Christmas in the Desert

Well it seems blogging is harder than it looks. I haven’t posted anything new in a while and a lot has happened over the past month and a bit. So I guess I will get right to it! Over the Christmas holidays my parents and I headed to Northern India for 2 weeks. We flew to New Delhi and spent 2 days touring around and seeing all the major land marks like the India Gate, the Red Fort and we even took a bicycle rickshaw ride around the streets of Old Delhi.

After taking in all the crazy sights, sounds and smells of New Delhi, we headed for the Taj Mahal which is about a 3 hour drive from Delhi. Now the Taj (as we call it) was so breathtaking, my jaw literally dropped! The Grand size and stunning white marble deserves its own detailed blog…but alas there is never any time to create it!
We drove on to Bharatpur where we spent 3 days in a VERY fancy hotel (good thing for parents, eh?) And for those of you who know my Dad, it was 3 intense days of bird watching. I quite enjoyed myself though as we were able to take a bicycle rickshaw for a majority of the trip. We also were able to see other wildlife in its natural habitat including two 13 foot pythons! We also got to drive through some of the most rural parts of India to get to these ‘bird’ places. Very neat!

After Bharatpur we continued on to the State of Rajasthan where our desert adventures began. We had to drive from Bharatpur to Jaipur where we saw the famous Amber palace and took an elephant ride. Kinda wobbly and slow creatures, but nonetheless another life experience.

From Jaipur we flew to Jodhpur (home of the Jodhpur Pants, the baggy ones that polo players wear). Now this was the beginning of TRUE desert. With small, low lying scrub bushes and sand as far as the eye can see, we drove 6 hours to Jaisalmere. Here we stayed 5 days shopping in the old fort and of course desert bird watching. On our last day we did a camel trek were we stayed in “Swiss tents” in the desert and rode the camel to the sand dunes to catch sunset. It was pretty spectacular! We then flew back to Bangalore for Christmas Eve and spent Christmas Day at a 7star hotel with all you can eat and drink western food….A very nice treat!

After Christmas we planned to head to the east coast of India, but due to the Tsunami, we had to cancel our plans. So that was my Christmas vacation in a nut shell. I hope to keep my blogs shot and sweet as not everybody in interested in massive amounts of detail….that’s what emails are for!
A belated Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you all!
Love Jesse