back north to Karol Bagh in Delhi.

From Delhi the final chapter starts. By train we go up north to Amritsar and then to the Himalayan foothills at Dharamsala. This city is known as Little Lhasa because the exile government of Tibet here lives. Also we spent some days at the Tibetan Children Village where we will visit the foster children of Marinalbertim: Karma en Dawa. After that is time to look at the finale....

Our plain from Dharamsala departs on August, 2th, back to Delhi and from there on Aug. 3th to Holland.
The original blog is written in dutch and you can read or of you like see photo's on:
http://noordindia2010.blogspot.com/
On this English blog we will post our shorter messages. And you are more then welcome to sent us your replies on this site!
Namaste!