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[travelingwithlohit]

Day 1: Jaisalmer (Golden city)

Rajasthan trip is my first blogpost because of 2 reasons :

1.       It was my last trip before COVID-19. I have not travelled anywhere since. The maximum distance I have gone away from my home is 10 km.

2.       Jaisalmer: I have had done 2 trips to Rajasthan earlier, but I never went to Jaisalmer. Therefore, there was a separate kind of excitement to see the Thar desert.

In the morning, we took off from Jodhpur – Railway station was lit in Blue. We had a 1st AC with cabin booked for this trip and we intended to enjoy our trip through the deserts. We clicked some pictures on the way while the journey ended pretty soon. We were in Jaisalmer in 5 hours, which seemed like 2-3 hours to us. We were excited to stay in the hotel that we had selected ad it was a heritage hotel by Marriott, “Jaisalmer Marriott Resort and Spa” and we chose to spend our loyalty points here and boy was it the best decision of the trip.

We had a super warm welcome in Marriott with hot tea and pakoris. We were given a wrong room at first as we had specially requested for the Fort view room, which we got changed later. Nevertheless, this room was also not too bad since we were hardly going to be there on the first day in the room. The reason for this was the safari that was planned and prepaid ahead of us. I will post a picture of room, just to let the readers relate. We had selected this hotel, owing to its proximity to airport, or at least that’s what we thought (Another surprise awaiting on the last day of the trip).

After we had our snacks, we were able to do a hour early check in. This was much needed as we were exhausted of the journey and had to be ready for upcoming safari. We ate and rested for around 3 hours before we started to get ready. After a small mix-up in terms of the taxi that was suppose to pick us up, we finally left our hotel at 03:20 pm and we reached Kanoi in about 1.5 hours, sams dunes area to begin our safari and entertainment for the rest of the evening.  On the way, we saw a lot of windmills. In india, this is one of those few places where there is a flurry of windmills.

We had booked our Safari with the “Rajputana Desert camp” and it was well organized and they quickly cleared the communication among them and we were on our way to desert ride on Camels. We spent around 50 minutes on Camel riding and 1 hour clicking pictures of the sunset in desert before we moved back (again on camel) to the destination of Rajputana Desert camp. By the time we were at the camp, it was already dark and the entertainment ground ahead awaited us. Here we sat on ground mats while ahead of us, were several performances of music and Dance, in pure Rajasthani style. Once the performances were almost over, our driver came and asked us to use the opportunity to have dinner before rush comes in and so we obliged and were on our way back to hotel. We were at our hotel around 09:30 pm (40 minutes while traveling back). We had a night tea and crashed within an hour. This day was fully exhaustive and eventful. We had a very few places to visit the next day and so the plan was pretty smooth. After a train, Taxi , Jeep and Camel journey, we were on our dream journey 😊

[travelingwithlohit]

Jodhpur: Blue city @Nuovotaashi

[travelingwithlohit]

Day 5: Museum and food

Fifth and last day in Jaipur, and it was about shopping and museum 😊

Since we had an early dinner and we left late after packing because we had a night train to Jodhpur, we were hungry and we went to the popular place, “Gulab ji Chai wale”, to have bun maska and pyaaz kachori with of course Chai.

We had decided to see the Albert Hall Museum and we liked some portions of the museum like ancient mummy which we saw only in New York before this. More then the time we spent inside, we spent outside it playing with huge number of pigeons, sitting by. (Pictures below)

After spending around 75 minutes, we completed a small stretch of walk to enter the markets and as soon as we did, we had a refreshing kulhar of Lassi from “Lassi waala” – Literally. (Pictures below)

We spent the remaining day shopping around all the popular Jaipur stuff like indigo clothing, women’s jewellery, mens kurta, Jaipuri jutti, et cetera. Finally, we travelled back to hotel to rest before taking the morning train and we purchased Gajak on our way back, enough to munch during the travel to Jodhpur.

