Around India in 7 weeks north and south?

Tess

Hi Guys,
I was wondering if I could get some advice on my South/North India travels, from members more experienced in India than myself (ie all of you
We fly in to Chennai on the 31st of December, and out again on the 18th of Feb from Chennai.

While I thought 7 weeks would be perfect to just see the south, my travel buddies have their hearts set on the North as well... To that end I have sat down and worked out the following loose Itinerary.

My questions to you are: do you think this will be too rushed? I've left us about 3 spare 'just in.case' days in there...
Are there must-see places that we are missing? Most of our travel we intend to do overnight if possible...

Chennai 2 days
Pondi 3 days
Madurai 3 days (overnight to trivi)
Trivi to
Kovalam 3 days (maybe we can skip Kovalam and do the beach thing at Perriyar or Munnar in Kerala?)
Kollam 1 night
Kollam to Allepay (1 night at hugging mother ashram)
Allepey 2 nights, then to Ernakulum – Kochi
Kochi 2 nights
Palolem 3 nights (overnight train to Mumbai)
Mumbai 2 nights, 3 days
Udaipur 2 nights
Kumbarlgarh 1 night
Pushkar 2 nights
Jodphur 2 nights (then 3rd night, overnight train to Jaisalmer)
Jaiselmer 1 night (overnight bus to Bikener)
Bikener 3 nights, probably camel trek (Overnight train to Jaipur)
Jaipur 2 nights
Delhi 2 nights
Agra 1 night (overnight train to Varinassi)
Varinassi 3 nights incl. day trip to Sarnath
Bodhgaya 2 nights
Kolkatta 2 nights (then fly to Chennai)

Thanks in advance, sorry for such a long post.

machadinha

I find it hard to say precisely, or to advise on the details. For 7 weeks, what I'd do is go with your plan as a rough indicator, then just see how it works out on the ground, and if you find you're traveling fast, or have rather planned too much. I usually end up skipping something like 1/3-1/2 of my planned itineraries.

I'd say those three areas might turn out to be a little much; you may find you have to skip one of them (going north towards either Rajasthan or towards Varanasi/Kolkata). But again, I'd just let it depend on how it works out. You sometimes cover a lot, sometimes you don't, kind of thing. Bear in mind travel itself there can be taxing and time-consuming, and distances are great while travel may be slow, and you plan to cover a lot.

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Tess

Thanks for your reply, i think you're probably right about the three areas.. Maybe we spend a bit less time in Rajasthan (cut out a town or so) and a bit more time in Bodhgaya, because I'd would really love to experience both...

Any thoughts on beaches in Kovalam and Palolem vs Perriyar and Munnar in Kerala, or Coorg and Gokharna in Karnataka?

Cheers,
Tess

federica

Periyar and Munnar have no beach! Periyar is a wildlife sanctuary and Munnar a hill station....

missmanda

Hi, sounds like you have some great places in mind. It is always hard to narrow down that itinerary. The thing I find with India is that train and road travel are arduous and time-consuming, so it's necessary to give yourself enough time to recover from the journeys, or else you won't enjoy the destination! I personally can't sleep a wink on the overnight trains so the day after is always wasted. Have you considered air travel? It's really cheap now and I found Kingfisher and Spicejet to be good carriers. On my most recent trip to India I cancelled about half of my planned train trips and replaced them with flights and it was the best decision I made as it saved both time and sanity. And didn't really cost a whole lot more.

I was recently in Periyar and Kovalam and enjoyed them both. Periyar is a beautiful park and I would highly recommend doing a half-day trek with a guide into the park, you will never forget it! There are some opportunities on the boat tours for seeing wildlife such as elephants but bring your binoculars as you don't get that close. You will not see tigers in Periyar, according to locals their habitat is some 25km+ away from where the tours go.

The problem with Periyar is that it's a long journey from anywhere and the roads are terrible. Cochin to Periyar was about 4.5 hours drive, the roads were mostly passable but it was slow driving. I then did Periyar to Trivandram which took 8 hours - to cover a mere 200kms of very pot-holed roads! It was not a trip I'd ever like to repeat and I'd urge you not to travel that way!

