This Is A Lake - A travel blog

Last day in Delhi. Last day in India! Today I took an Uber to a place I’d meant to visit last time, but which was closed: the National Museum!  The first impression isn’t great, because it occupies a rather old and ugly building -uglier still inside, white walls with green white tiles that scream “government building where you need to take a number and wait for an hour to do paperwork”. Plus, like all stations and airports and the metro and most museums, they have this stupid security system where they make you put your bag in an X-ray scanner, then go through a metal detector, and regardless of whether the metal detector beeps or not, the security guard does a patdown of every single person. It’s so inefficient!! But: the collection is absolutely worth the visit. I spent nearly two hours inside, and several galleries were closed for renovations (including, alas, the Jewelry vault -longtime readers know I like exhibits of shiny things!). The greatest asset of

If you remember, today I was booked on a tour to Sarnath, having more or less seen all of Varanasi yesterday. It’s learning time! Sarnath, which is a town just 10 km north of Varanasi, is one of the four first holy sites of Buddhism, based on the major events of Buddha’s life. The first is Lumbini, in modern-day Nepal, where prince Siddhartha Gautama was born. The second is Bodh Gaya, in Bihar, India, where he achieved enlightenment and became the Buddha under the bodhi tree. The third is here, in Sarnath, Uttar Pradesh, where Buddha gave his first sermon and thus started Buddhism. The fourth is Kushinagar, also in Uttar Pradesh, where Buddha is said to have died/achieved Nirvana at the age of 80. Nowadays, Sarnath has become a Buddhist pilgrimage destination and has given rise to many different denominations of Buddhist temples all around its main attraction, an ancient archaeological site and museum. It was a sunny morning, and the drive took probably half an hour, alth

This guest house may have more charm than I needed -I slept well, but it was super noisy with people coming and going outside since the crack of dawn! My only plan for the morning was to walk around Varanasi and get a feel for the place, so I took my sweet time with breakfast before going out to a warm and sunny morning. Some background on Varanasi: also known as Benares or Banaras, it is the holiest city in India, believed to be the home of Lord Shiva, the Destroyer. It is also one of the most ancient cities in the world. Its most notable features are its ghats, which are the stone steps that descend from the city and into the Ganges. The whole length of the river’s West bank is made of different ghats, each one with its own name and purpose. Some are bathing ghats, where people (well, I only saw men) dip or swim into the Ganges to receive its blessing. It goes without saying that I don’t want to touch a single drop of that water -I’m on the record as saying you’ll di

This is going to be a light entry, as most of my day was spent traveling! I took an Uber from my hotel to Jaipur airport, which took about half an hour. At 8:30, I was afraid I’d hit rush hour, but in fact the roads were way emptier than during the day. Once at the small airport, I discovered that things work differently here: first thing you do is take your bag to your airline’s X-ray scanner, where they put a seal on its lock, and then you can take it to a check-in counter to drop it off and get your boarding pass. I got on a flight to Delhi, which was on time, and once there I had a 4h layover until my next flight, to Varanasi. There are apparently direct Jaipur-Varanasi flights, but only some days of the week and it didn’t work out for me. Also, in the end it was okay but I initially booked this long layover deliberately just in case my first flight was late. At Delhi airport, there was a small food court with fast food joints where I had a pizza. Yes, I am at tha

Today’s main attraction was to visit Amber Fort, which is not in Jaipur city but in the nearby town of Amber (it’s pronounced “amer”). For this I had hired a driver through my hotel, supposedly to take me on a tour of Amber Fort, Hawa Mahal and Jal Mahal -although when he picked me up at the hotel he went “Where to, sir?” so I don’t think he was very up-to-date on the program! I was disappointed to see that the visit to Hawa Mahal consisted of a literal drive-by of the facade I saw yesterday. I thought he’d drop me off so I could go inside. Still, I wanted to reserve my strength for the fort so I nodded along and next we stopped at the Jal Mahal. On the road we crossed camels and even an elephant, a real elephant just walking down the road. The Jal Mahal is an odd palace that is built right in the middle of a lake, and I don’t mean on an island in a lake, I mean the building itself juts out of the water. It’s closed to the public, so I have no idea what’s inside, but I th