Our tour of Rajasthan ended, and we arrived back in Delhi just in time to see crowds of Hindus starting an annual pilgrimage. They were mostly dressed in orange and each carried two small jugs of water which will be deposited at a temple 200 kilometers away. The other major activity in town is construction. They are getting ready for the Commonwealth Games in October and have a lot of streets to fix, hotels to upgrade, subway lines to build, and various other infrastructure projects. There is much speculation, and …

Although Rajasthan is not home to the Taj Mahal, it does contain the Pink City, the Blue City, and numerous palaces and temples. We opted for a ten day private car tour of the area. Fittingly our driver’s name was Raj!
The first stop was Agra. We didn’t head to the main attraction right away but instead went to Agra Fort. From the outside it looked like we’d be there all day, it is massive. However, once inside we learned that it is still used by the military so we …

When the British got tired of the heat they went to the mountains, we were hot and tired in Kolkata so we went there too. Apparently this happened to them a lot, so they found a little patch of fog in the Himalayas and built a small city up there. Posters on the walls of travel agencies offer views of Mt Everest from town, but the reality for us, in the middle of monsoon season, was just clouds. The fog would roll in and out all day, but never cleared …

That was our first thought when we landed in Kolkata. The airport was built in the 1930s and it appears that little has changed. No computers at immigration, customs was a joke, no ATMs anywhere, and once you step outside you find a fleet of yellow taxis made circa 1950, lovingly called Ambassadors.
The drive to our hotel revealed the modern side, complete with neon lights. The whole city is an interesting mix of old and new. Many colonial buildings remain but most in dismal shape with vegetation growing from …