India PTR - Part 6: Kolkata

[Gavin]

This wasn’t much of a theme park trip, but I obviously squeezed some creds in. I’d been to India before (Mumbai, Chennai and Bengalaru - all chosen mostly for parks), pretty much exactly 4 years prior to this trip, but since it’s so huge, I decided to go back and see some different parts of it, including some of the more touristy areas.

Delhi Day 1

I’d heard nothing massively positive about Delhi, but along with Mumbai it’s the most easily accessible from here with regard to flights, and it was close to other stuff, so I started there. I got to the hotel in the midafternoon, so knocked off some nearby stuff.

The view from the hotel which gives you a good indication of the air quality:

I don’t usually bother taking pictures of/bragging about hotel rooms, but this bathtub was epic:

The hotel was well-located next to Connaught Place, which was very central, near the main train station and loads of shops, restaurants etc.

Delhi is f**king huge, so although India Gate was “close” it was still a good 30-minute walk. I thought there might be a bit of stuff to see along the way, but there wasn’t. It was cool though. Beyond the gate, there’s some memorial thing.

There’s a long, straight road connecting that to some government buildings, so I walked another 30 minutes up to those. This is where the constant hassle from tuk-tuk drivers started, which didn’t finish until I left the f**king country. There just doesn’t seem to be an understanding of the concept of WANTING to walk somewhere. You politely say no (or start to just ignore them completely after a while), which is met with “Very cheap, only 20 rupees!” Yeah, it’s cheap as f**k (if that is the actual price and they don’t try and scam for more at the end of the ride), but I. Don’t. Want. To. Take. A. F**king. Tuk. Tuk. Right. Now.

Anyway, the old buildings at the other end were nice enough.

From there, I circled back to the hotel (must’ve been a good 8km walk in total despite taking up a tiny area of the whole city), had my first Indian meal of the trip at Taco Bell (because eating local food is important) and spent an hour filling that bathtub, feeling slightly guilty about the amount of water that was being used.

I was going to just post that, but I’ll shove the next day in, too since I still have half an hour before I can f**k off for my lunch break.

Delhi Day 2

This was going to be more touristy stuff, starting with some mosque. I used a combination of Uber and Ola (local equivalent) to get around almost everywhere on this trip since they were ridiculously cheap and I couldn’t be bothered with the hassle of dealing with other drivers / getting ripped off.

The mosque was fine for all of 15 minutes; there’s not much to actually see. It was nice enough though.

It’s very close to Red Fort, which was my main reason for heading to this area. It’s just a short walk through some crappy market area (the sort of place that the Lonely Planet crowd would take a million pictures of, pretending that they’re having some deep cultural experience when they’re actually being harassed and ripped off by every f**cker in the place) and across a road.

This was right to the side of the main entrance to Red Fort:

Completely unplanned , but YAAAAAAAAS!

CRED! Only just to be fair.

See, there’s a massive hill which clearly makes it a cred:

The Ferris wheel was absolutely ridiculous. No doors on it, no restraints from what I could see, and moved ludicrously quickly.

It seems I’ve deleted the videos from my phone, so I've grabbed them back off Facebook, which unfortunately compressed the s**t out of them.

https://imgur.com/a/XVXETME

https://imgur.com/a/wEiAEZq

Red Fort then. The main entrance was right next to the fair, but the ticket office was, stupidly, about 1km away along the walls with no entrance next to it, so you have to go here and back to get in. It was pretty impressive, with a mix of the old Indian stuff (It was a palace in the past, but had mostly been looted) and some colonial buildings, which used to be used as a military barracks, but were now used as museums showing how sh**ty Britain had been.

Both of these things were absolutely EVERYWHERE, not just around the fort, but Delhi in general and everywhere else I went to:

Even though it was a weekend, the fort hadn’t seemed particularly busy, which I took as a good sign for the next place I wanted to check out, Lotus Temple. Wrong. The queue just to get through security (EVERY tourist spot in India has bag checks/scanners) was at least 300m long. I almost sacked it off, but it actually moved pretty quickly and I was in within about 15 minutes.

The temple looks nice from the outside, but there’s f**k all to see inside and the crowds were horrendous.

