Worthy trip for brave travelers
No matter how loud the phrase “Conquer Berlin” sounds, but against the backdrop of my parents’ trip, which just ended successfully, the conquest of Berlin is just a business trip. If anyone does not know, then my parents are leading an unspoken race in the number of countries visited. We once got them hooked on traveling, and now they are rapidly catching up with us, and we are helping hard in this. So, a couple of years ago, my mother said the reckless phrase "We are already so experienced travelers that we are ready to even fly to India! " Since that day, I have kept my eyes on the headlines about tickets in this direction. And so it happened, right during our Dominican trip, I had to catch a promotional fare until it disappeared. So mom and dad flew off on the most trashy and certainly the most unforgettable trip to central India.
Dasha and I carefully studied the mistakes of our route seven years ago and built the most interesting route, removing unprofitable and too trashy places from it.
At least trains below the third class were removed from the route. I'm not saying that the slipper class is bad, but there are so many things in India that can take you out of your comfort zone that it's better to book more comfortable conditions in places where possible.
But no matter how much travel experience you have, building an Indian route requires heroic efforts. The most difficult thing is to buy train tickets on the Internet. If earlier it was unbearably difficult and long, then with the new Indian site it is almost hopeless. Here it is necessary to actively participate in forums where people help each other to overcome the site. It would seem that it can be difficult if now you don’t even need to write emails to the administration of the railway station to buy tickets? The main difficulty lies in the unpredictability of the site, whose work logic changes every day. Moreover, it is clearly not changing intentionally, it is clear that a detachment of Hindu programmers is trying to keep this beast around the clock, so that it at least shows something. By the way, if someone needs a working account on the Indian ICRTC (ZhD), write, I will be happy to share it.
Since India is one of the top countries in stealing bank cards, we have built a rather interesting scheme with cards and limits, excluding the possibility of re-withdrawing money.
The key change in the itinerary was that we added a full 6 nights in Goa. After four days in central India it will be like a rehab. One potentially difficult moment was laid in the route, it was critically important to sleep during the flights. Otherwise, you will end up with a day and a half without sleep due to the time zone shift. And upon arrival, it is critically important to drive all over Delhi and catch the train to Agra.
In the end, we built the route like this: Delhi-> Agra-> Jaipur-> Delhi-> Goa-> Mumbai.
My parents' journey started in the best possible way. At first, Turkish began to move the dates and agreed to give a free stopover in Istanbul for a day and a half. Then, via video link, my mother called me directly from the plane. But the connection had to be interrupted when the stewards came to make the bed and when it was necessary to choose food. It was another great bonus - parents were put in first class instead of housekeeper. Everything was going as well as possible. The plane landed in Delhi early in the morning.
My alarm went off at two in the morning. This meant only one thing: something went wrong with the parents. After all, I woke up from an alarm clock, and not from an SMS that everything is fine, or from an SMS that Indian rupees were taken from the card. I set the alarm a little ahead - at the time after which it would be problematic to catch the train. Woke up again to the sound of the alarm clock. Silence on the phone. I started looking at the history of my mother's mobile phone billing. I noticed that it was at the same time that money was debited for roaming Internet. But the network is silent. Okay, plan B. I top up my mom's account and make a roaming call. It turned out that the plane was very late, roaming Internet from Kyivstar does not work in India, ATMs at the airport are so stupid that it was better not to insert a card into them. And now they are in a taxi rushing to the station.
As you know, trains in India tend to be very late. But not the trains that you miss yourself. As a result, the parents jumped on the train five minutes before departure, although initially we made about three hours of time. But taxi drivers who understand, if they see that a tourist is late for a train, arrange a real rally, the main thing is to deliver the tourist on time. They also sing along with the radio)
A rather funny moment, when buying train tickets for one of the trains, there was a mandatory field “Vegetarian or not”. On the train itself, as a result, they were fully fed and given fruit for dessert.
Although the other trains were not fed. For the first time, we were able to get in touch with my mother only in the evening. From the delight and shock of the parents, it was clear that they were experiencing all the same emotions that we had 7 years ago. Only here, probably, the adaptation period was more acute for the reason that we were not aware in advance about all the intricacies of India))) Mom and dad were at least warned where they were going. Dasha and I, after we gave them tickets, did not forget to once again sympathize with the upcoming trip))).
