Snapshot of India

I was back, for the first time in over 15 years I was back in India, my ancestral home and birthplace of my mother.

I have a lot to say about the 3 weeks Jill and I spent here and the 1 week we spent in Nepal – I wrote a combined 20,000 words about them both in my travel log. Verbose perhaps, even by my usual standards but I see it as something else. Being back in India inspired me to write more because I didn’t want to miss a single detail, it’s been nearly 16 years since I was last in India, who knows how long it will be before I’m back. I captured the sights, sounds and smells of the places I went with possibly the most vivid and detailed descriptions I’ve ever written, referring to my log every now and then should keep my memories fresh and tide me over for at least a little while.

While writing my travel log, I had every intention of sharing it with others via this site and wrote it with an audience in mind but during the course of my travels, it became far too long for me to consider doing that. Instead I’ll make this an image post and walk you through our journey with a photo diary.

Walking around in Delhi with a few of our trip mates.

A very narrow bridge in Orchha. It was more than a little nerve racking when a bus came through and we were forced to walk inches from the barrier-less bridge.

The Raj Mahal, the most impressive building I saw on this trip, bar none (yes that includes the Taj Mahal).

While in Orchha, we happened across a massive wedding procession passing through town. A couple of the ladies and I decided to join in with the celebrations.

One of the many nights we got drunk with our tour leader; he seemed to have an endless supply of bewitchingly delicious rum.

That’s Vandana in the centre, a lovely woman that invited us to her home for a meal and showed us how to cook Indian food.

A picture showing us on an overnight sleeper train.

Boat ride on the Ganges, our destination was a sand island four hours downstream. There were four of us in each of three boats and a fourth boat that accompanied us that was basically a kitchen.

One of the guys on the kitchen boat busted out a cricket bat and tennis ball almost as soon as we made landfall. Most of the guys in the tour group joined in, we were playing cricket until the sun started to set. Playing cricket with Australians, on an island in the middle of the River Ganges. Now that’s something I didn’t think I’d ever do.