Varanasi versus Khajuraho

For our trip to India we were planning on including a visit to Varanasi. Some people have been discouraging us from going there and suggesting that we go to Khajuraho instead. We do not have time to go to both as most of our trip is planned around Delhi, Agra and Rajasthan.

I know that many will say that both are worthwhile, but I would appreciate hearing what are the good and bad points of the two alternatives. Which would you choose and why?

Thanks,

UTLX-Chicago

Varanasi versus Khajuraho

The only negative I can think of about Khajuraho is that it is quite a trial to get there overland.... the bus takes about six hours to go 100 kilometres, and when you see the size of the potholes that it frequently disappears into, you%26#39;ll know why!

Khajuraho can be seen in a day and a half.... it%26#39;s fascinating, but the temples are ALL that you go there for. Everything else is just ordinary.

However, I loved our trip there and would urge anyone to go. The temples are unlike any you will see anywhere else. For what it%26#39;s worth, I enjoyed Khajuraho%26#39;s temples FAR more than the Taj Mahal... I know I will be howled down by everybody for this, but if I were you I wouldn%26#39;t choose between Kahjuraho and Varanasi... I%26#39;d choose both and, if time was so pressing, leave out Agra!

Varanasi... well, I can%26#39;t think of ANY negatives about Varanasi, except that you are bound to get hopelessly lost in the maze of tiny alleyways if you don%26#39;t keep the river in sight at all times! Of course, for many people -- myself included -- that would rate as a positive!

Varanasi is absolutely wonderful.... unbelievably crowded, bizarre, varied, endlessly fascinating, the most photogenic place I have ever visited, and one that will provide you with a hundred dinner-table stories. It is worth going to India JUST to see Varanasi.

So I would strongly urge you to go there, too. If I had to choose just one, it would be Varanasi, and I%26#39;d stay in one of the guest houses that had balconies overlooking the Ganges. I%26#39;d make sure I spent at least one sunrise and one sunset walking along the ghats. There is nowhere else in India even remotely like this -- and I expect there is nowhere in the world like it. You may love it, you may hate it... but I bet you come away with very strong feelings, one way or the other, and that alone makes it a must-see destination!

Another must-see destination in Rajasthan is Jaisalmer. Whatever you do, don%26#39;t fail to go there.

Varanasi versus Khajuraho

We have just returned today from our trip to India. we went to both Khajuraho and varanasi. Yes, the temples in Khajuraho are amazing but like the previous reviewer it is worth going to India for Varanasi alone. Do a search on the internet and you will read about this holiest of cities and the timeless Ganges rituals, especially at sunrise. I can promise you a range of emotions as you get a boat down the river along the ghats - bring a local guide who knows the place inside out. The memories of this place will stay with you forever - just amazing.

I would really love to know which one you finally decided on!

I went to Varanasi 20 years ago and still cant forget the experience.

I certainly cant say I enjoyed it as such. I wretched bile all along the dawn cruise as people snorted,gargled,washed and spat into the very poluted river.

I tried as hard as I could to see the beauty but have a sensitive stomach!. Even so one cant help but be inspired by the spiritual wonderment as one takes in the colour, the prayers , the rituals and the love the people show for the

ganges. You just HAVE to go.It is an experience that bores into your mind.

How can erotic carvings live up to that!!

I am going again on 23/Nov sop it cant be all that bad.

I went to Varanasi 20 years ago and still cant forget the experience.

I certainly cant say I enjoyed it as such. I wretched bile all along the dawn cruise as people snorted,gargled,washed and spat into the very poluted river.

I tried as hard as I could to see the beauty but have a sensitive stomach!. Even so one cant help but be inspired by the spiritual wonderment as one takes in the colour, the prayers , the rituals and the love the people show for the

ganges. You just HAVE to go.It is an experience that bores into your mind.

How can erotic carvings live up to that!!

I am going again on 23/Nov sop it cant be all that bad.

Based on everyone%26#39;s comments we will be going to Varanasi. (I did bring up the idea of skipping Agra and seeing Khajuraho as well but as first time visitors to India, I guess that Agra is a must see.)

