The big attraction of Gwalior is its big fort on top of the hill above the city. Once it was one of the most beautiful in Madhya Pradesh, with intricately carved sandstone walls, covered with mirrors and precious stones. The the Islamic Mughals came and took them all away. But some of the tiles survived,…

In Europe, the basic unit of traffic is the lane. Here it’s any space big enough to squeeze into, at any speed, without making the next vehicle brake too hard. It’s ok because people honk madly while they do this. It’s also ok to make a U-turn on a divided highway and going against traffic.…

Britain is an often cold and wet island somewhere out in the Atlantic Ocean, and that is how the British like it. So when they find themselves ruling a place like India, where temperatures can get close to 50 degrees C, they build hill stations up in the mountains. One of the largest ist Mussoorie,…

Once again I am in the Himalayas, my favorite mountain range. Not the high peaks, these are a long way to the east, but today’s trip took me to Chambra at 2000m. It’s a long narrow road along the edge of the mountains that consists only of curves. Chambra itself is a nice town, but…

Rishikesh is a town further up on the Ganges. The town has a split personality: the larger part is a fairly generic busy town full of markets and honking traffic, a narrow footbridge over the Ganges connects it to the smaller part built up a steep hill. The bridge is not too narrow for motorcycles…

Haridwar means Gate of the Gods. It’s a town on the Ganges, up the mountains where Ganges water is still clean, in eastern India. At the ghats – waterfront stairs – people go swimming in the holy Ganges because it’s a shortcut to Nirvana, i am told. The river is flowing so fast that people…

Trivandrum is a major transport hub and international airport in southern India,  but it doesn’t have very much to offer to tourists. The main temple is closed to non-binding and the palace next door is closed to everyone,  except the museum. So we went to Kovalam for the day.  There is some debate on which…

Kanyakumari sits at India’s southernmost point,  and gets its fame from being the place where the Arab Sea,  the Indian Ocean, and the Bay of Bengal meet. People say that only here you can see dawn and sunset at the same point, a statement that needs so much qualification that it really doesn’t mean much.…

Varkala’s beaches have become a major attraction. The main beach is huge,  with fine white sand, warm water, good surf, and lifeguards waving red flags that are cheerfully ignored by everyone. Most swimmers are men; if women go into the water they are fully dressed and stay at the edge. India is still quite conservative.…

Spent much of the day on a ferry from Alleppey to Kollam, another town down the coast. The ferry uses only inland canals and lakes. On arrival, we got into a procession with brightly lit animatronic Gods on floats, drummers, dressed-up people with oil lamps, torches, and several elephants. All with incredibly loud Indian music…

The big attraction on Kerala’s coast is backwater touring,  and Alleppey is ground zero for it. When you arrive by bus, touts will descend on you brandishing beautiful but faded pictures of houseboats. The iconic Kerala houseboat looks like a huge wicker basket mounted on a barge,  but these aren’t actually the best way to…

Alleppey is a town on the coast,  south of Cochin. It has nothing to do with Aleppo. Alleppey is mostly known as the best place to explore Kerala’s backwaters,  an extensive network of waterways spanning thousands of kilometers. While the hills are dry and cool, the coast is hot and humid. Getting there involved another…

Up in the hills of Kerala they are growing tea since British colonial times. Nothing is ever flat here, and tea plantations cover the rolling hills like bright green pillows. Women hand-pick the tips of the plants for white tea and the top leaves for green tea, then someone clips the rest with shears for…

The Coast of southern India is hot and humid, even in February. This was perceived as unsatisfactory by the British when India was part of their empire, because British weather is not like that. So they moved inland to the “hill stations”. So did we today. That meant a long tuk-tuk ride to Ernakulum, the…

Did I mention that my palace suite in Ooty had a fireplace and a jacuzzi? The Residency Towers room in Chennai has neither, it’s more like an economy version of a Western Grand Hotel with lots of marble and columns. But it has a pool. Chennai (formerly Madras) itself is not very attractive; there are…

Made an excursion into the hills around Ooty. Wonderful views of the valley and the hills stretching to the horizon. There are many tea plantations. It’s another warm sunny summer day, but I am told that in two weeks the monsoon will bring lots of snow, in June! Took a local bus to Mettupalayam, a…

Amazing. I actually got a train ticket to Chennai tomorrow. Not the slightest bit sold out. The narrow-gauge mountain train, which somehow got Unesco World Heritage status, is booked solid well into June though. You don’t rush from one temple to the next in Ooty. It’s too relaxed for that, and besides there aren’t any…

The Maharaja of Mysore and I agree that Mysore is too hot in the summer. He owns another palace in Ooty, a hill station 100 km south at 2200m, where it is dry and cool. I like Ooty’s palace much better than the one in Mysore – it’s older, but a lot more cozy; everything…

Mysore’s palace was rebuilt in 1912 after a fire, and it now looks as if they got a Victorian railroad engineer to do it. The steel structure is never completely hidden even though they hung tons of Indian ornamentation on it. It’s grandiose all right, but it doesn’t feel right. Only the throne room is…

Although I wasn’t quite up to exploring Mysore after that 18-hour bus ride from hell, I did walk around town in the evening a little. It’s the usual chaotic south Indian town, without much colonial atmosphere. They have a large partly covered bazaar where I walked for a while, striking up conversations with vendors. Most…

Can’t really spend time in Goa without hitting the beaches, so I hired a motorcycle driver for an excursion. Fort Aguada and Candolim are a little west of Panaji, looking out on the Arabian Sea. All the things one expects on any beach of that kind are there – beach pubs, huts for rent, white…

Old Goa was a great town once, in the sixteenth century, larger than Lisbon and London. No longer. But the huge elaborate churches, convents, and some ruins are still there, scenically scattered about a very large park with palm trees (one of which tried to drop a huge frond on me but missed), forests, and…

Goa, on the west coast of the India, surrounded by beaches and old towns that look more Portuguese than Indian, has been known as a 60’s hippy hangout ever since the Beatles found their Baghwan here. The hippies are gone, but this is not the place to rush from one church to the next. This…

The hotel breakfast isn’t very good (“continental”, ugh) so I went to Leopold’s. That’s an old institution in Mumbai dating back to the British rajs. It was one of the targets of November’s terror attacks, and the bullet holes are still there. I hope it’s the last bullet hole I’ll encounter on this trip. Dharavi…

The interesting part of Mumbai, where nearly all the sights are, is a peninsula between the harbor in the east, and Back Bay in the west. Another, much narrower, peninsula wraps around the other side of Back Bay, and that’s where I went today. They have a few very nice parks (where “straineous exercise” is…

The Gateway of India in Mumbai is a monumental arch facing the sea. It’s best seen from the harbor so I took a harbor tour boat. It didn’t really work because it’s full of Indians; at first I didn’t realize why the two seats next to mine saw so much traffic, people constantly getting up…