Home from exchange

The 3 of January 2009 I arrived home from my exchange and holiday in India after 4½ months away from home. It was all in all a very good trip, where I meet a lot of new people. Experienced a lot of things I had never done before. 
After returning home I needed to start my master's thesis, so I could finish my Master. But not long after returning home I started planning my next trip to India, only 1 months after I came home I booked a new ticket. This time I would stay in India from 17 of April until 4 of May.

The Taj Mahal and Agra Fort

As most other tourists coming to India, we could net go home without a visit to the Taj Mahal and Agra Fort. It was a beautiful 31 of December, the sun was shining. Here are some of the pictures I took while we were at the Taj Mahal.

This is just so amazing, very pretty. I would never say no to going again. The next pictures ara all from Agra Fort.

As you can see there are a lot of fog in these pictures, North India are known for the heavy fog in winters, for so me it could be fun to go back in summers some time and get some better pictures of Agra Fort. After this we spend some days in Delhi doing the last shopping, and then we headed home.

Goa

After picking my friend up in Delhi, we went to Gao, my dad had found a hotel in the north of Goa, and even though this part of Gao are know for the wild and loud parties, our hotel were in a place where there was not too much noice.
We spend most of the days just laying at the beach, talking small walks in the city and eating good food. Here are a few pictures from our hotel and the beach.

While we were in Gao we wet to see a spice plantation one day, it was very fun to see how all of the spices looked when they were still in the ground growing. Because most of these spices we do not grow at home, so I had never really seen then like this. Below you can find a few pectures from the spice plantation.

I decided to get my first suit made from a tailor, since here I could get it as i wanted it. I have this small problem, for a Scandinavian I am quite small, so I can never get any pants that fit me, and it costs extra to get the pants put up. This combined with the fact that both of my grandmothers had send some money with my dad, as a birthday and Christmas gift, I decided to do it. It came out great :-)
This is more or less what we did while in Goa, it was a great week, and fun to spend time with my friend and family from home. To finish this post off here are a few of my favorite pictures of the beach.

Rajasthan

The last day before we went to Rajasthan we decided to stay at a hotel near to the airport, so that it would not take too long to get there. So my dad decided to book a room for us at one of the more fancy hotels. I really enjoyed this, since I could count on 2 hands the number of times I had taken a hot shower, where the hot water was comming out of the shower head since I left Copenhagen in August.
The comming day we went to the airport and checked in, we were flying in Jaipur in Rajashtan where our driver for the whole Rajasthan trip would pick us up. Below you can see a map of what cities we visited in Rajasthan.

We started in Jaipur, where we arrived at our hotel early in the evening, but since it was already dark, we did not go to see anything the first day.

Udaipur is from my point of view the most charming of the cities we saw in Rajasthan, we lived at a hotel where we had a view to the lake and the palace on the other side of the lake. here are a few pictures from Udaipur. The 2 first pictures are the old lake palace.

After staying in Udaipur for a few days we went on to Jodhpur, here we only stayed for 1 day. And dident get to see a lot because it was raining heavly when we arrived at our hotel. After this we continued on to Jaisalmir here we stayed for a few days. the first pictures are from the old city.

These pictures are from the old fort in Jaisalmir.

We stayed at a hotel a bit from the city, this was fine, since it was not longer than we could take an auto to the city. We spend our days walking around in the city. After this we went to Bikaner, unfortunatly I do not have any good pictures from Bikaner. After this we went back to Jaipur, and then to Delhi to pick up my friend.
After visiting Rajasthan in December, I think it is very importent to know as tourist that even though it will be nice and sunny during the day. Then it will be very cold at night, so it might be an idea to bring a extra blanket on your trip.

