We stayed at the Hotel City Palace, which is directly in front of the beautiful Victoria train station. The hotel is ultra-clean and modern, but the relatively cheap room we had was windowless.  We had our own bathroom, a double bed and even a TV.  The only surprise we had was a 1 minute call ... (read more →)

After Kanha, we headed back to Jabalpur by car (Wendy was feeling better, we just didn’t feel like a long bus drive) and took the train to Bombay (Mumbai). It was the longest train ride we took, but it was comfortable.  The train station is beautiful, too – an old building that from the outside ... (read more →)

We took a night train from Varanasi to Jabalpur.  Shortly after leaving the Ghats, we realized that you can take Wendy out of Varanasi, but it’s a little more difficult to take Varanasi out of Wendy. She got sick multiple times on the train ride to Jabalpur.
So, instead of ... (read more →)

We arrived in Varanasi yesterday afternoon and are leaving tonight (we hope) on the night train at 11:30pm.  (Maybe – that’s what it says on the ticket).  Our train was 3 hours late this time, but we did make it.  Our guidebook warned us that Varanasi has very high ‘hassle-factor’ so we came out ... (read more →)

The following day, we hired a taxi for the day. First we headed to Fatehpur Sikri, a couple of hours outside of Agra.  It’s  a silent hilltop city of abandoned palaces and gorgeous crumbling red stone buildings. We were there first thing in the morning and had the place to ourselves – a beautiful ... (read more →)

We’ll we showed up at the train station in Amritsar at 3:30PM for our 4:10PM train to Agra.  Make that our 5:00 train…  Actually 6:00…  Well, actually 7? No, 8:00 train.  Which then lost 2 more hours, finally arriving in at 3:30PM instead of 9:30AM.  And today is Thursday.  And tomorrow is Friday – the ... (read more →)

We’ll we showed up at the train station in Amritsar at 3:30PM for our 4:10PM train to Agra.  Make that our 5:00 train…  Actually 6:00…  Well, actually 7? No, 8:00 train.  Which then lost 2 more hours, finally arriving in at 3:30PM instead of 9:30AM.  And today is Thursday.  And tomorrow is Friday – the ... (read more →)

Our next destination was Amritsar. This was not a night train, it took about 4 hours. We took the Express, which is renowned as one of India’s nicest trains. We were fed (well) and it was very comfortable. We arrived in Amritsar at night and made our way to our hotel, the Sharma Guest ... (read more →)

The following day, we started out early to see the Red Fort. Our trusty driver didn’t know how to get there – he ended up paying an auto-rickshaw driver and following him. Our guidebook had the opening time wrong – but fortunately also had failed to indicate the entry gate, so by the time we ... (read more →)

The next day, the first thing we did was head out into the city to find an ATM. At 8am on the weekend, Connaught Place was a ghost town. It to ok us about 4 ATM’s before we found one that accepted foreign cards. We ended up at a Citi Bank. Getting breakfast was a ... (read more →)