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.