Meh.

I decided to squeeze in one last place. I figured it would also be horrendously busy, but thought I’d just suck it up and get it done with. It turned out to be fine. It took ages buying a ticket to get in thanks to people in front faffing, but once inside, it was pretty quiet. Oh, it’s some old tomb. It was lovely to be fair.

That’s the end of the second day then. “Proper” parks in the next bit.

 

[Hixee]

The fog (smog?) is actually pretty atmospheric in some of those pictures, but equally a stark reminder of the air quality. Do you happen to know if that's a seasonal thing?

Impressive looking cultural stuff though. Bonus big bath and creds, what more could you ask for?

 

[Gavin]

The fog (smog?) is actually pretty atmospheric in some of those pictures, but equally a stark reminder of the air quality. Do you happen to know if that's a seasonal thing?

Impressive looking cultural stuff though. Bonus big bath and creds, what more could you ask for?

Partly seasonal, yeah. A lot of it, especially in the mornings was more mist/fog (it was f**king cold in the mornings and evenings in that area), but the air quality was also appalling. I'll have a rant when I wrap up this report later, but India's, unsurprisingly, a bit of a s**thole.

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[davidm]

Ha ; re: that last place "some old tomb"

So I work at a reasonably large multi-national IT company, so obviously all the boring technical jobs we have shipped off to India because Indian employees get paid peanuts compared to the Europeans (oh no, not exploitative at all is that!), but anyway we have a internal social networky thingy and theres a photography group on there and just the the other day one of the Indian peeps on the group posted a rather splendid photo of that very tomb (taken from the corner with a reflection in a little pond there) ; anyway I quite liked the picture and so I had spent a while reading up about the place ; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humayun's_Tomb

 

[Gavin]

Ha ; re: that last place "some old tomb"

So I work at a reasonably large multi-national IT company, so obviously all the boring technical jobs we have shipped off to India because Indian employees get paid peanuts compared to the Europeans (oh no, not exploitative at all is that!), but anyway we have a internal social networky thingy and theres a photography group on there and just the the other day one of the Indian peeps on the group posted a rather splendid photo of that very tomb (taken from the corner with a reflection in a little pond there) ; anyway I quite liked the picture and so I had spent a while reading up about the place ; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humayun's_Tomb

That's the one. I could have Googled the spelling (I clearly went there deliberately; I didn't just stumble upon it), but I find that spending undue time on these reports to give details is an absolute f**king waste.

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[JamesB]

Hell no at that ferris wheel!

As always, a very cultural and interesting PTR. I went to Delhi many years ago and can't really think of anything positive to say about the place, Fortunately other places in India make up how bad the capital is.

 

[Smithy]

I'm glad you called it a ****hole because I didn't want to come in here and be the first to say it. Absolute dump.

That ****ing ferris wheel too - unreal.

 

[Gavin]

^ It’s just such a mixed bag. I’ll go into more details when I wrap the report up, but, basically, you’ve got some absolutely amazing sights which are surrounded by dreadfulness and the whole thing just becomes such a bloody chore.

Delhi Day 3

This was going to be a cred whoring day, but I found out about some other UNESCO historic s**t (Qutub Minar), so decided to head there first. I’m glad I did because it was great. I’d assumed it was just the tower, but there was quite a bit more to it.

I got there early, and it was a Monday, so it was quiet. I imagine later in the day and/or at weekends, it would be just as vile as the Lotus Temple to deal with. Early morning and time of year again meant a very misty/foggy visit though.

Have lots of repetitive pictures:

I didn’t realise I’d uploaded quite so many, but they’re here now, so you’re getting them. Apparently, it used to be possible to climb the tower, but they stopped it a few years ago. Given the number of people this place must get, it makes sense from both a safety and preservation aspect.

There were 3 +1s I looked at getting, all of which were an “if there’s time” thing and none of them anywhere near each other. Since one of them was very close to a metro station, and I was also only a 15-minute walk from a metro station, I decided to give that a go, partly to see what it would be like and partly to avoid traffic and s**ty drivers (all of them). It was surprisingly excellent. It was, obviously, cheap as f**k, but was fast, clean and very modern. It took a while thanks to the distance, but not too much longer than the drive would have.

