25. INDIA I - West Bengal, Delhi & Rajasthan

The 3 states of this post

India. How can one even start to write about India? For me, India is the most fascinating, eventful and interesting country in the world. I could have done my entire world trip only in India and there would still be enough places to explore for another lifetime. India is the country in the world with the biggest contrasts in all kinds of categories.

Hundreds of thousands of rural villages where people do their laundry on riverbanks, keeping an eye out for crocodiles in contrast to vibrant cities such as Mumbai, New Delhi or Bangalore, that rival any other cities in the world for modernity and development. Diverse landscapes like deserts, snowy mountains, tropical jungles, beautiful beaches and fascinating river systems. A huge variety of different climate zones, histories, cultures, languages, cuisines, traditions and customs. An abundant wildlife of at least 13,000 species of plants and more than 65,000 species of animals such as snow leopards, tigers, elephants, sloth bears, rhinos, cobras or monkeys. It has a population of nearly 1.4 billion people and will overtake China as the world's largest population soon. India's people speak at least 17 different languages and almost 900 local dialects. The Indian subcontinent was the birthplace of four great world religions- Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism and Jainism. All of that together is India and probably the most fascinating country on our planet to travel in. Follow me on a legendary 7 months journey around India and its neighbors!

India is actually many countries inside one nation. Whenever I changed to a different state, customs, cuisine, language and landscape changed as well. It felt more like traveling a full union of states, such as the European Union. Therefore I will split my blog post into different parts to give a better piece of overview of what India is and feels like.

After my first failed attempt to enter India via Kolkata (story here), we finally arrived in India in July of 2022 and obtained our 1-year visa. Our rough plan was to spend 3 months in the North and 3 in the south plus additional side trips to the neighboorcountries. We started in West Bengals capital Kolkata, where we explored the colonial history, emerged ourselves into the streets, had delicious food and went on a weekend trip to Shantiniketan with our friend Subesh. Even the most experienced traveler will still be overwhelmed by all five senses with scents, hustle, colorful festivals, flavors and poverty. Culture shock is a great word for that and I got a feeling that I had to learn nearly everything new, what I have learned before in my life. That caused some very frustrating but also plenty of rewarding experiences that I never want to miss in my life.

From West Bengal we traveled overland to Bangladesh (next post) and took a flight back from there to Delhi. India's capital and seat of government is one of the biggest cities in the world. Visitors with little experience of visiting developing megacities will find Delhi to be chaotic, crowded and too dirty. Coming from Dhaka in Bangladesh I had the exact opposite impression. New Delhi felt modern, clean and convenient, but that's for sure not an objective impression. We were lucky to be in Delhi during the 75-year Independence Day with plenty of festivities and an abundance of Indian flags over the full city. Delhi was also an amazing place to sample northern India's fantastic cuisine, in my humble opinion the best food in the world.

Our state number 3 was Rajasthan, a Northwestern state bordering Pakistan with plenty of amazing sights as forts, temples, holy cities, palaces and deserts. We traveled the state for 6 weeks quite extensively and I was amazed by the beautiful sights. Most of them are breathtaking and impossible to find in any other part of the world. We started in Jaipur, often called 'the pink city' because of the various shades of pink on the buildings. The Amber Fort, Palace of the winds (Hawa Mahal) and Monkey Temple (Galta Ji Mandir) are absolutely amazing and among my highlights of visited sights. We also met our friend Deepak, who helped us so much with my hacked credit card and let us stay for free in his great Hotel for several nights.

Most of the traveling days involved trains and the Indian Railway. It's one of the biggest railway networks in the world and booking a ticket feels like science. The trains are rarely on time but mostly quite comfortable (we preferred to travel 3AC - class). Train stations themselves are mostly incredibly overcrowded and waiting there for several hours for your late train can be a nightmare. The ride itself is a great adventure, vendors are selling delicious chai, snacks and Biriyani, and other passengers were (mostly) nice and super interested and curious about us. Changing places in India always takes ages, distances are gigantic and trains are definitely the comfiest way, especially during the night. Sometimes we were sitting for 5 hours in a train and could not even see any progress on the map :D

Next stops in Rajasthan were Pushkar, a holy city famous for its pilgrims & ghats, Jodhpur, called "the blue city" with a very hot climate just at the edge of the Thar Desert, Udaipur with beautiful lakes, white palaces & romantic backdrops and Bundi, with a stunning fort, step wells & friendly locals. It would take ages and plenty of posts to write about all experiences we had in India. There is so much going on every day, you have the best and worst travel experiences ever on the same day and the sights are just crazy.

In Rajasthan it also happened for the first time on my entire trip that I had serious problems with many people. You will find an abundance of scammers, touts, liars, and annoying & disrespectful people. By that I don't only mean sellers, taxi drivers or shop owners. I mean mostly local people we met in trains, sights, restaurants or just by walking around the cities. Typical situations are: People taking photos of you after you rejected their request many times (if they even ask), people touching or taking personal things of you just to use them or check what that is (i.e. newspapers, shoes, backpack or clothes), hotel staff entering your room in the middle of the night to see what you are doing (happened at least 10 times) or racist comments as "Europeans don't love their families", rickshaw drivers or shop owners blocking your way to squeeze money out of you or group of male teenagers following you everywhere by foot after you screamed several times to them to leave you :D And those things didn't happen sometimes, they happened EVERY DAY in Rajasthan. Because of those people, it was mostly impossible to enjoy the beauty of Rajasthan, which really is a shame.

Of course, we also met plenty of great people, especially Deepak in Jaipur, Sunil & Pragya in Jodhpur and Uttam & Anjana in Udaipur. All of you were so incredibly nice and hospitable and some other people as well were among the friendliest I met so far!

Anyway, Rajasthan is still worth all the hassle and no India trip would be completed without visiting this fascinating state.

India II - Madha Pradesh & Uttar Pradesh
India III: Maharashtra, Goa & Karnataka
India IV: Kerala & Tamil Nadu

5 Highlights:

- Kolkata with its colonial architecture and Bengali cuisine

- Jaipur, the pink city with beautiful sights

- Bundi, an atmospheric small city in Rajasthan with very friendly people

- Udaipur, the white romantic city with plenty of idyllic lakes

- Pushkar, a small holy town with ghats and temples