Masinagudi is the stretch between Bandipur national reserve forest and Madhumalai forest range, all of which is situated in the Western Ghats.Masinagudi can be reached by road from bangalore or Mysore.The road is good most of the way but once you enter the forest…Read More

Masinagudi is the stretch between Bandipur national reserve forest and Madhumalai forest range, all of which is situated in the Western Ghats.Masinagudi can be reached by road from bangalore or Mysore.The road is good most of the way but once you enter the forest range there are a few potholes and one has to be very careful while driving at night. But once you enter the forest range one is least bothered about other things like bad roads because there is so much to see and absorb.One can see animals ,birds,wild squirrels, even snakes on the road. As we entered the reserve forest we were advised by the forest range personnel at the gates to drive very carefully taking care not to hurt or scare the animals away.

We were fortnate enough to see a couple of Panthers in their natural setting, and the endangered species of barking deer.It was also great to see an elephant family bathing and cooling off in a stream.

Masinagudi itself is a lovely place with an abundance of raw wild nature where one can go for long walks and generally relax amidst the wonderful bounty of nature.The place is simply amazing and most visitors tend to come back to the place again and again.We met a gentleman who has been visiting the place since 18 years.He was saying that after the initial few visits with family and friends , now he is much happier coming there alone, since he gets do what he wants without any interference from others.It is that kind of a place , complete in itself mesmerising you !

Most mornings in masinagudi are Cold, filled with mist , which slowly clears away.One can spend hours together watching this and also listening to the birds.Many people come to watch birds since there are many species of migratory birds coming there during different time of the year.It is advisable to carry a sturdy pair of walking shoes and a small umbrella or a rain coat since it rains without any warning .The best time to vist Masinagudi is from May to November after which the Eastern Monsoons set in and it becomes difficult to move about because of torrential rains.
We were told that there were a few tourists who came at that time of the year just to watch the rain from the resort and it must be quite a spectacle.

There are quite a few jungle lodges and guest houses in masinagudi , most of which are filled to capacity.So, one needs to book in advance.We stayed at one such place called Blue Valley Jungle Resort. The scenic Blue Valley Jungle Resort where we stayed for the weekend is situated on the slopes of Nilgiri hills also known as the Blue Mountains , which also has the famous hill resort Ooty nestling amidst the mountain range.There is also a jungle resort run by the governement authorities situated close to Blue Valley Jungle Resort.

The place can boast of one of the most breathtaking sceneries that is bound to stun the visitors.We were definitely more than impressed. One can hear the trumpet of elephants,tigers roaring and see plenty of deers and other wild life around the place since it is situated close to the Madhumalai forest range.As we took a walk through the jungle we got to see some amazing variety of wild orchids and other wild flowers some of which are not found anywhere in the world..

The facilities that the resort provided was inclusive of all meals, trekking and camping with the help of a guide and campfire at night with some entertainment for the guests.All in all it was excellent value for money .
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Herbert Ypma is a design guru and probably best known as the man behind the popular 'Hip Hotel' guides. If Herbert says it's hip, the world listens to this arbiter of fashion. Herbert was born in the Netherlands which is pretty ironic given how rubbish…Read More

Herbert Ypma is a design guru and probably best known as the man behind the popular 'Hip Hotel' guides. If Herbert says it's hip, the world listens to this arbiter of fashion. Herbert was born in the Netherlands which is pretty ironic given how rubbish Dutch hotels tend to be but fortunately for the world of fashionable accommodation, his family moved to New York when he was six years old. So strong is his association with the hotel trade that I was quite surprised when I realised that he had edited this book, 'India Modern – Traditional Forms and Contemporary Design' which is published by Phaidon.

We go to India on holiday most years and when I'm not in India I am generally thinking about India, writing about India or planning where to go next and sometimes I just enjoy indulging in looking at picture books like this one. 'India Modern' is a gloriously indulgent visual feast of images that remind me of the country that I love.

It's first and foremost a book of images interspersed with the odd fairly insubstantial commentary by Ypma or more interesting quotations from famous (or not so famous) people. But the words are secondary to the pictures. Some of the shots are outstanding and make me sigh jealously at the thought that my own photos will never come close to being as good but surprisingly I consider that rather a lot of the images are not substantially better than my own pictures. Ypma himself is not the photographer – he worked with a team of what the introduction describes as 'talented photographers'; some more talented than others, clearly. I am of course utterly green with envy that someone got paid to trot around India with a bunch of photographers taking pictures – now why don't I get opportunities like that?

Modern? Really

I'm not entirely sure why the book is called India Modern since very few of the pictures are overtly modern in tone and many are distinctly historic. I'm also not sure what Ypma is really trying to achieve with this project – other than a big, bright, visually indulgent coffee table book. If that's really all there is to it, then let it stand on that merit as a successful volume. But somehow I think there's supposed to be more to this than just nice pictures. There is a sort of explanation given in the quotation on the inner cover from the great architect Le Corbusier, famous outside India for many reasons but within India as the architect of the city of Chandigarh, loved by its inhabitants and derided by the British as 'India's answer to Milton Keynes'.

Here's the quote:

" To be modern is not a fashion, it is a state. It is necessary to understand history, and he who understands history knows how to find continuity between that which was, that which is and that which will be."

So on that basis you can easily justify a book full of fairly random images of past and present and call it 'modern'.

Ypma's photographers take the kind of pictures that I take – but generally of course they do them much better than I do. They capture images of windows and doors, scenes shot through screens and framed by doorways. They play with light and shadow and crop familiar images in unusual ways. They pick out the colours of turbans and robes set against drab backgrounds. They capture faces in a way that I will never be able to because I'm still just a tourist who travels in fear of giving offence. But still I struggle with the theme.

I have the large format version of the book – the one which corresponds to Ciao's ISBN code in this listing. It's a large paperback about 10 or 11 inches square. The quality of the paper is high – it's thick paper that lets the colours sing out of the page. In just under 250 pages we get seven chapters, some more coherent than others. It seems as if Ypma laid out all his favourite photos and then tried to think of a way to group them together. The opening chapter is perhaps the most muddled and is called 'A Rich Reservoir'. This includes some of the historic sources of design inspiration such as the Indian love of mathematics (an Indian famously invented zero – dontcha know!), the Islamic influence of the Moghul invaders, the early development of Indian modernism and the influence of colonialism – Dutch, Portuguese and British in particular. See what I mean? A bit of a mish mash.

In the second chapter Ypma is on comfortable ground. It's entitled 'Splendid Ruins' and focuses on two of India's famous heritage hotels – the Neemrana Fort Palace Hotel and the Udaipur Lake House. From the sublime to the ridiculous and we flip from 5 star splendour in Chapter Two to local mud architecture in Chapter Three – 'Indigenous Skills'. Chapter Four ' A Natural Sense of Colour' gives Ypma's photographers free reign to run around taking pictures of turbans, doors and windows, especially in the blue city of Jodphur.