[travelingwithlohit]

Rajasthan: The land where you truly meet simplicity

Pink City – Blue City – Golden City

After a long train of thoughts and decision-making process, I have finally yielded to my temptation of writing a blog towards my experience in, before and after travelling. This one in particular, directs towards my latest travel for food, experience and relaxation. This is one of those trips here apart from venturing to different new places, I enjoyed staying and wouldn’t have mind staying one or two more weeks, per say.

The journey started way before the actual trip, like it usually does in every planned trip. Mine is especially planned because we not only plan for just the stay and travel, we also plan for the food we need to eat, things we need to buy, places we need to see in a priority list as per the number of days allocated to that place and overall, keeping in mind the baggage limit that an airline allows for us to travel. In this case, especially, since Spice jet was our career which was the only viable option available at the time of booking.

The planning starts with the weather predictions, using different websites offered by google. To an extent, this removes an uncertainty from the picture. To our relief, there were no days of rain and the weather was extremely predictable as there were no surprises, at least 10 days before or after the trip dates. There is a tolerance range of plus-minus five days in the intended days of travel and stay when you start booking and that is where you give weightage to your travel + stay (Days + Expense).

There is a clear standoff between the days of stay vs the money that you want to spend on a specific trip. Flight and train travel rates do not vary much, but each number of days, adds to the cost of the complete trip in terms of hotel stay. In this case in particular, we were more concerned about using our points we earned over the last 2 years of stay in hotels. The trip was supposed to start in the penultimate week of the year so we can accommodate five days of stay in Jaipur, followed by two days of stay each in Jodhpur and Jaisalmer. Five days in Jaipur because of 2 reasons.

1. We had enough points to stay over Hilton for 4 nights and as a promotional offer, we got a night extra for free. This helped us chalk out the plan really smoothly.

2. There were enough no. of places to shop and go around that we needed these days to see them all. Particularly, learning from mistakes (mistake we did in Bangkok, where we kept shopping and did not enjoy much the amazing food and culture they have on their streets – will write about it in another post of mine).

Jaisalmer as most say is a one-night stay trip as we could reach an early morning and the departing flight, not many options, only leaves in the afternoon around 3:30 pm. So, they say, have a desert safari (Pre-booking required), the first day and city tour the second day before the flight. Here again, owing to the points we had and the reputation of another 5-star hotel – we could use our Marriot Bonvoy points for 2 nights and enjoy their hospitality and so we decided to do that and leave 1 day to treat our taste buds and the local folklore enjoyment.

There were still 2 questions pending to answer:

1. Where do we stay in Jodhpur – No Hilton, No Marriott – Places were getting booked like flies booking a place on a sweet.

2. How do we travel the whole trip?

To answer the first question, we did a two-day research to find out 5 best hotels, we can stay at, the distance from public commute options and the Flight/train availability from the incoming and outgoing location. We had a comparison of all the features mentioned in Trip Advisor, booking.com and a couple of other google recommendations along with the reviews and decided on staying near one of the two popular tourist destinations, Mehrangarh fort or Umaid Bhawan and we chose the latter, owing to its proximity from train station.

Second question was trickier and it required a lot of planning of dates, sacrificing a night of stay at Hilton and enjoying some extra time in Jaisalmer. Also, there was a decision to be made between Jaipur-Jodhpur-Jaisalmer and Jaipur-Jaisalmer-Jodhpur. We also explored on the option of landing in Delhi and taking a Zoom to these places and decided against it as it would not only be tiresome, but also worrisome and money intensive. Also, there was low provision of leaving the vehicle at final destination and bring it back to Delhi made no sense and it would take 2 more days of unnecessary travel. Therefore, finally, we were able to make a plan while staying in the hotels we wanted while taking care of the number of days we spend in each city.

Plan for Travel:

·         Day 0     : Flight from Hyderabad to Jaipur

·         Day 1-5 : Stay in Jaipur

·         Day 5     : Train from Jaipur to Jodhpur

·         Day 5-7 : Stay in Jodhpur

·         Day 7     : Train from Jodhpur to Jaisalmer

·         Day 7-9 : Stay in Jaisalmer

·         Day 9     : Flight from Jaisalmer to Hyderabad