Kovalam was starting to get very crowded 2 or so weeks ago when I was there. It is quite pretty , but very touristy, though I'm sure if you head to the beaches either side of the main tourist strip though it wouldn't be so bad.

Also, 3 days in Varanasi? I think you could do a morning ghats boat trip and an afternoon trip to Sarnath in the same day and cut it down to 2 nights and a day. But I personally hated Varanasi and couldn't wait to get out of the place. If your purpose is to see the Ganges I'd recommend Hardwar/Rishikesh, a much shorter journey out of Delhi where the water is cleaner, there's more natural scenery, and the people more chilled out than in Varanasi. Ditto spending more than a day in Delhi, I'd only use it as a launching place to see other places in the North. Mumbai is a much nicer city to spend a few days in.

machadinha

Yes, on that note, don't forget you already basically have two/three in the south (Tamil Nadu/Kerala/Goa). Since you don't seem to be spending much time in either the first or the last though, I guess you can consider them one for practical purposes.

But again, you'll just have to see how you get along I think. In that sense, 2 months is really more than double just 1, as it allows for more intervals of speeding up, as well as of relaxing for a bit, and it tends to take some time to get acclimatized and get out and in of your entry and exit points. But all in all, the itinerary does look ambitious. Skipping just one or two towns in Rajasthan to make it to Bodhgaya and possibly beyond won't do much for you I think, that's quite some distance.

If you haven't already and my usual advice, look up the country on a map that shows it on the same scale as your home country, and bear in mind the infrastructure and generally getting about won't be the same. Some flights would obviously be helpful; still involves getting to and from the airport and your hotel, possible delays etc. though; I've never done it, but not sure if it would be that more relaxing. Could be handy for the longer stretches, of course; e.g, Mumbai-Delhi (then Rajasthan), Delhi-Kolkata (then go westwards). Bear in mind that domestic air travel is indeed cheap, but only in comparison to the higher train classes.

Chennai doesn't look all that handy as your entry point anyway, maybe Trivandrum (Thiruvananthapuram) would have been better, then move up west from there. You could look into changing that if still possible. Looks like this would involve multi-stop flights from Darwin though. But then this looks to be the case for Chennai as well (all this from a quick glance.)

But maybe this is all just being too conservative and it can really be done like this, it's always hard to say.

ps

I guess this would be easy to misread Looks to be a choice between the three combos. Of those, I've only been to Coorg. What I hear is Kovalam is the more tourist package deal, with some backpackers thrown into the mix; Palolem I guess would be the more, um, Goa experience, depends on whether you're after that; Periyar would depend on do you want to visit a park down there or not; Munnar is supposed to be very nice, with tea estates I believe; Coorg is a jungled hilly region with small villages and the odd town strewn about (and more tea estates, I think, didn't see any), very beautiful; and Gokarna is said to be a somewhat quieter and hippie-cum-backpacker type place still. So -- up to you!

Tess

Whoops, thats embarrassing, no more early morning posts for me

Thanks for the detailed responses guys. I know Chennai is a bit of a strange place to choose to fly in, but it was the cheapest, so like good (or simply stingy ) backpackers, we chose it as our starting point.

Hmm, ok, so the more I hear, the more I realise that is a pretty jampacked itinerary. It was the only way we could realise everything that all three of us wanted to do, but it looks like we're going to have to compromise...

I think on the Periya, Munnar, Kovalam situation, we're going to want to avoid overtly touristly places, so perhaps inland is best. I'll let my travel buddies know all of the feedback. Thanks again

natasha chanda acharya

If not Jammu and Kashmir, at least Sikkim. I don't see the Himalayas in your itenerary at all. According to me you are spending too much time down South and not as much up North and very litle in East. My advice will be to pick places that are essentially Indian. I mean, all mountains and beaches across the wrold are more or less the same. So you should go for places that will give you the India experience. Rajasthan is definitely one of them, and so is Calcutta nd Varanasi. Down South temple towns and backwaters in Kerela, Hampi in Karnataka is also special.