Chapter Five is called 'Cultural Ingredients' and takes us off in an unusual direction, that of textiles with beautiful atmospheric photos of cloth. It sounds crazy but it works. Chapter six is called 'Ornate Order' and is another mish mash of random images that don't work for me at all. The photographers get carried away shooting scenes through carved screens – never easy to get the focus right on those as I know only too well.

Finally in Chapter Seven after more than 200 pages Ypma seems to be making his point. This is called 'Form Follows Culture' and contains photos of modern buildings that he believes are inspired by the traditions shown in the preceding chapers. One of these is – bizarrely – the Belgian Embassy in New Delhi and another is the Jawahar Kala Kendra Museum in Jaipur which was inspired by the astrological designs of Marharajah Jai Singh II. Finally in the cheesiest of style the book plays out with three sunsets which are instantly recognisably Indian silhouettes.

What I like about the book is that I only have to open to covers to be reminded why I love India. I love that the photographers capture the visual delights without being dragged down by the smells, the filth and the decay whilst showing an honest image that nothing is perfect and unblemished. What I don't like is the pretence that there's a theme and a thread running through the book. My advice would be to look at the pictures and enjoy them and not to look for too much more than that. Only when you start to read do you realise that it's actually rather a shallow compilation of thoughts and quotations that don't tell us anything like as much as the pictures can.

IndiaModern– Traditional Forms and Contemporary Design
Herbert Ypma
ISBN 071483646X – this is the large format version I have
Amazon have the smaller format ISBN 98-0714839486 available for just over £8.
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Every time my husband and I go travelling in India and we wonder whether we should hire a tourist guide at a major attraction, I’m reminded of an experience at Fatehpur Sikri. Fatehpur Sikri, near Agra, is a very major site – it was established…Read More

Every time my husband and I go travelling in India and we wonder whether we should hire a tourist guide at a major attraction, I’m reminded of an experience at Fatehpur Sikri. Fatehpur Sikri, near Agra, is a very major site – it was established in the 16th century by the Mughal emperor Akbar. The palace complex, in particular, is the highlight of any trip to Fatehpur Sikri: the palaces are gloriously carved, and have interesting histories to them.

Our trip to Fatehpur Sikri was very impromptu: we woke up one Sunday and decided to go to Fatehpur Sikri for the day. We didn’t get any time for research, so when we landed up, we hired a guide – a licensed Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) guide. These guys go through training and exams, so we’d guessed we’d be in safe hands. Almost from the very first structure in the palace complex, we realised how wrong we were. "This," said our guide, waving towards a set of stone cells, each with a stone ring carved into the base of the wall, "were the stables. The rings were used to tether the horses."

We walked on till the end of the ‘stables’, only to find the regulation ASI sign. On it was written the sad truth: "contrary to what most tourist guides say", this was not the stables, but possibly the chambers of the maids. The stone rings were used to probably secure curtains or screens. At nearly every building in the complex, our guide had something interestingly juicy to tell us – which, on examination of the ASI sign alongside, proved to be pure bilge.

Which is why we don’t really trust Indian tourist guides very much. There’s a tendency to play to the gallery – doesn’t everybody love a delightful history? – so delightful histories are cooked up. It’s pretty much the same case in Delhi too. For example, guides will tell you that the massive barbican in front of the gate of the Red Fort was built by Shahjahan to ‘veil’ the fort from public gaze (the barbican was raised by Aurangzeb, long after he had succeeded Shahjahan as emperor).

Your best bet, therefore, is to either spend a lot of time and effort finding a guide who really knows what they’re talking about (not an easy proposition, as there are a lot of charlatans out there) – or to get yourself a good guidebook. Unfortunately, since most travel guides try to cover everything a tourist would be interested in, the amount of detail and explanation you can expect is pretty minimal.

This is where Swapna Liddle’s recently-launched book Delhi: 14 Historic Walks (Westland Ltd; ISBN: 978-93-81626-24-5) is a boon. Swapna’s a historian (her PhD was on 19th century Delhi, so she’s literally on home ground here). Also, she’s been conducting historical walks for over a decade now. I’ve been on umpteen walks with her – in fact, all the information in my numerous ‘Historic Delhi’ journals has been compiled from notes I’ve taken on her walks.

Delhi: 14 Historic Walks covers, as is obvious by its title, fourteen walking routes. These include Delhi’s three World Heritage Sites (the Qutb Minar area, Humayun’s Tomb, and the Red Fort), plus eleven other areas that are rich in historical heritage, such as Lutyens’ Delhi, Tughlaqabad, Hauz Khas, Nizamuddin, Lodi Garden and Safdarjang’s Tomb, and Purana Qila. Each chapter (one per walk) begins with a brief history of the area, followed by a longer description of the walk route. Here, there are clear instructions on which path to follow, what to look out for, and – of course – the history of each structure along the way. Unlike a lot of other comparatively boring tourist literature I’ve come across, Swapna’s book actually takes the trouble of explaining architectural nuances that help you to appreciate a building better. For example, how the arch developed from a clumsy ‘false’ arch (Indian stone workers knew nothing of arches till the Central Asians brought the concept here) to a ‘true’ arch – or how you can tell the difference between the cenotaph of a Muslim male from that of a female.

Alongside are occasional anecdotes. I am a writer of historical books and do a lot of research into 17th century Delhi, so in my self-satisfied way, I’d not been expecting to come across anything new. But there was – interesting legends (and, significantly, specifically marked as legends or stories, not paraded as history) about places and people in Delhi’s history. There are little asides, like excerpts from the memoirs of travellers like Ibn Battuta, François Bernier and Maurice Dekobra. There’s a sadly prophetic couplet by the last Mughal emperor, Bahadur Shah. There are the names of the common bird species to be seen at Hauz Khas. And more.

From the purely practical angle, too, the book delivers. At the back of the book is a map of Delhi, with each walk area highlighted, along with major roads and the Delhi Metro rail network. Each chapter has a detailed route map, including prominent landmarks and roads in the vicinity, plus (of course) the exact route of the walk and the structures it includes. Also provided for each walk are the details you’d need as a visitor: timings of monuments, ticket prices, amenities, parking facilities, difficulty levels, special instructions (for instance, for Tughlaqabad, Swapna mentions that you should wear sensible footwear and garments that cover your legs, since thorny scrub covers much of the area). For each walk, she also specifies the approximate time you can expect to spend on the walk – and suggests an abbreviated walk, with only the highlights, should you have relatively little time at your disposal.

