Tuesday, January 03, 2006

What happened to the second Editor?

I've enjoyed posting some descriptive prose on our 'Blog'; we certainly have seen some interesting things to talk about. However, I haven't been posting much lately and I want to explain why. One thing is the technology; it is often a trick getting photos posted from virus-ridden computers with no DVD-ROM on dubious internet connections in locales where the power goes out several times a day for several minutes at a time. For instance, right now I think 4 computer users are using 1 dial up connection here.

However, it's fun to be able to share some of our pictures "live"; this is something we never could have done so easily (relatively speaking) without digital photography and of course the Internet.

The second thing I've been busy with is planning transportation. India is a big country, and, we've found, Indians just have a different tolerance level for transportation than we (at least Tiffany and myself) do. Doing a 4-5 hour bus ride on the buses we previously described, with plywood-hard seats and no legroom, is absolutely routine. It is also quite easy to end up on a 15-30 hour train ride trying to get where you want to go. Furthermore, many flights and trains are full. It is not wise to book trains any later than 2-3 weeks in advance, because they are so full. We saw some trains with 120 person waiting lists for a single class (3-bunk stack A/C)

So, the other thing I've been working on is arranging travel and lodging. It's kind of fun, it's a challenge to plan, and I hope it will be rewarding to us later. two days ago we traveled from Kochi to Munnar in a private car, about a 5 hour trip. we will be here 3 more days, then travel back to Kochi either in a car or on a bus, then take a train overnight to Mangalore, up the coast (not Bangalore) we'll have a 4 hour 'layover' in Mangalore, then continue on to goa, for a total of about 14 hours train travel. This is the best we could do booking 10 days in advance.

we'll be in Goa for a while then take a plane to Mumbai for a couple of days. Then, we will fly again from Mumbai to Udaipur, where a lake palace is, along with some cooking classes! a few days later, we will fly from Udaipur to Jaipur, then after a couple of days take a train from Jaipur to Agra, where the Taj Mahal is. After a day and a half in Agra we'll take a train again to Delhi, and the following day we will fly from Delhi to Chennai, and fly later that evening from Chennai back to Bangkok!

All of the train and plane reservations have been made, and hotel reservations in Goa. We still need to make hotel reservations for Mumbai, Udaipur, Jaipur, Agra, and Delhi, but I think (hope) this will be fairly straightforward now that we have all of the dates lined up.

So ... that's what I've been up to, when we've had communications access. Hope to talk to you folks more now.

1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hi Travelers!

I'm loving reading your blog and enjoying all your descriptions. Boy, a plywood seat for hours at a time sounds rather gruesome! Making reservations sounds like a full-time job with lots of unknowns. How did you get to go somewhere by private car? How did you find the driver? Did he point out things and talk the whole way? What was the highway like? Paved? Did you see many other vehicles? What do the cars look like and how many do they hold?

Thanks again for your great writings--both of you!!!

Love, Mommy Moore (written Sunday at 7:30 a.m.)

8:34 AM  

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