2025: Northern India

1. Delhi, and onwards to Jaipur

It was time to visit another part of the world which was completely new to us, and we contacted Titan Travel who had provided us with an excellent holiday in Sicily in 2023. We chose their 'Great Indian Rail Journey' tour which promised some amazing sightseeing - but strangely for us actually included no boating at all.

After a very comfortable overnight flight - thank you Virgin Atlantic - we arrived in Delhi where we were greeted by Vishu who was to be our tour manager and guide for the next 2 weeks (and an absolutely excellent manager-guide he was too). Our coach immediately took us through the chaotic horn-blowing Delhi traffic to our first hotel, the Leela Ambience, which was very well decorated with many beautiful flowers and statues. As we were tired from our journey, we were glad to be able to spend the afternoon resting and getting used to the shift in time-zone - not to mention getting used to the concept of a hotel whose reception was on the 3rd floor and whose room-numbering system was just a little bit illogical (2201-2241 on the 5th floor, 2301-2341 on the 6th floor, etc).

The hotel had many beautiful flowers ...			... and some very interesting statues

The next day we were ready to start exploring the city of Delhi, and the coach started by taking us into Old Delhi to visit the market. The streets here were too narrow for motor vehicles, so we transferred to a group of rickshaws - although for a while we had to walk because the streets were too narrow even for rickshaws..

Our first view of the Old Delhi market	The many stalls, selling a variety of foods and other products, reminded us of the market that we'd visited in Old Hanoi
A fleet of rickshaws waited to take us into the market	No, not this one (loaded with rather a lot of gas bottles)	The chaotic electric wiring above the market streets ...	... was ideal for the many monkeys to swing from

Also that morning we visited the 17th century Jama Mosque, for which we had to be barefoot and have our heads covered. Beautifully crafted in red sandstone and marble as one of the largest Sunni Mosques in India - it has a capacity of almost 25000 worshippers - it was built in a fortified style but is still very much in use as a place of worship today.

Barefoot and covered to visit the mosque	It is a beautiful place of worship ...	... with magnificent features ....	... and a well fortified entrance ...

Our busy morning finished with a visit to the Memorial Gardens dedicated to Mahatma Gandhi. Beautifully maintained  grasslands and flower-beds are home to numerous plaques displaying quotes from his speeches, and around the edges are many trees planted by world statesmen (such as the one we saw that had been planted by Nelson Mandela)

Statue of Gandhi at his memorial garden	The memorial gardens	His memorial tomb	Typical plaque in the garden

After a delicious lunch of lamb curry in a local restaurant, we continued that afternoon to visit an even older mosque, the Quwwatul Islam Mosque. Built about 750 years ago, its most striking feature is the Tower of Victory which celebrates the Islamic conquest of India in 1192. Built from the ruins of Jain and Hindu temples, this tower was so well constructed that it is still absolutely upright after all these years despite the occurrence of several earthquakes during that time.

The amazing Tower of Victory	The tomb in the Mosque	There are some amazing decorations...	Another view of the Tower

The next morning we had a very early start, up at 4.15 to catch the 6am train to Jaipur (with the time-zone difference, my internal clock was screaming 'but it's still yesterday'). Trains in India have improved greatly in the last 10 years: no longer are there crowds of people hanging outside the train or sitting on the roof, for example, but their standard still falls a very long way short of the trains in Europe or America. We travelled first-class (which meant that we had proper seats in a carriage with air-conditioning) and we were served with breakfast snacks at our seats, but overall it was not as comfortable as, say, 2nd class travel in England; if you are intending to travel by train India, I definitely recommend that you travel on the highest class of carriage available on your train, for rail travel is relatively inexpensive there. The train was quite crowded, with all seats being taken and pre-booked so do not expect to be able to get a good seat if you haven't booked. Note also that since on a 6-hour journey a visit to the washroom is almost inevitable then, unless you are lucky enough to be on a train that has a "Western-style" washroom, the facility consists merely of a hole in the floor and an instruction on where to put your feet!

After a brief rest in our hotel in Jaipur, we visited two smaller temples. The first of these was dedicated to Ganesha, the elephant-headed god of beginnings and of the Removal of Obstacles. The legend goes that when he was just a boy his father chopped his head off after a misunderstanding, and then made amends by cutting the head off an elephant and transferring it to his son. On our way to the temple we passed a market where people would buy offerings to place in the temple, and where there were numerous cattle roaming the streets.

Market stalls sold offerings to take to the Temple	Wild cattle roamed the streets ...	... stopping to drink at the well	The inside of the small Temple was beautiful	The statue of Ganesha inside the Temple

We then visited a more modern temple nearby, which was most impressive (but photographs were not permitted) before spending a relaxing afternoon sampling the local beer beside the hotel's swimming pool. The following morning we set off by coach to view the nearby Amber Fort, but on the way we stopped to admire the impressive facade of the palace that the local Maharajah had built for his female personnel (who were not permitted to be seen in public). It is genuinely a facade however, for there is no palace behind it; it consists entirely of windows behind which the women could sit and observe the street-level parades and other activities.

And so we proceeded towards the Amber Fort and other amazing sights....

All pictures on this site are © Allan Jones unless otherwise stated.