The book has lots of black-and-white photographs of the buildings described, along with the maps. It’s a neat size, so it’ll fit easily in your hand or bag – and, blessedly, it’s a lightweight book that you can actually carry and refer to on a walk. I’d have preferred some nice colour photos, but I can see the publisher’s point of view. Glossy photos and art paper are all very well for coffee table books, but they can make a book expensive – and inconvenient for rough handling (I’ve had guidebooks come apart in my hands during a trip). So, I’ll forgive the black-and-white photos.

If you’re interested in Delhi’s history – even if you don’t have the time to go on each one of these walks – I’d highly recommend buying this book. Even if all you’re interested in is seeing Delhi’s major historical attractions – the Red Fort, India Gate, Humayun’s Tomb and Qutb Minar – this book’s a lot more tourist-friendly and historically accurate than your average guide. And, at Rs 495 (just about $10), it’s a worthwhile buy – look out for it at major bookstores in Delhi, including at the airport. It’s also available online from Amazon.com, and in India from booksellers like Flipkart and Infibeam.

If you can’t get a good historian to lead you on a walk through Delhi, this is the next best it gets.

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This is not a book that will tell you where to go, when to go or what to see. Instead it's a book which will lift your heart and inspire you with the author's and photographer's love of India. They don't 'tell' you very much…Read More

This is not a book that will tell you where to go, when to go or what to see. Instead it's a book which will lift your heart and inspire you with the author's and photographer's love of India. They don't 'tell' you very much at all - but they 'show' you plenty. If you've ever bought a book and been disappointed that there weren't enough pictures, then the Taschen 'Icons' range is probably just what you want.

Taschen is a German publisher based in Koln/Cologne which has been running for just over 30 years. It was started by an 18-year old who ran a shop selling comic books and he realised that there was a high demand for unpretentious, good value books about art, design and architecture. The brand has grown to be an international success story, partly due to their use of multi-language formats for many of their books (Indian Style's few words are in English, German and French) and they generally cost much less than you might expect. My assumption would be that by using three languages, they can produce much bigger print runs and so create their democratised-art books at much lower costs.

Indian Style is edited by Angelika Taschen - clearly one of the family - with photographs by Deidi von Schaewen. As is entirely appropriate, on the cover it's the photographer who takes the honours as the first named because this is at heart a book of photographs with a few words here and there for little other purpose than to tell you where the photographs were taken. 'Indian Style' doesn't waste its words and is all the better for that. Instead it places beautiful coloured images in front of you and lets the reader - or rather viewer - make of them what they choose to. In contrast with other similar books, I also like that all the photographs are from just one photographer because it means the images knit together more coherently than in a multi-photographer book.

The book splits the photographs into four groups or chapters. Angelika Taschen gets a page or two to introduce the book with a preface entitled "Why is India so beautiful?" which is one of those questions that anyone who's spent time in the country will recognise as a simple and very searching question. She offers a few suggestions but it's up to you to decide whether she answers the question - in any of the three languages in which the text is offered. With Angelika's musings out of the way we're straight into the wonderful ingulgence of looking at pictures.

The photographic chapters are Landscapes, Houses, Interiors and Details. The book is a small paperback format with the pages just 19.5 cm by 15 cm so there's a risk that such a small layout might compromise the photo quality, however that's not the case. In the first three photo chapters all of the pictures are double spread shots so you do get a good sized picture. Only in the final chapter on 'details' are some of the pictures offered in portrait form but even then they resist the temptation to put two different pictures on each view, opting instead for a blank coloured page to offset the main image.

I enjoyed the Landscapes chapter in particular, indulging in some shameless exclamations of "I know where that is" as the photographs took me on a tour of the country with which I'm so obsessed. I could continue a bit of this self-indulgence in the Houses chapter, taking a moment to confirm if I was right in the section at the end of each chapter which identifies the location and identity of the picture. Interiors is the largest chapter and the least easy for me to identify the sources. The final chapter of details looks unnervingly like they've looked inside my brain and worked out the photos I love to take - lots of painted doors and windows and photos shot through gaps in walls. I'm just so predictable!

The book does a lovely job of mixing old and new, poor and wealthy, exclusive up-market and scruffy unpretentious places - though it would be true to say that it's always going to be easier to see beauty in the grand houses than in the slums so that balance is rather more towards the fancier places. I suspect that Taschen and von Schaewen weren't staying in crappy hotels as they bounced around India taking photos and musing on why India is so lovely. We see a mix of historic periods from Moghul architecture, through very 'days of the Raj' interiors which offer chintz and teddy bears on European sofas, on to pared down and structured Art Deco, through to modern. Many of the images leave us to think about the type of people who could have chosen to live surrounded by such strange furniture or paintings and to wonder at the decay and faded grandeur of some of the old palaces.

You won't find explanations of the pictures - just a few words of identification. If you find yourself wanting to know more, then you'll have to go off and do your own research. You won't LEARN a lot but this book isn't trying to teach you - just to inspire and delight you visually. What you choose to do with that inspiration - if anything - is entirely up to you. This is one of the nice things about the Icons series - if you want to just look, coo over the nice pictures and then put Indian Style back on the shelf, that's fine. If you want to use it to inspire your redecoration of your house - feel free. Or you could see a building that fascinates you and then go online to find out more about it, maybe even build your itinerary for your next holiday around going to see for yourself. Taschen won't tell you how to use their book - it's your choice. The freedom is perhaps part of their 'democratisation' of art. I find it very refreshing when too many art books try to tell us what to feel and how to respond.

Indian Style
ISBN 3-8228-5562-6
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I’ve been to India for holidays and for business trips over 15 years. I’ve been all over the place but I still wouldn’t claim that I ‘know’ Inda; it’s an unknowable mess of contradictions and conundrums. I should have been a bit more sceptical…Read More

I’ve been to India for holidays and for business trips over 15 years. I’ve been all over the place but I still wouldn’t claim that I ‘know’ Inda; it’s an unknowable mess of contradictions and conundrums. I should have been a bit more sceptical about ‘India--All the parts other travel books leave out’ by Phillip Donnelly when I spotted it in Kindle format on Amazon for just 77 pence.

"It’s not flying I object to – it’s the people I have to fly with that I fine objectionable."

I read the first few pages which were available via Amazon’s ‘Click to look inside’ and was mildly amused by the authors thoughts on how other people should behave on planes, thinking he was clearly quite bigoted but might be funny. I should have spotted that anyone who can’t put up with a couple of hundred fellow passengers on a flight is going to have tolerance problems with over a billion people living in India. If I had known that Donnelly and his wife had only been to India once, had stayed for less than a month, and took a package tour put together by a local tourism company, I would definitely have questioned his qualifications to be writing a book.