The family comes on holiday

After the end of my term at IIM C I had arranged with my dad, that he and my brother would come to India, and we would travel for 1 month together.
They arrived on my birthday December 9 at Calcutta airport, I went to pick them up, so that I was sure they would get to the right place, after my own problems with the taxi driver that picked us up, I did not want to take any chances.
'I had arranged that they would live at campus with me for the first few days, so I had rented a room for them.
We spend the first days at campus, and in Calcutta so that they could get use to the heat, they came from below 0 in Denmark, so the 15-20 degrees we had in Calcutta, was a good change for them.
After the first few days we went to the makemytrip office in Calcutta, a travel agency that we had, had good experience with. They had planned our trip to Nepal for us.
We had decided that we wanted to take a trip to Rajasthan, and after that go back to Delhi for some days, to pick up my friend, then all of us would go to Goa for Christmas. For New Years we would go and see the Taj Mahal, and then finish the holiday with a few days back in Delhi, before going back home. For me this was a great way to finish my stay at IIMC
But first of all it was very fun to show my dad and brother the school and the city, even though we have traveled quite a bit, this was their first time in Asia, as it was for me.
I will write a post for each of the places we went to, Rajasthan, Goa and Taj Mahal.

Sigheseeing in New Delhi

One of the first days we were in New Delhi (August 2008), we decided to take a sightseeing trip around the city. One of the Danes I were travelling with, knew a guy that were on business in New Delhi, so he called him and all 4 of us went sightseeing together. We decided to go to these 4 places in New Delhi. India Gate, Red Fort, Qutub Minar and the Lotus Temple.
Picture from India Gate

The follwoing pictures are from Red Fort.

The next few pictures are from Qutub Minar.

The last visit of the day was the Lotus Temple, here we ended up just looking at it from the outside, because we were tired and very hot. We were still in the process of getting use to the weather in India. Here are a few pictures from the Lotus Temple.

The second picture are the entrance to the visitor center. This was what we saw on our sightseeing trip the first week. We spend most of our days just walking around in the neigbourhood where our hotel was, just adopting to the countrie that would be our home for the next 3½ months or so.

Calcutta

During the 3½ months I lived in Calcutta, I went to the city to see the sights on several occations, but I did not want to write a post for each time. So this one will summarize some of the things I have seen in Calcutta.
One of the first weekends we were at campus some of us took a trip to the flower market and then to Part street to have lunch. Here are a few pictures from the flower market.

Since it took almost 1 hour to drive to the city from campus, me and the French girl I went to Darjeeling and Sikkim with decided to find a hotel in the city and stay there a Friday, Saturday and Sunday. During this time we went to see Victoria Memorial. It was very fun to walk around both inside and outside, today the inside are used as a museum where they have a lot of old paintings and photos of the city.
This is a few pictures of Victoriw Memorial.

During my time in Calcutta, I became a big fan of visiting the markets around the city, like New Market. The first few times I went there it was very overwhelming, because the salesmen are running around trying to get you to go to theie store or some specific store where that have a deal with the owner, that they get a small fee if they can get customers to come to the store. But after a couple of visits I got use to it, and it did not borther me anymore. I took it as a part of my Indian adventure. These pictures are all taken outside New Market.



Placement week = time for another holiday

In November there are placements at campus, where the first year students are getting placed with companies for their summer internship. During this time there were no classes so we took this as an opportunity to go travelling again. This time I went to Nepal with some of the other Danes and one of the Norwegians.
We started out fine by getting to the airport in good time before our flight would leave. But as we were going through immigrations a few of us ran into some problems. I do not want to get into the details, but it ended up with some of us being off loaded from the flight and then we had to go visit the FRRO in Calcutta. After some problems and a phone call to the Danish embassy and a few days of going back and forth to the FRRO we managed to get the paperwork fixed and got on a flight 3 days after the rest of our group.
This was a very emotional experience because we had looked forward to the trip for a long time, and just wated to go. But in the end we ended up getting to Nepal. :-)
Here are a few pictures from the drive from the airport to our hotel, where we meet up with the rest of our travel group.

From our hotel there were a good view of the mountains, see this.

One of the days we went to see the sunrice over the himalayas, so we got up at 4 something to drive and then walk the last bit to the view point. I was very happy to find out that the weather was good and there was no cludes. Because I miss the sunrice at Tiger Hill in Darjeeling because of bad weather.

This last picture was taken when we were o our way down from the hill after the sunset, it is one of my favorite pictures from that morning.

This is something I will recormend to anyone going to Nepal, especially if you come from a countrie with no mountains like mine. :-)
During our time in Nepal we also spend a day of sightseeing in Katmandu, here are some pictures of a few of the thing we saw.

Since our trip was cut short I would like to go beck to Nepal at some point and spend a few days in Katmandu.