Jaipur & Agra ... Taj Mahal

Our longest and much awaited trip came last weekend! Wednesday morning we started towards Jaipur. Once we got there we were instantly blown away by the mass amount of people in the big capital city of Rajasthan. We knew we had to try and see as much as possible before dark so we rushed to our first destination...City Palace. It was beautiful to say the least. Next, we headed to Birla temple. Built in 1985 was the newest landmark we had seen in our whole trip. As you might have figured out from the picture below it was made completely of marble. No big deal! haha...We crashed in Jaipur for the night and head towards Agra the next day. Agra was a smooth 3.5 hour journey. We first arrived at Agra fort where we met up with a couple of our friends from IIT who live in Agra. We saw Agra fort which was massive with a great view of the one and only...Taj Mahal. The fort's history and architecture was phenomenal! All our excitement however was channelled towards Taj Mahal so we decided to head straight there next. I'm not even going to bother describing it... Definitely deserves to be one of the wonders of the world! Taj Mahal is built by Mughal king, Shah Jahan in the memory of his wife. Lucky wife! We spent several hours here and exhausted our cameras. Finally, unwillingly we all decided we had seen enough of the wonder before us and decided it was time to go. We then went to a local market, where we were able to try some local snacks. And then...it rained, haha i don't mean just normal rain, crazy Indian monsoon rain. For some reason we thought it would be a great idea to play in the rain! For the first time in India we actually started to get a little cold so we went inside a Caffe Coffee Day (popular coffee shop) to enjoy a nice hot coffee! The driver was pretty displeased when he saw the condition we were in and almost didn't let us back into the car. That night we crashed at our friend Aman's house. His mom cooked us a delicious meal.

The next day, said our goodbyes to Aman's family and went to Sikandara, which held the tomb of famous king Akbar. It was beautiful here and inside the gates there was a lot of wildlife. We saw peacocks, parrots, deer, antelope and various other animals. We then went to a couple of other locations like I'timād-Ud-Daulah and Jama Masjid. We then travelled to Mehtab Bagh which was a garden across the river from the Taj Mahal. We spent several hours just relaxing enjoy the beautiful view of Taj Mahal for the second time. It was sad parting from Taj Mahal but we had to move on. We got on our way headed back towards Jaipur. On our way we stopped at another tourist location called Fatehpur Sikri. 

We got to Jaipur late and were tired so we directly went to our hotel. The next morning was a big day. We saw several locations in Jaipur, Amber fort, Narhargarh fort, Jaigarh Fort, Hawa Mahal and Jantar Mantar. The Indian Institute of Technology got its logo from the Jantar Mantar which is a collection of architectural astronomical instruments. At Amber Fort we got a chance to ride elephant! It was pretty amazing... After the jam packed trip we were all travelled out and head back home to Jodhpur. 

It was kind of a sad car ride home because we all knew it was our last travelling trip together here in India.

Camels & Sand Dunes

Sorry I haven't blogged in a while...been procrastinating just a tad bit...a couple of weekends ago we found out that some of the other interns are interested in going to Jaisalmer as well so we got our group together. Before we knew it we had a bus full of 14 people...Yeay! We left early Saturday morning and travelled straight to Jaisalmer...We first went to a lake called Amar Sagar, sadly as expected it was drying out! After that we travelled to a place called Bada Bagh which held the memorials of several Maharaja's (kings) of Jaisalmer. It was really cool to see the change in the architecture in the form of sandstone. We then travelled to a abandoned village of Kuldhara. Here we saw the ruins of the once village. Four of us noticed the very top part of temple called the kalash lying on the ground and decided to put it back in its place. We lifted the big carved sandstone rock and lifted all the way up to the very top part of the temple. It was a lot of effort, but was a truly rewarding experience. After our noble deed was done, haha, we decided to continue on. We then went to Sam Sand Dunes where we enjoyed our much awaited camel rides. The camel safari took us 3 kms into the heart of the desert...sand dunes...The group of us thouroughly enjoyed playing in the sand and watching the sunset. After about 3 hours, it was time to head back in where typical Rajasthani cultural dance, music and food awaited us.

The next day we saw Jaisalmer fort from which we could see all of the surrounding city. I personally think it was the best fort we had seen yet. After that it was time to head back to Jodhpur. We did however stop at a temple on our way back.

PS. I forgot to mention: JAISALMER WAS SUPER HOT!

Lakes in a desert!

So Rajasthan is not all desert. About 270 km from Jodhpur is the famous lake city, Udaipur. Udaipur is considered the Venice of the East. It is built on the coast of a couple of lakes and is surrounded by mountains. We first arrived at City Palace in Udaipur. Now a museum, City Palace hold a spectacular view of the lakes and the surrounding city. Once we finished touring the museum, we took a boat ride in the lake to get a closer look at the Lake palace (convert into Taj hotel) as well as Jag Mandir (temple in the middle of the lake). After spending some time relaxing in the garden of Jag Mandir we decided to take a boat back inland.

Thanks to Malini's connections we checked ourselves into Royal Retreat Resort. The resort was unbelievable with a couple of pools, a spa, gym, horses, and various art exhibits. It was great to get away from the crowd and relax at the resort. We spend the whole afternoon there. In the evening we went back in town to lake Pichola. We enjoyed some iced coffee and got to see the city lights across the lake.

After having, arguably the best sleep of the entire trip, we headed for monsoon palace where we were once again greeted by winding mountainous roads and lots of wildlife. Monsoon Palace had a great view of the whole city of Udaipur. We then headed to Gulab Bag (rose garden) which also had a small built-in zoo with tigers, bears, peacocks, deer and many more. Next, we travelled to celebration mall. It reminded me of Eaton Centre in downtown toronto. It was a very westernized mall with tons of branded stores. We enjoyed some ice cream as well as some cricket batting practice at the nets outside the mall. Around mid-day we decided to head back to Jodhpur.

Note to self: Do not travel between 12 and 3. Its way to hot!