Their visit took place in 2008 in August. One thing that the travel books wouldn’t leave out is that August is undoubtedly the most stupid time of year to go on the itinerary that they followed. They start in Delhi, head to Agra, Fatehpur Sikri, Jaipur, Pushkar, Jodhpur, Jaiselmer, Udaipur, Mumbai, Goa and back to Delhi. There’s a very good reason why most people go between October and April – the summer is a shocker. I’ve been in Mumbai in August for work and it’s like a sauna – I wouldn’t recommend anyone to go there for fun. Had Donnelly done even a little bit of homework before flying willy-nilly into the world’s largest democracy, he might have thought to head for the mountains or put his trip off to a more suitable time of year.

"... a vast array of people working in various service industries seem to be permanently bereft of change but curiously enough only when dealing with foreigners"

This isn’t a book of advice; it’s a book of moans and whinges and prejudiced observations. It’s true that people don’t have change in India but the reason is that it’s only idiot tourists who expect a guy selling stuff on the side of the road for a few rupees will have change of a 500 rupee note. If you want to give advice that they won’t find in the guidebooks, it should be to prepare yourself by saving up as many small notes as you can and using the big notes in places where there’s a lot more money passing through. He says those same people don’t have the same problem with the locals? True – that’s because the locals have more sense than to attempt to expect change for an amount that could take someone a week to earn. I’ve seen traders go to extreme lengths to send someone all over the town trying to get change so they don’t lose a sale – so please, let’s have a bit of consideration.

Donnelly spent his entire trip looking for a Starbucks ( I could have told him not to bother – probably some of the guidebooks would have pointed out that he was wasting his time too). One of my favourite UNESCO World Heritage sites in India is the ghost town of Fatehpur Sikri. He’s disappointed – wanted it to be more like Angkor Wat. That’s like going to Rome and complaining that the Coliseum wasn’t as much like the Eiffel Tower as you’d hoped. In one city he decides not to go to a Hindu temple because "I’d already seen one Jain temple that day". That’s like "I decided not to go the synagogue because I’d been to the mosque".

"India makes you Paranoid"

India only makes you paranoid if you’re a closed minded person who isn’t willing to see the good in other people and find humour in the absurd. Whether you will love or hate India is not about India – it’s about YOU and your attitude. After a taxi driver takes him on a bit of a wild goose chase he declares "From that moment on, I trusted no-one, I believed nothing, and I never spoke to strangers". He believed the only way to survive was to avoid over a billion people. I’m sure they didn’t feel they missed out on his company but I can’t help thinking he missed out a lot and learned nothing by attempting to make himself a hermetically sealed bubble. He eats bananas and cheese toasties and then wonders if he’s the only person ever to go to India and get constipation. He’s probably also the only person to go to India in August with just one pair of trousers too – yuk.

"NEVER set foot in a shop in India – you just never escape without buying something you don’t really want"

I’ve had some lovely afternoons sitting in shops drinking tea, talking rubbish about cricket, discussing the troubles in Kashmir and getting educated on handicrafts and then walked out again with nothing more than a warm glow and the email address of the owner’s cousin-brother in Srinagar who’d love to help us arrange a holiday. Not one rupee has left my pocket and there’s been no hard sell. I’ve also spent a fortune on beautiful things that give me pleasure every time I see them. I can honestly say I’ve never bought anything I didn’t want at least on some level and I’ve never paid more than I really wanted to. PLEASE, don’t dismiss the wonderful experience of shopping in India just because you’re crap at it. Donnelly gets frustrated that no taxi driver will ever take him to a shopping mall. There’s a very good reason for that – in the places he went to, there aren’t any. So if the driver tries to take him somewhere else does that make him or the driver the moron?

Errors and Typos

The book is full of errors and typos. For example at one of the churches in Old Goa he says they have the undecomposed body of St Francis of Assisi – it’s actually the body of St Francis Xavier, the inquisitor, not the guy who could charm the birds out of the trees. St FX’s body is actually in the basilica of Bom Jesus, an entirely different building from the Church of St Francis of Assisi which he describes. He writes about rioting in Ahmenabad which was presumably supposed to be Ahmedabad. He refers to the god Shiva as ‘her’. This ‘book’ needed a critical read by someone who knew what they were reading about and not a quick glance from a handful of the writer’s friends.

Typos are rife. He tries to ‘relief the pressure’ when his head hurts, a tout tries to sell him ‘an arithmetic message’ (I puzzled for a while on that but I think it was was 'arthritic massage'), he says that India is the ‘lost populous country on Earth (I think that was most).

Undoubtedly many people go to India and they don’t like it or they hide in their rooms and attempt to avoid talking to anyone or undergoing any interaction with the locals. They eat cheese on toast and get flustered by the attentions of people trying to make a few pennies out of them. That’s their choice and it’s as valid a response as anyone else's but it doesn’t necessarily qualify them to give much advice. The Amazon blurb claims that India was a country that Irishman Donnelly really wanted to visit but there’s not much evidence of that in his book. From the moment he lands until the moment he leaves, he’s worrying about dirty public telephones, getting ripped off by everyone and generally getting scared of the entire local population. I would be embarrassed to show myself up with the prejudices and ignorance displayed in this book. I'm sorry to say that I'm not convinced that he actually read many guide books before going or that he'd really know what is and isn't in them. As for the idea that this tells you the things that guide books don't that's probably true. However the reason they don't tell you is that much of the advice is wrong, unhelpful or very biased. Guide books assume that their buyers actually WANT to go to a country - not just hide in their rooms with their cheese toasties.

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~My Relationship with India~ The first few holidays I had in India were organised by tour companies. After four trips where we paid over the odds for the convenience of someone else making all the arrangements, I realised that we didn't need to do that…Read More

~My Relationship with India~

The first few holidays I had in India were organised by tour companies. After four trips where we paid over the odds for the convenience of someone else making all the arrangements, I realised that we didn't need to do that any more. By then I knew enough about how the country 'worked' to just get stuck in and do it myself. I also realised I didn't want the sanitised and buffered protection of a tour company - we could do it ourselves and we might well get to see a different side of life in India. For the last 5 years I have booked everything myself - flights, trains, hotels and have done all the research myself. Some of my itineraries have been pretty strange and when we meet Indian people on our travels they're usually impressed by how much of the country we've seen and baffled by how I even knew about some of the places we've been to. I smile wisely and take all the credit but in truth most of my inspiration comes from the India guide in Dorling Kindersley's Eyewitness Travel series.

~Horses for Courses~

If I want a guide book to anywhere I always check first if there's a DK Eyewitness guide available and that's the one I'll choose every time. Quite simply, different travellers have different needs and different people like different type of guide. DK and I are made for each other.

