|
Subject: India
Posted: 14 Feb 2005 12:07 pm
Hi Sandhya.
I had two main reasons for not exploring every single nook and cranny of the world while on my long trip. They were:
1. My funds were limited, and when this is the case you have to make choices as to where you can visit and which parts you have to omit. The problem is that if you've not been somewhere before, you can't tell whether you're going to like it, so the best solution is to explore as varied a selection of places as is possible within these constraints. That's why my trip took in a lot of the world, but not all of it.
2. After three years on the road, I woke up one day and realised I couldn't remember what my mother's face looked like. That's when I realised that I had to go home, so I dropped my plans to return home through Pakistan, the Middle East and Europe, and flew home. It was a good move.
Specifically, though, this is why I chose the countries and places I chose:
* I wanted to visit Pakistan, but I left it out because three years on the road was enough.
* I looked into visiting Tibet from Nepal, but at that time crossing the Himalaya overland into Tibet was practically impossible, so I would have had to take a flight. In the end, I simply ran out of time and money.
* I didn't manage Sri Lanka because the most sensible way to visit it would have been to fly from southern India to Sri Lanka and back, but this would have eaten into my six-month Indian visa, which would be quite hard to extend. I decided that I was enjoying India so much anyway that I would save Sri Lanka for another time.
* I had originally planned to visit Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia after visiting Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand, but by the time I arrived in Thailand I'd had enough of south-east Asia and fancied a change. So I scrapped my plans for those three countries and cought a flight for Calcutta instead, and it turned out to be an excellent move. I loved India!
* By the time I got to Dharamsala, my Indian visa was about to expire, so I didn't have time for Manali, Kullu, Ladakh and so on. The same goes for Sikkim, which at that time also had a lot of red tape associated with it; I couldn't visit it without getting a fair amount of paperwork sorted out, and I figured that it was simpler to stick to the places I could visit more easily, seeing as I wasn't going to manage to see all of them anyway.
I believe that it's better to visit a smaller number of places and really get under the skin of the country, rather than rush round trying to tick everything off the list. Your suggestions are all very worthwhile, but to visit everywhere is just too expensive and too tiring. I just picked the places that sounded the best, and went for it. I wasn't disappointed!
I hope this answers your queries... 😀
Best wishes,
Mark
Post a Reply
|