I just reread my post and I sound so preachy. I am sorry. I will stop.

machadinha

Hm, yes, and pack still more into the itinerary? One can always return if the bug bites you.

I think the bottom line to me would be 7 weeks allows you the luxury of just going with the flow with a rough idea in mind and see where it gets you; forcing yourself to do it by a fixed day-to-day plan kind of defeats that purpose. You may want to hang out somewhere longer, hate one place, enjoy another but find a day there suffices nonetheless, find that onward transport isn't going for a day or two... In any case I find liking a place or not has far less to do with famous monuments and stuff, than with did you discover a great eatery, run into some nice people, just want to sit on your bum with a book for a bit after some hard travel and sightseeing... that sort of thing (well, arguably some nice sights or scenery may help). Maybe had you visited a week later you wouldn't have liked it at all, or the other way around.

It's not a race. But there are arguably those who travel very differently and want to see it all. A goal not so easily met in India anyway, I think.

dhans

For inspiration look in our journal and find the seven week itenerary we did for our honeymoon.

Have fun,

Hans

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natasha chanda acharya

I agree completely with machadinha. My yearly trips to rajasthan are never less than a month or two long, and then I just like to drift... However, I just guessed from your current itenerary that you's like to cover a lot of places, coupled with my wish for everyone to see as much of India as possible... Thus my two pence worth, which ends right here.

Tess

Machadinha, i totally agree, this is what I've always foudn on my other travels... and it is nice to have the time to drift. I guess, my feeling with an itinerary this time is that i'd like to figure out before i go the kind of places to drift to

Don't worry Natasha, I know we're missing the North, but I have total faith that this won't be the last trip to India. Next time I want to fly into Kolkatta to do the North east states, and work my way accross the top to the west. But I think that better be in summer - if I tried to do it now, I'd freeze. LOL, so used to 30 degree days.

In the end my friends and I have decided to take more internal flights as suggested, this seems more expensive, but also more efficient, so its worth it.

Hans, thanks for shoing me your journal - it looks like your honeymoon trip covers as much ground as we are hoping for - how did you find the travel pace? Too rushed, or perfect, no enough time to get bored?

Thanks again for all the good advice guys,
Cheers,
T

dhans

No, the pace was fine, the reason for that the only thing we really booked solid once in Delhi was the traintrip from Varanasi to Chennai. With the use of tourist and other quota we could just go with the flow.

We would have liked to stay another 4 weeks or so .

Have Fun,

Hans

loonypooh

the tour is south india, well if i may ask what would you be doing 3 days in pondi? unless are you planning to go to auroville? Coz i dont think its much of a touristy place anyway.

Instead go to kodaikanal in tamil nadu, a lovely place.
In kerela go to Munnar,plus kochi n backwaters.take a houseboat for a day along the backwaters, its a loveeely experience

vandy

Hi Tess,Best wishes for your holiday.

Personally I would give Kovalam a miss,you will
encounter similar stuff in Goa,you could maybe stop in at Varkala on way up to Kollam,Do your best to try and get to Munnar hill station from Cochin,on your way up to Munnar you can go to Kodanand (morning)& help wash an elephant or two down by the river.Whilst In Munnar you can do a day trip to Mettupaty Dam and Top Station, along the road between dam and echo point lunch spot there's the oppurtunity to have an elephant ride.

Also whilst in Allepey backwater area strongly reccomend doing a COUNTRY BOAT(different to houseboat) cruise,takes you around smaller canals
and also the lake,can hire by the hour,reccomend
4 - 5 hour journey,go earlyish in the morning,
Absolutely specky.If you run out of things to do in Fort Cochin,you can take short ferry ride across harbour to Vypeen Island and check out Cherai Beach area.

Happy & Safe Travels

vandy