Jaipur "la ville rose" Our experience in Jaipur, the capital city of Rajasthan, was a bit of a whirlwind. We arrived in Jaipur at 4am to a surprisingly busy train station. We met a couple called Rosie and Jim at Agra train station who were heading to Jaipur and to the same guesthouse as us so we made our way there together. The guesthouse owner was not best pleased at being woken up at 4.30am but we got rooms and were just grateful to be getting some s...

Taj Mahal There are some things in life that are worth getting up early for. Going to see the Taj Mahal at sunrise is definately one of them. We arrived in Agra late one evening as our changeover in Delhi from Dharamsala didn't go as smoothly as we'd hoped. When we reached Old Delhi train station no one seemed to know anything about getting a train to Agra. When we went to the ticket office they told us to come back in an hour. Why? Your guess is as good as min...

McLeod Ganj After leaving Punjab we made the long journey to Dharamsala in the Himalayas; home to the exiled Tibetan government and his Holiness the Dalai Lama. We were so excited to be heading this far north away from the chaos, noise and intensity of the big cities. We had to take two buses with a journey time totalling around 8 hours and the roads up the mountains were so bad that my teeth were chattering from the bumpiness! In the final couple of hours of t...

All that glitters is gold in Amritsar After suffering a bit of an ordeal on our overnight train from Haridwar, we arrived in Amritsar at about 7am. We took an auto rickshaw straight to the backpacker area and set about finding somewhere to stay. The first few places were either too expensive or full but we eventually settled on Sharma guesthouse. Not quite as cheap as Rishikesh, but close. With no time to lose as we were only staying in Amritsar for one night, w...

Rishikesh All I knew of Rishikesh before travelling there was that The Beatles had spent some time at the ashram of the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi back in the 60s. Although I wasn't there in the 60s, I can't imagine it could have been much different to the way it is now. It's still made up of ashrams, yoga and meditation centres, and people (both Indian and Western) chanting mantras. To get to Rishikesh we had to take a train to nearby Haridwar which happens to be ...