In planning our trip we have some discretion in the order that we visit the various cities. We currently are flying into Delhi and plan to visit it first, then take a day trip to Agra, then fly to Varanasi the following morning. After returning from Varanasi, we would fly to Udaipur, Jaipur, Jodhpur and Jaisalmer (great idea Alan) and then return to Delhi and fly home. Does anyone have any thoughts about the order of our trip? Will Varanasi wear us out more than the others so that we should go there at the end of the trip? Overall, we recognize that this is an ambitious schedule for 2 weeks. There will be four of us traveling--two in our 50%26#39;s and two in the mid-20%26#39;s.

Also, does anyone have any thoughts on getting from Joshpur to Jaisalmer? We have 1 1/2--2 days to spend in Jaisalmer. There is an overnight train from Jodhpur that arrives first thing in the morning or we could take a morning train that arrives midday. At the end of our second day we could either take the night train back to Jodhpur or one the following morning. Another alternative would be to hire a driver for one or both legs of the trip. When we arrive back in Jodhpur, we plan to leave that afternoon at 2PM for Delhi and then catch a late night flight back to the U.S.

Thanks for all of your help,

UTLX-Chicago

have a wonderful trip.I have the names of 2 very honest guides who can take you round Rajasthan and Agra. How can I get them to you?

Hi, again UTLX!

Your itinerary sounds so great that you are getting me excited all over again!

I can think of several things I want to tell you from your most recent post, and I will probably forget most of them (since only the original post is visible above me on the page right at this moment), but definitely the most important thing I want to say to you is this: while I realise that Agra IS, as you say, a must-see destination for anyone on their first trip to India (I went, too, and I%26#39;m not sorry!), and I didn%26#39;t really expect you to take me up on my earlier suggestion to skip it in favour of Khajuraho, I really do want to talk you out of the idea of taking a day trip from Delhi to see the Taj.

You must remember that this is the most popular sight in all India, and countless thousands of people visit it every single day. Most of these come by coaches, and an amazing number are school children from other parts of India. The Taj is like Disney World on half-price day.

It opens at the crack of dawn -- 6 a.m. -- and at that time it%26#39;s beautiful. At 6 a.m. there are only about a dozen people waiting at the ticket office, you%26#39;ll be inside in a few seconds, and you will stroll around the site as the sun comes up (so peaceful and other-worldly.... THIS is how the monument SHOULD be seen) with only another twenty or thirty people on the whole site!

By 7 a.m. (this was true on a weekday in November, anyway), the number had swelled to around 300, but it%26#39;s a big site and that number was still very pleasant. In that first hour we saw the inside of the monument, and took photos of the outside from every conceivable angle.

By 8 a.m. the tour buses had started to arrive. Some of the school groups were already piling in. The Taj was literally crawling with people, and we couldn%26#39;t find a place to take a photograph without people walking into the shot. By 8:15 it was pretty clear to us that the best part of the day was over, and as we left, to go back to our hotel for breakfast, we were pretty dismayed by the length of the queue at the ticket office; we didn%26#39;t envy the people just joining.

We never returned to the Taj, but, since our hotel was practically outside the ticket office, we did see the queue (and the car park!) around 9 a.m., after we had finished breakfast and checked out. As I said, Disney World on a half-price day. I heard of people who queued for ninety minutes in the middle of the day.

Now, if you do a day trip, you will probably leave Delhi at around 6 a.m. or 7 a.m. and get to Agra Station at 9, or thereabouts, By the time you get to the ticket office it will be no earlier than 9:30, and more like 10. I shudder to think what time you%26#39;ll actually get to the head of the queue, and even if you had express entry (apparently some drivers can organise this), the Taj would look a lot different, when you got inside, to your impressions from the pictures you have seen in the travel brochures!

My earnest advice is to catch a late afternoon or early evening train from Delhi (we took one around 9 p.m. from Delhi%26#39;s Nizamuddin Station, and it arrived in Agra a few minutes after midnight), and spend the night in a hotel near the ticket office. I can recommend Hotel Sheela -- there could surely be no closer hotel to the ticket office than this -- fifty metres! -- and it is really a very pleasant place for a budget (450 rupees a double) choice.

Get up VERY early, and be in front of the ticket office by 5:50. You will have a late breakfast that morning, but you will see the Taj that you WANT to see, I promise you. Then you may just be content that it was worth missing Khajuraho for!