My choice is based on a variety of factors. I want a book that covers the whole country - even if there's only a tiny bit about a particular place, I still want it in there. So don't give me a guide with dozens of pages on the Taj Mahal but nothing on Hyderabad. I don't want hotel suggestions - I will use online forums to research my hotels so I can judge whether the recommendations are offered by 'people like me'. I want to know about all the attractions in every city but I don't need to know what they cost and when they are open. If I am interested enough to want to go, then I'll go online and check for more info (and then write it onto my book). I don't need up to date prices - I'd rather have a well researched book that offers me enough info and maybe the websites where I can go and find out more. Most of all what I DO want, is lots of pictures, lots of maps and a good sense of whether something and somewhere is really worth seeing.

It's not a guide I take with me though. DK is the guide that helps me to imagine, plan and construct a tour but at more than 800 pages it's one I leave at home. My last day tasks before I head off almost always include photocopying the relevant pages that I need before I leave. Thus I often back up my DK research with a smaller, often second hand, book that's more relevant to the particular area. Or sometimes I just go with nothing.

~So what do you get?~

I paid about £12 for my 2008 edition when it was still fresh off the press. Due to the nature of India (most of the attractions have been their for hundreds of years) and to the style of guidebook (there are few prices to go out of date), I don't feel the need to buy the latest one. Perhaps in three or four years when they update it again, I may invest in a new copy but for now I don't think I am missing anything. Amazon can let you have a second hand copy for less than a fiver with P&P on top, of course.

The first thing you notice about a DK guide is that it's built to last. The covers are flexible but thick and have a wipe-clean surface. Both back and front covers have a 'flap' you can use to mark the bit you're using, making it easier to find. Personally I use removable Post It Index Tabs to mark the bits I'm using at any time. I have had books - usually trade show guides - with multiple book marks and that would be just about the only thing I can think of that would improve the DK guides. Inside each cover there is a map - the front map divides the country into zones which correspond to particular chapters, making it much quicker to find the right part of the book without needing the index. The guideline page numbers on the map are not all correct - for example the map says Mumbai is on pages 358 to 77 but it's not. It doesn't actually appear until page 443. The indicated pages for Chennai and Kolkata are also wrong - I can only assume they refer to an earlier edition and were not removed or updated when this version was published. It's not a big deal to cross them out and correct them but it is pretty weird that the publishers made such mistakes, especially since all the page indications for the other areas are correct.

Once inside you'll find a chapter introducing the country which offers a mix of highlights of each area, some maps, information on the landscape and wildlife, an introduction to architectural elements, the Hindu faith and iconography, clothing and dance of different regions. Next there's information on the different things to see at different times of year with emphasis on the many and varied festivals. Finally you get info on the climate and the history of the country. To be honest, it's a bit of a brain dump of things that visitors might want to know and I rarely bother too much with that section.

~Region by Region~

Next we reach the main part of the guide - a set of chapters dividing up the country. Each time you get a few pages about the highlights of that region and then the key cities and sub-areas are described within that region. For example we start with Delhi and the North and get sub-chapters on Delhi itself, followed by sections on Haryana and the Punjab, Himachal Pradesh and Ladakh, Jammu and Kashmir. It's a lot of India to chuck in together but there's some logic to this. From Delhi, those are areas that would make some sense to visit. However, if you aren't so familiar with the country, it could be a lot to handle in one big chapter of 95 pages. Next stop is Central India with coverage of Uttar Pradesh and Uttaranchal, Bihar and Jharkhan and then Madhya Pradesh and Chhatisgarh. Eastern India follows with Kolkata, West Bengal and Sikkim, Orissa, Assam and the Northwest. Western India offers Rajasthan and Gujerat and then Southwestern India has Mumbai, Maharashtra, Goa and Karnataka. Finally on the geographic chapters, we hit the southern tip with Chennai, Tamil Nadul, the Andaman Islands, Kerala and Andhra Pradesh. Luckily the maps at the front and back of the book should help you to navigate your way around.

Finally a chapter called 'Travellers Needs' gives advice on where to stay and eat, where to shop, entertainment and specialist activities and then a chapter called 'Survival Guide' gives some practical advice on a wide range of topics from when to go, what to pack, what jabs you need, tips on etiquette and how to dress and how to stay safe. There's also some basic advice on how to get around by air, rail and road as well as local transport.

A typical city section - let's take Delhi - starts with an introduction to what to expect, has lots of photos of the highlights, maps to help you work out where everything is and to plan how to get around, suggested walking tours with lots of photos to help you follow the route and contact details for all the attractions along with the opening days and hours and helpful hints such as whether there are toilets and left luggage facilities, cafes or audio guides. The really big attractions get a couple of pages with detailed layout plans and photos of the key things to see.

~Recommendation~

I've tried multiple guidebooks for India and this is the one I come back to time and time again. It won't suit everyone and it's not 100% perfect - the pages can get very 'busy' with so many things squeezed onto each page, and some of the small maps can be confusing - but the photos are spectacular and I have no expectation that any other guidebook will take the place of my DK Eyewitness guide to India.   Close

In many respects I like to think that I'm not typically British but there's one area where my roots show through very clearly and that's massage. I have German colleagues who merrily book a week at a spa and let strangers pummel and prod them…Read More

In many respects I like to think that I'm not typically British but there's one area where my roots show through very clearly and that's massage. I have German colleagues who merrily book a week at a spa and let strangers pummel and prod them for hours each day but the very idea fills me with dread because – like many Brits – I'd really rather not be touched by people I don't know. Yep, I know that multitudes of readers will now be thinking that I'm a bit weird but the idea of stripping off and getting basted in weird oils leaves me a lot less than thrilled.

There is therefore no way on earth that I'd have chosen to go for a full body massage in a little back street massage place in Munnar if I hadn't been almost forced to. My husband wasn't keen either but our driver was absolutely determined that whether we wanted to or not, we would be getting an Ayurvedic massage from the salon whose brochure he had in the back of the car. We tried to evade, hoped he might forget but it was not to be. We were marched in and with an imaginary gun pointed at our heads, forced to make a booking for the following evening. I managed to escape from the head and neck massage knowing it would take forever to get all that icky gunk out of my long hair, but grudgingly agreed to having the rest of me attacked. My husband, ever inclined to go with the flow also booked. The brochure had reassured me that I wasn't going to get rubbed down by a man so I figured the potential for utter humiliation and embarrassment couldn't be all that great.

The next day we set off to a tea plantation and then to a wildlife park. We watched the clock as we got horribly delayed in search of mountain goats, crossing our fingers that maybe, if we were really lucky, we might get out of the massage. It wasn't to be. After a long day of sightseeing our driver delivered us to the salon, telling us we would feel "very very good madame". I wasn't convinced.

