‘Plain living and high thinking’ – Mahatma Gandhi

India Travelogue 2006

India is buoyant at the turning of twenty first century. Boosting the biggest democracy in the world, and on e of most populous developing country only second to China, we hear all too much about Indian is coming. Software outsourcing, customer services outsourcing, medical care outsourcing… Arguablely China is taking on the ‘hard way’ of the world (manufacturing). India must be taking on the ‘soft way’ (service industry) of it.

This is a 17 days epic journey covers 4000 kilometres by land. We travel south to Mumbai (Bombay), east to Varanasi, north to Dharamsala and west to Amritsar. This land cultivates one of the four great ancient civilisations with most diverse culture, relatively sucessfully integrated religions and beliefs. Simply put, it is a fascinating eye-opening, discovery and self-discovery journey.

To a seasoning traveller, India is ‘the world’. Our 4000 km highlight in 17 days couldn’t possibly be in-depth. In retrospective, we reckon it takes at least 4-5 visits or 6 months time to enjoy the most.

Having said that, we still had a 360 degree load-down. See it, observe and interact with the country and her people we feel India is not only Taj Mahal, rickshaw drivers or snake charmers – they are there, that is for sure. But if one thinks those are all about India, one may only get 30% out from it.

Next 30% goes to Mumbai Dhobi Ghat (laundry yard); madness rushing hour commuting; Khajuraho – the ‘love’ temple; Ganga praying; Varanasi Buring ghat; Himalaya trekking; Guru Granth Sahib ceremony(Sikh Golden Temple) and the railway history of India. More than that, talk to her people makes at least another 40%: white collar worker, Chinese pilgrimage monk, Agra auto-rickshaw driver; Varanasi silk merchant; Dharamsala Tibetan exile monk and Sikh graduate studying Politic Science.

This is our first visit to India. We would like to see India for ourselves, from normal people’s perspective, and admittedly, people from one of India’s biggest ‘competitor’ countries – China. We grown up in China and recent years move to Britain – the yesteryear Raj Empire. We hope thought our live experience, we can offer some unbiased yet interesting reading to you.

We aim to write this travelogue in both English and Chinese to feast the world. So that three quarters of the world’s readers would be able to enjoy it. Each article may contain a link at the end to point to it’s counter part. There is also a language (hyperlink) switch link to a language collection, which is at the top-left corner under the banner.

If you see some ‘strange’ characters on a page that your browser does not support, don’t worry. Readable part on the same page is what it says.

Please feel free to leave comments where you see fit. If you are an Indian I would like to hear from you: correction on the fact, discussion or comments. If you are planning your India trip, please feel free to ask any question. If you are interested in the past and current affair of India, please share your thoughts.

We gratefully received a lot of advices for preparing the trip. Two most frequented online forums are Lonely Planet: Thorn Tree and India Mike. It is our chance to pay back.

Part one is the preparation and retrospective, given a count on the logistics, comments all hotels and services we used. It also contains some useful planning tips and the itineraries map of our journey. Part two is the travelogue.

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