In October 2008, we started thinking about the much awaited Christmas Holidays. Since we always wanted to explore India more, we thought of covering length and breadth of any state. We narrowed down our search to – Rajasthan, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, and Andaman & Nicobar Islands. We shot down Rajasthan as it was a tourist hotspot season. Our friends Sapna & Naveen were going to Andaman & Nicobar Islands so we didn’t want to go the same place. So the choice was really between Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh.
Aishwarya (Aish), our well travelled (within India) friend was witness to all this planning and mentioned that she would love to join us if we were going to Madhya Pradesh as it was one of the very few states in India she hadn’t been to. That really sealed the decision. Madhya Pradesh (MP) it was! All that remained was for Aish to get permission from her parents which wasn’t really an issue.
Thus began our research and planning to carve out a suitable itinerary. Being ardent followers of the Outlook Traveler Magazines, Sharan quickly reminded me that the ONLY issue that we DIDN’T have was that of May’08. It was an MP special edition. We then started the hunt for that valuable edition – we asked umpteen magazine stores, friends and folks who may have it – all in vain
. Sharan then dared to call the Magazine office in Delhi to find out. It turned out that Outlook Traveler believes in Customer Service and customer satisfACTION. They IMMEDIATELY sent a FREE copy of the much wanted issue. Thank you Outlook Traveler – we used so much of the information given there.
We also thought that the ad by MPSTDC, as part of Incredible India Campaign, was a good point to initiate our research - Hindustan Ka Dil Dekho (See the heart of India). We also used Wikipedia and Madhya Pradesh State Tourism Development Corporation Ltd official website for our planning (destinations, distance calculator, accommodation, itinerary, etc).
After a lot of discussion, debate, argument and reviews, we finalized and went on an 11 day trip to MP (24/Dec/08-3/Jan/09). The trip was bifurcated into 4 phases:
~ Episode I - covered Western M.P IndorePlaces visited were in and around Indore – Mandu (City of pleasure palaces of Baz Bahadur), Indore, Maheshwar (Narmada Ghats) and Ujjain (including Bhairavgarh)
~ Episode II - covered Central M.P journey Places visited were in and around Bhopal – Bhopal, Bhojpur, Bhimbetka and Sanchi
~ Episode III - covered part of Northern Eastern M.P Places visited were in and around Khajuraho – Khajuraho, Panna National Park and Ken Ghariyal Sanctuary
~ Episode IV - covered part of Northern M.PVisited Orccha (and Nagpur in Maharashtra, which we stopped by for a connecting flight)
We seem to have covered a little bit of everything - heritage/history, geography, nature, wild-life, culture, religion as well as lots of food and fun! We travelled by air, rail and road. We interacted a lot with locals and met some amazing people in our trip (Hope to write a separate post on this). In truest of sense we felt the heart beat of "Incredible India". Planning and research on the places we visited made our trip thoroughly enjoyable.
Since we used MPSTDC for accommodation and sight-seeing, I should have a special mention for them. The hotels & resorts – though very basic – were well maintained in most places. It exceeded our expectation of a “Government” run hotel/resort. Most sites of tourist attractions were clean and well maintained (thanks to ASI – Archaeological Survey of India. also). Moreover the information provided on their website is sufficient enough to plan a trip.
For those interested in our trip journal, Aish’s blog has detailed posts on our trip (not covered the full trip yet but she'll get there some day).
Aishwarya (Aish), our well travelled (within India) friend was witness to all this planning and mentioned that she would love to join us if we were going to Madhya Pradesh as it was one of the very few states in India she hadn’t been to. That really sealed the decision. Madhya Pradesh (MP) it was! All that remained was for Aish to get permission from her parents which wasn’t really an issue.
Thus began our research and planning to carve out a suitable itinerary. Being ardent followers of the Outlook Traveler Magazines, Sharan quickly reminded me that the ONLY issue that we DIDN’T have was that of May’08. It was an MP special edition. We then started the hunt for that valuable edition – we asked umpteen magazine stores, friends and folks who may have it – all in vain
. Sharan then dared to call the Magazine office in Delhi to find out. It turned out that Outlook Traveler believes in Customer Service and customer satisfACTION. They IMMEDIATELY sent a FREE copy of the much wanted issue. Thank you Outlook Traveler – we used so much of the information given there.We also thought that the ad by MPSTDC, as part of Incredible India Campaign, was a good point to initiate our research - Hindustan Ka Dil Dekho (See the heart of India). We also used Wikipedia and Madhya Pradesh State Tourism Development Corporation Ltd official website for our planning (destinations, distance calculator, accommodation, itinerary, etc).
After a lot of discussion, debate, argument and reviews, we finalized and went on an 11 day trip to MP (24/Dec/08-3/Jan/09). The trip was bifurcated into 4 phases:
~ Episode I - covered Western M.P IndorePlaces visited were in and around Indore – Mandu (City of pleasure palaces of Baz Bahadur), Indore, Maheshwar (Narmada Ghats) and Ujjain (including Bhairavgarh)~ Episode II - covered Central M.P journey Places visited were in and around Bhopal – Bhopal, Bhojpur, Bhimbetka and Sanchi
~ Episode III - covered part of Northern Eastern M.P Places visited were in and around Khajuraho – Khajuraho, Panna National Park and Ken Ghariyal Sanctuary
~ Episode IV - covered part of Northern M.PVisited Orccha (and Nagpur in Maharashtra, which we stopped by for a connecting flight)
We seem to have covered a little bit of everything - heritage/history, geography, nature, wild-life, culture, religion as well as lots of food and fun! We travelled by air, rail and road. We interacted a lot with locals and met some amazing people in our trip (Hope to write a separate post on this). In truest of sense we felt the heart beat of "Incredible India". Planning and research on the places we visited made our trip thoroughly enjoyable.
Since we used MPSTDC for accommodation and sight-seeing, I should have a special mention for them. The hotels & resorts – though very basic – were well maintained in most places. It exceeded our expectation of a “Government” run hotel/resort. Most sites of tourist attractions were clean and well maintained (thanks to ASI – Archaeological Survey of India. also). Moreover the information provided on their website is sufficient enough to plan a trip.
For those interested in our trip journal, Aish’s blog has detailed posts on our trip (not covered the full trip yet but she'll get there some day).
Posts
good stuff ... long time coming!
ReplyDelete