I was led to the top floor by a muscular looking lady in a salwar kameez. She took me into a small room and I felt as I imagine a young man visiting a prostitute for the first time might feel. What was going to happen to me, what was the etiquette, would I get out alive or at least uninjured? A large plastic table filled the centre of the room and the masseuse lay a thin cloth over the hard black plastic. A channel ran around the edge for the oil to gather. At the head of the table the dreaded head massage oil container loomed ominously and was soon dismantled and put away.

I was directed towards some pegs on the wall where I could hang up my clothes. I stripped to my underwear and the masseuse shook her head at me. My bra came off and she shook her head again, taking out a small roll of cotton to tie around me like Mowgli's loincloth. I felt like an utter ninny standing almost starkers in my little cotton nappy. I climbed onto the bed, lying on my front and the attack began.

I don't know if all ayurvedic massage is as vigorous as what I received. If my poor old chakras were misaligned this lady was soon going to whip them energetically and violently back into shape. The technique consisted of a lot of oil and hard, long strokes. Lying on a hard plastic bed meant that some parts of me were getting pummelled into the bed quite violently and whilst my muscles weren't too fussed about what was happening some of my joints were objecting quite strongly. If my ankles could have spoken they'd have begged for mercy. My poor knees, long abused by too much past sport would have been on their knees pleading for her to stop. My feet quite enjoyed it though but most of me was just lying there thinking "Please God, let this not last TOO long".

A slap on the buttock told me it was time to roll over. I kept my eyes closed as the attack recommenced. I was relieved that the woman spoke very little English as this just wasn't the time for small talk. "Are you out this evening? Have you had your holidays yet?" and all that hairdresser chatter just doesn't seem right when someone is slapping your flab around and you're just praying she stops soon.

They say you should feel fabulously relaxed and rejuvenated after a massage; I just felt immensely relieved that the experience was over and I could attempt to rub off some of the oil and get dressed again. I did smell lovely for a few hours and my skin felt very soft but I'm sure I could have achieved that with a liberal dose of body butter in the privacy of my own room. My husband by contrast seemed to have a lovely time and spent most of his time chattering away to his masseur who had a lot more vocabulary.

We paid, I headed back up to hand over a quite generous tip (based on a sense of 'apology for being such a terrified wimp') and then we headed back to the hotel where I told my husband that if he ever spotted me considering such a thing again, he had my permission to take me out and shoot me. I believe we paid about 500-600 rupees each – I'd happily pay ten times that to not have to do it again.    Close

When you book a tour in India with a local driver you do pretty much take your chances with what sort of driver you get. Very rarely you’ll get a chap who drives like a dream, understands what you want and can explain what’s going…Read More

When you book a tour in India with a local driver you do pretty much take your chances with what sort of driver you get. Very rarely you’ll get a chap who drives like a dream, understands what you want and can explain what’s going on. If you’re lucky he’ll not kill you but you’ll never really have a clue what’s coming next. If you’re very unfortunate you’ll sit in the back of the car for several days with white knuckles.

I booked a tour with an Indian operator and they organised the driver. Of course I shouldn’t expect to get someone without amazing English and sure enough our driver was a pleasant chap who tried his best to entertain us, didn’t hit anything or come too close to doing so, and got us from A to B via a mix of places we were and weren’t expecting. Shijo picked us up at Kochi airport, drove us to our hotel and said he’d be back the next day at 9 o’clock to start the drive up into the mountains. An unexpected bonus came when he declared that we would be passing his village and so he was taking us home to meet the family and to take us to the church.

I don’t know if this is standard behaviour when he has local clients – I suspect probably not. I think as the deep pocketed foreigners he recognised that we might well be interested and that showing us his home and family might be good for a better tip at the end of the tour.

We have been to India many times but getting into a proper village is always a treat. Kochi is a quite well off state and the homes are mostly well built and often quite opulent due to the tendency of families to send a son or two off to the Gulf to earn money and send it home. Someone explained to us that the whole family chip in to build a good house so that the family will get a good match for their daughters.

We turned off the main street into the village, a neat and tidy place with roads that were no more battered and worn than elsewhere in Kerala. "That’s my friends shop" said Shijo, waving out the window to some smiling young men. He turned down a side alley between well built houses, and came to a rough looking track where a goat was sleeping in his path. Shijo tried the horn but the goat was uninterested. He got out to shoo it out of the path and by the time he was back in the car, the goat had beaten him back to its favourite spot. Some swearing and arm waving followed (Shijo, not the goat though for all I knot the goat might have been cursing him under his breath) and eventually we were able to pass.

First he took us to his parents’ house and showed us round the garden. All the nearest neighbours came over to say hello and the ones further away waved and called out to us, asking our names and how we were. Shijo showed us the plants in his mother’s garden before introducing us to his mother and his tiny old grandma. It’s easy to think that people are much older than they look and his grandma was actually younger than my mother who is only 70 and still pretty sprightly.

Next he took us to his house, a rather basic breezeblock building about the size of a double garage which had been built in the back yard of his landlady’s bungalow. We met his wife and two young sons, had a cup of coffee and played with the kids. It was a very basic place to live but the family seemed really happy. Since it was Sunday, next stop was the church, a massive modern building where the service had just ended. He told us that up to 5000 people squeeze in every Sunday and there is standing room only. I was quite surprised that a building only a few years old had been build with all the saints and icons depicted with fair European skin. I’ve seen that in the old churches which date back to colonial times but I was surprised that the statues would be shown that way without the influence of foreign missionaries.

When we left the church one of the local priests came to speak with us, asking where we came from and getting us to shake hands with some of the children who were with him. It was a stark contrast with my local church which dates back to the eight hundreds and is the oldest Saxon church in Europe but struggles to pull in a couple of dozen people on a Sunday. Everywhere we went in his village people were really friendly and it was lovely to see that he was working so hard to bring up his children with his parents and grandmother nearby. And of course it made us feel pretty generous when we reached the end of the tour – it’s hard not to put your hand deeper in your pocket when you’ve met four generations of the family.
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When I booked our flights to Mumbai a few months ago I really didn't have much of a plan about what we'd do on our holiday. With the help of my trusty India guide book I started to patch together some ideas and the main…Read More

When I booked our flights to Mumbai a few months ago I really didn't have much of a plan about what we'd do on our holiday. With the help of my trusty India guide book I started to patch together some ideas and the main thrust of my thinking was that we would go from Mumbai to somewhere vaguely in the south or west of the country and then work our way back again. Having spent a couple of slightly sick days in Kochi (a.k.a Cochin) eight years ago, I quite fancied going back for a better look (hopefully without the ickiness second time around). I went looking for flights and found a bargain deal on a flight from Mumbai to Kochi with Air India Express (let's call it AIE) for just 9466 rupees – a grand total of £117 for the two of us. I think at the time it was actually cheaper and a lot quicker than the train.

