India, January/February 2013

Head for Home

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When you ask a traveller to India to describe this country in one or two words, the word "symmetry" rarely comes as the first choice, as this word tends to imply order and a well defined world. Of course, symmetry is one of the fundamentals of Mughal (and other types of) architecture, but in reality this symmetry is always perturbed. On other hand, many seemingly random views exhibit symmetry-like features. This collection summarizes our travel from the Indo-Pakistani border in the West to the city of Kolkata in the East.

Perturbed Symmetry (or from red to red)

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These three collections complement each other.

The first collection shows pictures of sites that tourists go (and we went) to India to see; that is, places we visited traveling from New Delhi West to Amritsar and then East to Kolkata, on the plains (roughly) along the Ganges.

However, we've seen more; somebody asked me about how towns and streets look like and this collection gives a partial answer: places around India

And we ran into many people

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Every picture in this collection includes at least one of us and there are a few rare shots which feature all four of us to indisputedly show that we were there.

We were there

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One afternoon in Khajuraho we visited almost a dozen stores and here we document this achievement, along with showing a bunch of other pictures of places at which we shopped or shops and displays which caught our attention.

Shopping

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This is a very boring collection of bad and unedited pictures.

It shows what & where we ate; it is not a fully comprehensive document, as pics of a few places are missing: meals at the restaurant at Hotel Sakura (Agra) -- ambiance there was not that special or conducive for taking pics, though food was OK; lunch in Varanasi at the Hotel River View restaurant, where we were distracted by a wedding party going on at the street in front; lunch which was to be breakfast in Kolkata after arriving to the city six hours late. Also, not every meal is shown here, but rather we document places at which we ate in chronological order, as typically we have only one pic even if we had couple of meals at the same place (for example, at the restaurant at the Hotel Ganpati in Varanasi).

However, if you were there you'd remember how spicy the food was, or how hot the bread was, or how hungry or not we were ...

Planning this trip we communicated a lot, including e-mails which needed to be translated between English and Polish. Below is an example of the Google translation of the paragraph above.

To jest bardzo nudna kolekcja obrazów złych i niezmienione.

To pokazuje, co i gdzie jedliśmy, to nie jest w pełni kompleksowy dokument, jak fotki kilku miejscach brakuje: posiłki w restauracji w Hotel Sakura (Agra) - ambiance nie było, że specjalne lub sprzyja do robienia fotek, choć jedzenie było OK, lunch w Varanasi w restauracji hotelu River View, gdzie zostaliśmy rozproszony przez wesele dzieje na ulicy przed, lunch, która miała być śniadanie w Kalkucie po przybyciu do miasta sześć godzin późno. Ponadto, nie każdy posiłek znajduje się tutaj, ale raczej dokumentować miejsca, w których jedliśmy w porządku chronologicznym, jak zwykle mamy tylko jeden pic nawet jeśli mieliśmy kilka posiłków w tym samym miejscu (na przykład w restauracji w hotelu Ganpati w Varanasi).

Jednakże, jeśli chcesz tam pamiętam, jak pikantne jedzenie było, lub jak gorący chleb, lub jak głodny czy nie byliśmy ...

Fooding

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This collection includes pics of birds we've seen, noticed, and managed to photograph. It is put together especially for C.S.

Birds (or from green to green)

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Also, we ran into various animals: some live, some carved, and even painted or stuffed. Here, they are

Animals

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This was our plan; we've almost followed it.

Wed Jan 09 - Bob & Gosia fly from Washington IAD at 17:50 Thu Jan 10 - Marek & Nelka fly from Gdańsk GDN at 07:35 Fri Jan 11 - all arrive & meet in Delhi at hotel in morning (B&G: 00:50 M&N: 07:25) Sat Jan 12 - see Delhi Sun Jan 13 - train to Haridwar (#12055: 15:25-19:32) Mon Jan 14 - see Haridwar (holy bathing, evening aarti) Tue Jan 15 - train to Amritsar (#12053: 14:35-22:00) Wed Jan 16 - see Amritsar (Golden Temple) Thu Jan 17 - train to Mathura (#12904: 21:25-09:55) Fri Jan 18 - see Mathura and Vrindavan Sat Jan 19 - train or bus or taxi to Agra (??:??); see Agra Fort Sun Jan 20 - see Agra (Fatepur Sikri and Sikander day trip) Mon Jan 21 - see Taj Mahal; train to Gwalior (#14010: 16:20-17:57) Tue Jan 22 - see Gwalior (fort) Wed Jan 23 - train to Khajuraho (#19666: 12:50-19:30) Thu Jan 24 - see Khajuraho Fri Jan 25 - see Khajuraho and/or Panna Sat Jan 26 - fly to Varanasi (13:55-14:45 Jet Airways #9W2424, Conf #KGSUMV) Sun Jan 27 - see Varanasi Mon Jan 28 - see Varanasi (Sarnath) Tue Jan 29 - train to Gaya (#13010: 16:15-21:17), taxi to Bodhgaya (about 14 km) Wed Jan 30 - see Bodhgaya Thu Jan 31 - overnight train from Gaya to Kolkata (#12324: 22:25-06:00: Howrah station) Fri Feb 01 - arrive Kolkata in morning; see Kolkata Sat Feb 02 - Kolkata; Bob & Gosia fly at 21:55 ; Marek & Nelka at 03:15 (Sunday) Sun Feb 03 - Bob & Gosia arrive IAD 15:10 ; Marek & Nelka arrive GDN at 21:00