This Is A Lake - A travel blog

Red Fort, Jama Masjid After a wonderful, restoring sleep, I woke up this morning to a sunny Delhi morning, and this time I could definitely notice a grayish haze in the air, even though there were no clouds. My main objective for today was to visit the Red Fort, Delhi’s main attraction, a sprawling 16th century Mughal fortress with many historical buildings inside. I decided to brave walking to the fort, as it’s supposedly less than 20 minutes from my hotel -and sure enough, geographically it’s not that far but it’s more work than it would be back home, having to navigate narrow sidewalks teeming with people, occasionally having to find a way to cross a giant six-lane road with no lights anywhere... Eventually I spotted the red walls of the fort, and from there I just followed them until Lahori Gate, the main entrance, where I found out that it’s the entrance but not where tickets are sold. What the Lonely Planet guide fails to mention is that first you have to b

At one point this summer, I said, “Would it be crazy if I up and went to India in November?” and my friends went, “...Not more than usual?” So here I am now! As usual, I’m going to travel for two weeks, and I’m going to see what’s called the Golden Triangle (Delhi, the capital; Agra, where the Taj Mahal is; and Jaipur, the Pink City of Rajasthan) plus Varanasi, which is rather far from the others but seemed really interesting for being one of the world’s oldest cities and India’s holiest, with its famous stair steps into the Ganges. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, though. Getting to Charles de Gaulle airport was problematic as always (I left home at 17:00 for a 21:00 flight and arrived at the gate in the middle of boarding!), and then there was the Air India experience. I almost always fly with Air France, but their hours for India were universally terrible so I had to branch out. The plane seemed modern enough -the windows were larger and instead of having shades, the glass