I think you also asked about ways to get from Jodhpur to Jaisalmer. I recall we caught an early morning train; the driver that we chose when we arrived in Jodhpur picked us up at our guest house (the Haveli Guest House) at around 6 a.m., and we were on our way around 6:30. This train arrives in Jaisalmer shortly after noon.

There is also, I think, an overnight train nowadays; in retrospect, I wonder why we didn%26#39;t take that, as it would have given us an extra half-day in Jaisalmer, the most wonderful city in India. Maybe the train wasn%26#39;t running a year ago! There is a site run by the Indian Railways where you can examine all the trains, the various classes of travel, and their times: http://www.indianrail.gov.in/.

You won%26#39;t need to book ahead in Jaisalmer -- nearly every building is a hotel/guest house, and they all send their drivers down to the station to meet the train. You will see a veritable forest of drivers and jeeps, all holding up signs advertising their particular hotels. You could probably negotiate a good price right there and then.

You will have a choice, in Jaisalmer, of staying in a hotel inside the old city or outside. All the expensive international chain hotels are, of course, outside -- and a long way from the fort! There are, however, many traditional little places just a few minutes%26#39; walk from the gates of the fort, and, while you will be tempted to take the extra thrill of staying INSIDE the fort in one of the several-hundred-year-old hotels in the narrow laneways (Desert Boys is a popular choice with a lot of people), the fact is, that this is an expensive thrill -- not for you, for Jaisalmer. The fort%26#39;s plumbing is just not equipped to handle the hundreds of tourists who are now staying inside the fort, and wonderful old Jaisalmer is rapidly crumbling away. Parts have already subsided. If we all continue to stay inside the fort just for the thrill of stepping back in time, our children will never experience ANY kind of thrill in Jaislamer.

Anyway, staying in the fort has another ';down'; side, too. Many of the old hotels don%26#39;t have windows in the rooms, so you only get a view over the town when you go up on the roof. And you can do that without staying there, anyway, as the hotels all have rooftop restaurants. We dined on the roof of Desert Boys, and saw two nice rooms which the genial manager was pleased to show us even though we told him we were staying elsewhere (neither room had a window, however... but the ';island beds'; with all the Arabian nights draperies around them sure looked great!), so, as we ate, we got the view of the ';new'; town as the sun was setting. But the hotel we chose, OUTSIDE the fort, had a great view of the fort all day long!

Talking of ';long';, this post is getting ridiculous, and you have probably stopped reading long ago. Anyway, I have forgotten all the other things you brought up in your last post. So I will send this now and maybe resume later.

Happy planning!

Hopefully, we are getting close to a final itinerary. In order to be in Agra at dawn, I have revised plans to the following:

Day 0 Arrive Delhi at 22:00

Day 1 Delhi--rest and visit friends

Day 2 Fly to Jodhpur in afternoon

Day 3 Morning train to Jaisalmer (think that we will get a better night%26#39;s rest in a Jodhpur Hotel)

Day 4 Jaisalmer

Day 5 Drive back to Jodhpur

Day 6 Afternoon flight to Delhi arriving 15:20 and then to catch a train to Agra leaving at 17:45 (Is this too tight of a connection?)

Day 7 Full day in Agra leaving on 18:00 train to Jaipur

Day 8 Jaipur

Day 9 Early morning flight to Udaipur

Day 10 Afternoon flight to Delhi

Day 11 Morning flight to Varanasi

Day 12 Afternoon flight to Delhi

Day 13 Delhi

Day 14 Fly home at 1:00

I know that it is an ambitious schedule, but the more we read the more places we wanted to include (Jaisalmer was a major addition, but I am sure well worth it.) In any case, if you think that we are crazy, let me know.

Thanks,

UTLX-Chicago

Hello, Personaly I think its too rushed and not enough time to enjoy it. It is 7 hours I think in a car from Jaismler to Jodhpur and I think you have to be in the airport 2 hours before ( but I may be wrong). I would get the 8pm night sleeper from Varanasi to Delhi 8pm - 8am 1st class air con which would give you one more night to play with somewhere. After all you dont want to be in Delhi longer than you have to. I would give up Udaipur although it is lovely, to see longer elsewhere. You will spend a lot of time in airports otherwise and if there is a problem with delays you may never get to see the city.