In addition to the million emotions associated with trash and the lifestyle of the inhabitants of central India, on the second day there was a delay in one of the trains. Initially, while mom and dad were waiting at the station, Indians approached them and advised them not to wait for the train, since it would not arrive soon, but to go with them by car. Mom strenuously drove the Indians away, until one offendedly said: "If you don't believe it, go to the head of the station. " While walking to the head of the station, the train just left the scoreboard.
The boss called somewhere for a long time and then wrote on paper in English that the train would arrive later and at another station. Backpacks in hand - and quickly to another station. There, the chief and his assistant knew nothing at all about any train and advised to change tickets, but tickets must be bought a month in advance. Then my mother found a hand-written board and, among the Indian manuscript, figured out the information about the train that it would be after midnight.
At that time, I was struggling at home with Indian GPS train trackers, which showed me the third situation with this train in general. As a result, instead of 23:20, the parents arrived in Jaipur at 09:00. The hotel knowingly canceled the booking and rescheduled it a day ahead.
There were also strong problems with communication by phone. We could not just pick up and call at any time. But they came up with the following free way to communicate. Every time my mom made logical progress along the route, she would send me a free "call me back" request. I, if I wanted to clarify something, sent an SMS to my mother. And if in response my mother sent me "Call me back", it meant the answer was "Yes. " An important point: in case of an emergency, my mother would send a request "Call me back" to Dasha's number. Thus, we always knew that they got on the next train, taxi or plane.
In Jaipur, one of the key events, the parents, like us, visited the real Indian cinema Raj Mandir, which ranks third in beauty in the world, and it was gorgeous. Well, the sights of Jaipur, respectively, too.
The issue of food was also interestingly resolved. Dad doesn't eat spicy food. Mom eats, but the issue of Indian food always causes a lot of discussion and suspicion due to sanitary conditions. As a result, they always had a stick with / to sausages and in any incomprehensible situation they just ate sandwiches)
When mom and dad got to Delhi (on the next train, of course), they already became so bold that they began to separate on the route when it was necessary to solve the issue of storing and picking up things. When my mother called back that they got on a plane and would now fly away from central India, Dasha and I breathed a sigh of relief.
We have not been to Goa, but according to my mother, on the second day in Goa it seemed to them that central India was already in a past life and not with them. Now they were in a completely different, more friendly place. In Goa, they had a chic three-star hotel with Russian-speaking staff and all the benefits. Rather, it was described on the booking. To be honest, when I booked, I suspected that the ideal hotel in Goa would not cost 66 euros for two for all six nights, including breakfast. But when they moved in, it was funny and even really funny. We even received compensation of five euros through booking from the hotel due to the lack of a TV with the legendary Indian channels that mom and dad love to watch at night and tell us the latest news about the Bollywood heroes from the film, for example: ". . . of course, a magnificent wedding is being prepared, but everyone understands that that guest is a witch... ".
In Goa, my mother talked with one of the tourists, who even stopped by this hotel on a package tour, and in India, a tourist is not the first dozen times! Mom and dad became very interested in why such a "fashionable hotel" was chosen. The answer was: "No, in fact, on a package tour, we were supposed to have another hotel, but since there are a lot of snakes, I moved to this one. "
Nevertheless, events in resort India developed slowly and were no longer so rich in adventure. It was a lazy and beautiful holiday with beaches, crab fishing and, of course, an attempted robbery by the Indians. But the robbery, fortunately, failed. When it seemed that all Indian adventures were over and it was time to fly away, the plane began to delay. Between the planes, 6 hours were laid, and this was just enough for the plane, which was three hours late, not to make an epic failure at the end of the trip. The remaining three hours were enough for meticulous Indian airport security checks. I remember when we flew, there were about six passport checks alone.
In Istanbul, my mother also booked a suspiciously good hotel in the center of the Old City for 14 euros per night. In contrast to the Indian case, the opposite situation occurred. At the reception they were told that they would put them in a much better room with a balcony, a view of the Sea of Marmara and include free breakfasts, as they want to earn a good reputation. As if they knew that after India, parents simply need an excellent hotel. A day and a half in Istanbul passed like clockwork. No wonder, because for mom and dad, Istanbul is already as familiar and understandable as it is for us.
The feedback from the parents about the trip is this: I liked it very much. Mom believes that every Ukrainian should be given a free ticket to central India, so that everyone can reasonably assess the conditions in which we live and what life is like in bad conditions.
