While traveling to Bhubaneswar from Hyderabad by Falaknuma express I met a foreigner Mr Jacco. While having a short chat i was discussing about his experience in India. I asked Mr Jacco to write his experience in India and mail me.

Here is the mail which nicely depicts the diversity of India starting from

• Helpful people in Delhi to cheating by Taxi driver
• Beauty of Train journey in sleeper class where people occupy seats without tickets and the TTE says it happens
• Journey through Jaipur, Agra, Mumbai, Goa and Kerala

Hello Suman Das,

like I promised I send you this mail with my experiences in India.

I arrived on 26 nov in the early morning, or rather say night… I was 3:30 or something and the metro in Delhi wasn’t running yet.
Luckily I met a girl from India who just came back to India after getting a place to do her PhD. She stopped a taxi and we took off to her old university. This was JNU in Delhi and after we had waited there and she had dropped some gifts for friends she brought me to a friend of her who was working for national physics laboratory in Delhi and I could stay there for a couple of days.

They helped me to get around and introduced me to the metro system of Delhi. I have been with them to the central secretariat and the memorial gate.The days after I went alone to the red fort, old Delhi and Qutab Minar. They even helped me to get a train ticket to Agra but I was late on the station and I couldn’t find my train in the crowd over there so someone came to me and told me that I couldn’t use such a ticket as a foreigner and I fooled for that one so I ended up with a scam tour through Rajasthan. Believe me you don’t want to pay that much for a taxi for 2 weeks and pay more for every hotel they drop you off.

I have been with this tour to Agra:Taj Mahal after that to Jaipur: Amber fort and a little around my hotel then to the rat temple between Jaipur and Bikaner and to Bikaner where I have only seen the palace and the hotel. In Jaisalmer I have slept in the desert or at least I tried because the wind was cold and the blanket a little too short for me being so tall. I think I’ve slept maximum one third of the night. After the desert I went to Jaisalmer and I liked the fort and the Halevi’s that are really beautiful.

After Jaisalmer I went to Jodhpur and that fort there is really big and amazing. From Jodhpur I went to Ranakpur where is a beautiful Jain temple with a lot of marble carvings and the second day there I went for a day trekking. The last stop with this tour was Udaipur and I had a few days to see the city. The palace there is the second biggest of India. Only the one in Mysore is bigger.

From Udaipur I went by night train to Ahmdabad and from there after a few hours waiting I went by day train to Mumbai. This was a quite strange experience because we were sitting in a sleeper train but without using the beds. So people came in the cabin and climbed on the highest beds and took a seat over there, without asking. I wasn’t the only one who was surprised and it was all a little bit strange but the conductor said this was normal so ok…

I’ve spend a few days in Mumbai looking around in the city. I liked the city because the sea gives you a nice reference point which makes it easy to navigate.

From Mumbai I went to Goa to Margao and when I arrived there I realized I had enough time to go to the beach so I went to Benaulim which is little south of Colva. I spend there 1,5 weeks and then I moved to Anjuna for new year and after 3 days I went south to Palolem.

 

From Palolem I went by nightbus to Bangalore to find out there that the bus to Hampi was going at 20:00 so I took a bus to Mysore which turned out to be a tour-bus for Indians so in one day I have seen all of the sightseeing of Mysore. The palace in Mysore is not only bigger than the one in Udaipur but it is to me also a lot more beautiful. The next day I took a tour to Ooty in Tamil Nadu and this was so different because of the height there it is a lot cooler so there is a total different type of vegetation. There are also a lot of tea plantations over there.

Back in Mysore I took one day more to look around and then I went to Mangalore to get from there to Kochi in Kerala. Kochi was after Karnataka very touristic again so I had to get used to it for a while. There is enough to see and to do so I had a nice time over there. From there I went to Munnar hill station which was a little similar to Ooty but to way towards it was really amazing. It went first through the back-lands and then up the west Ghats through the tropical forests and then you could see the difference in temperature by looking at the vegetation.

I stayed one night in Munnar and went to a nature reserve. Then I went back to Kochi and from there I went to the ferry on the backwaters of Kerala from Alllepey to Kollam. I met some people who were going to Verkala so I joined them, but we missed the stop so we ended up in Trivandrum and had to take a taxi back.
Verkala at the coast was a very nice place with very nice people so I ended up staying there for 2 weeks.

I was running out of visa time after this so I went to Trivandrum to take a 16 hour taking bus to Chennai where I spend one night before going to Hyderabad.
I haven’t seen much of Hyderabad because I wasn’t feeling very healthy when I was there.
After my 3 nights there I took the train to Kolkata where we met eachother.

Now I have been looking around in Kolkata and I must say I like the city, there is a lot to see.

This was in really short my India tour.

Best regards,

Jacco van Soest

Thanks Jacco for this nice mail. My India is a country full of diversity starting from Climate, language, Appearance, Behavior,  Religion, Natural Beauty and many more. Please do visit again and have a nice experience.