Here’s a couple of short videos from our stay at the homestay in Orchha. scroll down… This first one is the breakfast served at Malti’s house: httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pplpDsSP6ws This second one is some footage of the kids playing and having fun in Ganj, the little village near Orchha where all […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry…
The room the owners of my homestay live in is no bigger than the room Emilia and I are occupying, yet we’ve only got a couple of rucksacks filling the space, although in typical Winchcombe fashion everything’s scattered to fill the void well. We’ve got beds, we’ve got mosquito nets, we’ve got electrical sockets, a […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry…
In a corner of the room, right next to the doorway, sat Malti, the wife of the family that Emilia and I were staying with. She was stirring some steaming potato curry in a pot which was resting over a fire powered by a single main log. The log didn’t fully fit […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry…
Perhaps the most intrepid part of our trip – apart from travelling on trains for 2500 miles in the worst season possible – was our planned stay with two local families in the sleepy riverside town of Orchha. The idea for a homestay was sewn early on, when the original plan was to go to […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry…
Today we were picked in Gwalior by a young taxi driver named Amir sent by the owners of the homestay organisation, Friends Of Orchha. A homestay is where you stay with a local family, often using a spare room of theirs or one they build purposely. Daddy found this place on the Internet and found […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry…
Delhi disappears into the distance along the train tracks as we head off on our first sleeping class train – the previous two have been day time Shatabdi trains – to Gwalior, a city which certainly isn’t on the standard tourist path but could easily be if it promoted itself a little more. It’s got […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry…
It was RebeccaM from IndiaMike who indirectly – via one of her posts – first put me onto Gurinder’s tour guide services and I’m glad she did. To be fair I’ve not used many guides before but it’s simply hard to believe you could find someone more knowledgeable, so easy to get along with and […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry…
This place should need little introduction, I’ll assume everyone has heard of this place but broadly it is one of the key holy places for the Sikh religion and is a centre for devotion in the same way as Mecca is to Islam, Jerusalem is to Christianity and St Mary’s is to football. So many […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry…
In the last post I described the ceremony and showed you some pictures but this video is worth watching just to see how bizarre it all really was Scroll down to watch the video Here’s a video of the ceremony: Wagah : httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WP6VCYP9Iqg
Each night when the border between India and Pakistan closes there’s a really fun, light-hearted but bizarre ceremony which draws a huge crowd, especially from the Indian side. The border ceremony is held at a place called Wagah so the taxiwallahs in Amritsar keep saying “Wagah border Sir?” as that’s how it’s better known as. […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry…
Waking up early after a great night out we had little time to celebrate the start of our 17th wedding anniversary as our train for Amritsar was scheduled to leave at 7:20 a.m.. At that time in the morning any train station that has 16 platforms could seem intimidating but other than the station guard […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry…
On Sunday having had a wonderful lunch with Madhu we had loosely planned to meet another friend again with the intention of taking him, or his family too, out to dinner. The loose plans looked like collapsing due to my lack of Internet connectivity and the problems with my mobile but we sorted out a […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry…
…then prepare to fail and Fail with a capital F.* Oh, and prepare to walk a long way in the wrong direction. On Saturday night I got little opportunity to talk to Yogesh due to the seating arrangements but he invited me to join him on one of the photo-walks he does, this time visiting […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry…
I love autorickshaws because they’re fun, cute and we don’t have them in England. An autorickshaw is a doorless small yellow and green car with three wheels. It has a very small engine, maybe one out of a motorcycle. Sitting in an autorickshaw is difficult for us all because they’re not really big enough for […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry…
So maybe the plan has worked: I called this blog ‘Monsoon Meandering’ and so far there’s no sign of the monsoon…actually hold that thought as I’ve just looked out of the window and it’s raining, lots. We thoroughly expected to get soaked everytime we went sight-seeing due to torrents of rain falling from the sky, […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry…
