Planning the trip

As I have planned this trip, I have utilized many travel blogs, forums, travel websites, and guide books. I would like to share the highlights of how I've hacked together a itinerary. In my rough draft stage, I knew I wanted a destination that was a good bang for the buck. I was willing to save up the funds, but wanted to find a place where I could splurge with what I had. I found G Adventures, an adventure travel company with a great website to browse tours throughout the world. Their detailed itineraries make a great rough draft. Nomad List was also a good reference for how expensive different regions of the world are for tourists.

For finding flights I used Hipmunk, the great thing about this site is that they sort flights based on "agony". Agony is based upon all factors such as layover time, the time of departure and arrival and price. When I found the flight I wanted I went directly to the airline's website to book it. Direct flights to the country are only flown by United and Air India -- So United it was.

There are so many great travel blogs covering every corner of India, but my favorite has been Hippie in Heels. It's written by a nurse from Ohio who left her job to travel. She solo backpacked though India and ended up moving to Goa, one of my destinations. She has some great stories and very good guides for all over the world. I would recommend reading her This is India series of posts, she gives you good insight on everyday life in India.  

Since India is 10.5 hours ahead of us (on the east coast, 13.5 for you, David), I was concerned about jet lag. I was referred to Stop Jet Lag. For $35 they create a custom plan for transitioning your body through the time zones. I have to say I thought it sounded stupid but have been very impressed. They tell you everything from the size of your meals, to exposure of bright light, intake of caffeine, and, of course, sleep schedule. I'm looking forward to seeing how well it works.

One of the many tips from Stop Jet Lag was to use noise cancelling headphones for the long flights. This started my research on headphones. While I am not a big fan of Bose, most reviews of other brands state that they work well but just aren't as great as Bose. But, there was no way I was going to spend $300 on a pair of Bose headphones that I will most likely not use after my trip. I read the reviews of Bose's current model the "QuietComfort 25". Many reviews said that the new model is about the same as the previous QuietComfort 15's in terms of noise cancellation. So I headed over to ebay. After a few days of loosing bids (in the final 5 seconds), I won a great set for $140. I have to say that they are very impressive on mechanical noise cancellation.

My final tip for this planning post: if you are a tourist in India, you must have enough passport photos to give two to each place you stay, as well as a few extra for other things such as getting a sim card for your phone. Apparently, the Indian government keeps track of tourists. Each hotelier keeps one of your photos and the other is sent to the local police station. While it sounds like a pain, I think it makes a lot of since. To make sure I had enough photos, I took a picture of myself (thanks, Jim) and Photoshopped it to a 2x2 to create a standard 4x6 picture with multiple me's. I put it on a thumb drive and had my local pharmacy print 4 sheets. After cutting them out, I now have 24 passport pictures for less than $3.

The countdown is currently at 37 days! I hope you enjoyed my tips.

Why India

The most common question I get is Why did you pick India? And my answer is that its the opposite of a Caribbean cruise. There is nothing more unappealing to me as being trapped on a boat with a bunch of passive tourists and being herded from one trap to another. I was looking for a trip of adventure like no other with history, beauty, and the food to back it up.

India has been inhabited since the dawn of man, 75,000 years ago. Has been conquered by countless empires, and traded with many others. All adding their own influence to Indian culture, religion, and cuisine.

I know most people don't think beauty when India is mentioned, but it is a different type of beauty. Not many countries can deliver Sahara type dune deserts as far as the eye can see which is the Thar desert, snow capped Himalayan mountains, dense rain forests of the western Ghats, picturesque beaches of Goa, and the major metropolitan areas of New Delhi and Mumbai.

For more beautiful pictures of India take a look at this site: Smashing Magazine

Note: None of these pictures are my own, I credit these sites 

Nanda Devi

Thar Desert

Western Ghats

Overview

INDIA

Welcome to my blog for my upcoming trip to India. I have been planning this trip for a few months now and decided to share my itinerary and create the website before the trip starts.

My primary objective for this trip is food. I have grown up loving Indian food and made a few dishes from an amazing cookbook, 660 Curries, that I would recommend to anyone looking to get into home cooked Indian meals, most of which are better than their restaurant counterparts. I plan on taking cooking classes in all the different cities I will be visiting, and exploring the country for authentic street food and local eateries.

I will be arriving in New Delhi on September 30th, staying in the capital city for the longest of all the cities I will be visiting, 4 full days. Since this is my first visit to India I decided to begin with the traditional tourist route -- the golden triangle. Delhi, Agra, and Jaipur are central India's major tourist destinations containing seven world heritage sites. I will take the Shatabdi trains, the fastest trains in India, think Amtrak Acela, for the first two legs of my journey. After a quick stay of two nights visiting the iconic Taj Mahal and surrounding area of Agra I will take another Shatabdi to Jaipur, the pink city, named after the pink walls of the old city. Painted pink for the arrival of the Queen of England and Prince of Wales in 1876, pink being the color of hospitality. Next, it's a flight to Chennai on the south east coast of India and taxi ride to Pondicherry. A French colony established in the 1600's, the area around Pondicherry has been inhabited since at least the first century as a Roman trading port. After four more days of cooking, eating, and exploring I will continue to Goa, an international beach destination enjoyed by European and domestic vacationers. There I hope to perfect my favorite Indian dish, Vindaloo, a very spicy dish originating from the influence of the Portuguese colony on traditional Indian spices. From the sunny beaches of Goa I will continue on to Mumbai - the New York City of India. With my final few days of vacation time I plan on cramming in as much shopping and sight seeing as I can before a long flight home.

This is enough of an overview for my first post, I will post more about how I planned everything in the next few posts.