I've used several Indian budget airlines without any trouble and really liked SpiceJet in particular. I was wary of Air India Express because it's the budget arm of Air India and I've never been overly impressed by the full-service airline. I had low expectations of how much more they could possibly cut out of their already pretty shabby service.

The good news for those familiar with the games played by the big European budget airlines like Ryanair and EasyJet is that thankfully AIE doesn't try to trick you or catch you out by charging you to check in or to take luggage and they don't make you practice your rugby scrum by not assigning you a seat and leaving you to fight for it. That's the good news – don't let it get you too excited!

AIE uses the international terminal of the Chhatrapati Shivaji Airport in Mumbai even though it's offering domestic flights. This means when you tell your hotel and your taxi driver that you want to go to the international terminal, they will assume you are lying or stupid. Be firm! Despite the suggestion from the airline that we might like to roll up 3 hours before departure we were actually at the airport about 2 hours before and were more than happy to find an almost empty airport and nobody in the queue to check in. So that's another big plus point AIE compared to our European friends. We handed over our bags, got our proper boarding passes and were more than happy to see that we had proper seat allocations. We then headed off for security checks, something to eat, some magazines to read and all the usual things you do at an airport anywhere before heading to find somewhere to sit in the gate area.

We steered away from the crush and were two of the last people to go to the gate and board the bus to the plane. It was a battered old beast and we were sweltering in the heat whilst we waited to go to the plane. Once we boarded it became quickly apparent that we might have been the only people who were happy to have allocated seating. I say that because it was evident that most people were not where they were supposed to be. Thankfully our seats were still free but conflict was breaking out around us as people tried to work out what was going on. A rather strident woman was strutting about trying to find somewhere to sit and we got the impression that she was a 'hitch hiker' who worked for the airline and was trying to get a free ride to Kochi. For a while she thought she had a seat until someone came a turfed her out. My husband had taken one look at her when she got on the plane and said "I can smell trouble" and sure enough he seemed to be right. We like to think they strapped her in the toilet for take off and landing.

The seats on the plane were awful. I'm not sure if I was just unlucky and others were better, but my seat felt like it had no padding in the bum area at all. The last time I'd had something close to so unpadded was a saddle on a camel. The plane appeared to be an old one that had probably been in service since Mrs Gandhi had been a girl. As you'd expect for a cheap airline, the seats were crammed in pretty tight but nothing worse than you'd find on a Ryanair flight. Looking around the cabin we quickly realised that we were the only passengers who didn't appear to be local – something which turned into quite a typical scenario during our holiday.

Being late arrivals, all the overhead locker space had long gone and contents suggested that people have a pretty flexible interpretation of what constitutes hand luggage. The plane was absolutely stuffed tight with bodies and – since we were flying a few days after Diwali and it's a big holiday season - a lot of the passengers where children. It may well become a recurring theme in my reviews of this particular holiday that middle class children in India might benefit from a little more discipline from their parents. That's my polite way of commenting that nobody seems to think it might be a good thing to stop their kids kicking the seats and bouncing on the seat back trays whilst screaming at each other. I'm failing to restrain myself from saying that I'd like to buy up hundreds of copies of a book I saw in a bookshop in Mangalore called "Learn to smack your kids" and them hand them out to AIE passengers. The volume of noise in the plane was like a Saturday afternoon in Pizza Express. I wished I'd had my ear plugs.

In terms of service during the flight, I'm not sure how much activity there was as most of the time I was sitting there with my eyes closed, gritting my teeth and trying to ignore the bedlam going on around me. The cabin attendants were neatly attired in smart salwar kameez rather than the more traditional saris I recall from Air India. I thought they had their work cut out to try to keep a plane full of rowdy passengers under something resembling control.

We were each given a small bottle of drinking water fairly early on and a slice of really poor cake followed. The cake was probably rubbish because in order to be vegetarian in the Hindu sense of the word, it can't contain egg. Nobody is going to hand out non-veg cake so the resulting slice of cake-like stuff has to work for both veg and non-veg customers. The other most noticeable thing about the flight was how incredibly cold it was. I wondered if someone had left the windows open!

The flight took about 2 hours and landed eventually in Kochi with a bump that might have been less noticeable if there had been more padding in the seat. The disembarkation resembled one of those training videos where passengers are challenged to prove that it's possible to get 200 people down an emergency shoot in less than 10 seconds. Bags were delivered after a short delay and I watched as two women lugged all the bags out of the trolleys and onto the luggage belt whilst a chap in a uniform supervised them. Some of the larger bags took both women lifting together to get them out and I couldn't help thinking that was a pretty awful way to earn a living.

I asked some locals we got speaking to on a train about a week later what they thought about Air India Express. They told me that even though the service is a lot poorer than many of the independent budget carriers and the planes are old and ropey, many people choose the carrier because it's part of Air India and they expect that if anything goes wrong the government will put things right. Whether that's 'anything goes wrong' in terms of flight cancellations or planes falling out of the air, I'm not sure. For my money, I'd rather book an independent carrier whose planes are newer and who might still have some padding in their seats. Our flight was a bargain but I'd prefer to pay a little more in return for a bit more comfort next time. AIE is unlikely to get repeat business from us.
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Rajasthan is traditionally divided into three regions: Marwar, Shekhavati, and Mewar. Marwar is known for the business acumen of its people. Shekhavati comes second, with some of India’s biggest business magnates originally hailing from the area. (For tourists, though, Shekhavati’s main draw are its many…Read More

Rajasthan is traditionally divided into three regions: Marwar, Shekhavati, and Mewar. Marwar is known for the business acumen of its people. Shekhavati comes second, with some of India’s biggest business magnates originally hailing from the area. (For tourists, though, Shekhavati’s main draw are its many grandly painted mansions).

And Mewar is one of Rajasthan’s greenest areas – thanks to the Chambal River, the state’s only perennial river. This is a land that's been ruled by some of the fiercest warriors in Rajasthan’s history. It’s also, for tourists, one of Rajasthan’s most glittery, dreamy, gorgeous places.

What follows is a day-by-day account of our trip from Delhi through Mewar and back again.

Day 1: Delhi-Kota: 500 km

. This was our longest, most exhausting day. The first half of the drive – Delhi to Jaipur, 236 km on National Highway (NH) 8 – was good. This is one of the area’s best highways, six lanes of good road and with lots of coffee shops outlets along the way where you can stop for something to eat and drink (not to mention a loo break).

After Jaipur, we shifted to NH12. The road surface remained all right till Tonk, though the road got narrower. Then, shortly after Tonk, the GPS on my husband’s phone indicated that the best route was down a state highway. (This, mind you, with NH 12 straight ahead, with ‘Kota’ and an arrow pointing the way). My husband’s faith in the GPS is touching, and he insisted we go down the state highway. So we did – for the next six and a half hours. The state highways are really village roads, often only about ten feet across, dirt-topped, liberally potholed, and with vast stretches that were completely uninhabited. The only traffic we encountered were a few men on cycles, an occasional small lorry, and a couple of bullock carts. This stretch passes through the villages of Nagar and Nainva before reaching Bundi and then onto Kota. Nowhere along the way can you get anything to eat (unless you’re willing to buy a snack from one of the dubious-looking carts in one of the larger villages). To take a leak, it’s the roadside bushes.

We’d left Delhi at 9 AM. We arrived in Kota at 10.45 PM, having stopped only twice – both times before Jaipur – for something to eat and drink.

Day 2: Kota

After our marathon 14-hour drive from Delhi to Kota, we were happy to let someone else drive us around Kota – especially as the old part of town (where Kota’s chief attraction, the City Palace is located) is a rabbit warren of narrow streets. The front office at our hotel put us in touch with a travel agent, who, for Rs 1,200, rented out a chauffeur-driven car for 8 hours. We began with visiting the City Palace (a smallish museum, but a stunning mirrored palace). From there, we went to the Kota Barrage (very mundane, though the average Kota resident seems to think it’s the city’s prime attraction), then onto the picturesque Abheda Palace, before returning to our hotel for lunch.

After lunch, we went off again – this time to the village of Kaithoon, 20 minutes’ drive from Kota. Kaithoon is the home of the diaphanous kotadoria sari, still woven in homes by the Muslim women of Kaithoon. No great bargains here, but the experience was interesting. We finished off the day with an exhilarating cruise down the Chambal, through the wildlife sanctuary that once harboured tigers. We saw nothing but some birds, monkeys and huge fruit bats, but our guide suggested visiting in winter, when sightings of gharial and turtles are almost guaranteed.

Day 3: Kota-Udaipur: 265 km

After the Jaipur-Kota road had turned out so awful, our expectations of the Kota-Udaipur road couldn’t be lower. This would be a state road, we thought, all potholes and cattle sitting in the middle of the road.

Surprise, surprise. NH76, which links Kota to Udaipur (and from there, goes on to Ahmedabad and eventually Mumbai) is the best highway in the state. It’s cemented (very unusual for Indian roads, even National Highways), four-lane throughout, and with little traffic except for fast-moving cars, buses and carriers. The countryside was lovely too: rich and green, covered with waving grass, stands of low trees, and the occasional shrub covered with pink or yellow wild flowers. We managed to do a comfortable speed of 100 km/hour (which is very good for India), and slowed only when we were suddenly hit by torrential rains. Anybody who calls Rajasthan a desert state needed to see that storm. 5 hours’ drive, and we were in Udaipur.

Udaipur

Udaipur is dotted with lakes – mainly artificial water tanks excavated by the maharajas of Udaipur. Their palaces are a dime a dozen (most of them converted into plush hotels now), and there are sights aplenty. We had a couple of days in Udaipur, so we decided to devote the first day to checking out the galleries, museums and palaces within the city. First up was the imposing City Palace Museum, no great shakes as a museum, but with some stupendous architecture. Here, we bought ‘package tickets’ for some of the other major sights and experiences: the cruise on Lake Pichola, the Crystal Gallery, and the Vintage Car Collection.

After that, it was a simple case of going from one attraction to the other. All were pretty dazzling in their own way.

Day 5: Eklingji and Nathdwara

If you’re spending a couple of days in Udaipur, a good day trip is to the Hindu shrines of Eklingji and Nathdwara. Nathdwara is 48 km from Udaipur; Eklingji about midway, 22 km from Udaipur and along the same highway. We began by visiting – within Udaipur itself – the gardens known as Saheliyon ki Badi. These weren’t as splendid as I’d imagined, but since there wasn’t that much to see here, at least we were able to head on for Eklingji pretty soon (the road to Eklingji is the same one on which the Saheliyon ki Badi is situated). Eklingji had a quaint, ancient charm to it – the 108 stone temples here are made of beautifully carved stone or plaster, and are well-preserved enough to appeal to someone like me, who’s not Hindu and to whom the only appeal of the temples was in their historicity and beauty.

Nathdwara was a different kettle of fish: newer, more crowded, and commercial – so much so that I couldn’t wait to get out of there. Fortunately, the drive back from Nathdwara through Eklingji to Udaipur is scenic – through green hills, with pretty wildflowers along the roadside.

Day 6: Udaipur-Bundi: 265 km

:This is the same stretch that we’d covered a couple of days earlier when we drove from Kota to Udaipur. On our way to Udaipur, we were in a hurry to get to our destination, so we’d driven nonstop all the way. This time, we decided to halt – at the almost-legendary Chittaurgarh fort town, home to India’s largest fort, a 1,500 year-old citadel that has some fascinating history attached to it. Chittaurgarh is only 6 km off the Udaipur-Kota/Bundi highway, so it doesn’t take much time to get there and back. We hired a guide and did a basic tour; even that, however, took 2 hours. After Chittaurgarh, we hit the road again. Past Kota, we had to leave the National Highway and take a state road to Bundi. This stretch wasn’t good – there were potholes and much mud. We ended up arriving in Bundi 8 hours after we’d left Udaipur.

Day 7: Bundi

Bundi is somewhat like a twin city to Kota: it lies across the Chambal river from Kota, but is smaller and sleepier. The staff at our hotel warned us that it wouldn’t be advisable to take our car into town – the lanes are narrow in places, and pretty chaotic. "Take autorickshaws," they said, which was what we did. The autorickshaws aren’t too comfy or clean, but they’re cheap and plentiful. We first visited the magnificent step-well known as Raniji ki Baoli, then went on to the fort. Here, the Taragarh Palace was a grubby and smelly relic of what it once must’ve been, but the stunning Chitrashala – painted throughout with beautifully preserved murals – was dazzling. After lunch, we visited the Chaurasi Khambon ki Chhatri, a three-storeyed medieval pavilion supported by 84 pillars. Then, back to the hotel, with enough time to have a leisurely afternoon nap, tea and some time to read or watch TV.

Day 8: Bundi-Delhi: 480 km

: This time, we took NH12 from Kota to Jaipur; and yes, it is a far superior road than those awful state roads. We got to Jaipur in time for a very late lunch, then headed for Delhi. Unfortunately, the Jaipur-Delhi stretch was bad at this time: there were traffic jams along the way, due to a combination of torrential rain, too many trucks, and work being done by the National Highways Authority of India. We only reached Delhi at about 11 PM.

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