Adventure Island

This place was at the far end of one of the metro lines and is a shopping area and park. It was totally dead until a few school kids turned up as I was leaving. I ambitiously went for the wristband option, but really shouldn’t have bothered.

Access to the park bit is over a bridge, with a parked-up plane used as a restaurant off to the side.

Some general stuff, most of which was open, but little of which I bothered with:

And the cred. Shameful really, but it is what it is.

At this point, it was already early afternoon. The two other +1 places were both really far from this one, and from each other, so there was only really time to do one of them. Well, I probably could’ve tried for both. I decided on the one furthest away since I could get back on the metro, ride it from one end right to the other with no transfers, and get a quick taxi from the other end.

Drizzling Land

So, 90 minutes later, we’re here:

And that’s as far as I got because it was closed “for maintenance and low season”.

I had checked their website beforehand with no mention of this, so ugh. I contemplated heading to the other place, but that would be another hour by taxi (at least), and I figured the chances that it would also be closed were pretty high, so I decided to sack it off and just got an Uber back to the hotel.

So, it was a waste of f**king time, but I had nothing else I wanted to see in Delhi and it was all costing me bugger all, so whatever.

 

[Gavin]

There are some “proper” parks coming up in this trip, but there’s some culture crap to get through first.

Day 4 - Agra

The original plan when looking at this trip was to leave Delhi and move to Agra for a couple of days, but looking at it more closely, it was easily doable as a day trip since it’s not too far and has a decent train connection, so I decided on doing that instead of faffing around with another hotel.

I ended up doing the whole thing as a private tour through a travel agent, meaning I was picked up from the Delhi hotel, taken onto the train (actually escorted to the correct seat rather than just dumped at the station, which I would have been fine with), met on the train platform on arrival in Agra (right at the correct train door since they had my seat number), taken to all the stuff, then the same in reverse to get back. All completely fool proof for any nervous travellers I guess (Indian train stations can be a bit confusing and actual seat numbers aren’t added to bookings until a couple of hours before the trains leave), but it was a bit much.

Anyway, first stop – and the main reason for 99.9% of people to come here - was the Taj Mahal.

We’ve all seen a million pictures of it, but there’s a bit more to it than just the main structure. The entrance gates alone were very impressive.

The whole thing was built with symmetry in mind, so the inside of the gate is identical to the outside. See?

Actually, just realised that's the same f**king side. Ugh. Anyway, it's symmetrical on both.

Onto the thing itself then. It was only shortly after opening, which was good in terms of visitor numbers (no wait to get in), but also meant it was very hazy. This was less of a problem once you got up close.

There are a couple of mosques on either side. Well, one is an actual mosque and the other is an empty shell, only built to continue the symmetry.

You can’t take pictures inside, but there’s not much there anyway really. You’ve got replicas of the tombs for the people it was built for (the actual tombs are below in basement/crypt area), but not much else. The terrace around the outside of it is generally more impressive.

So, all very nice and I’m glad I got to see it. It was busy, but not too bad, with a lot more people starting to arrive when I was heading out.

Next up, and not too far away, was Agra Fort. In some ways it was similar to Red Fort in Delhi, but it seemed a bit less run down, was probably bigger and was generally more impressive. I was probably here for a couple of hours. I’m just going to dump pictures

Lunch was included in the trip. I was expecting it to be pretty basic, but it turned out to be a buffet at a nearby Marriot hotel and was some of the best food I ate on the whole trip.

The final stop was the Tomb of Etmaduddaula, also nicknamed the “Baby Taj” since it’s in the same general area and is also a tomb. It’s much smaller, but no less impressive. It’s actually quite a bit more detailed, and also almost devoid of visitors, so that was another plus.

There was about an hour to kill before the train back to Delhi, so we just hung out at a Costa for a bit. All in all, it was a really good day. I’m glad I opted to do it as a day trip instead of faffing with relocating, and the guided tour aspect definitely made things less hectic even though it’s not my preferred way to do stuff (no need to use Uber/Ola, no waiting in line to buy tickets, far less hassle from tuk-tuk drivers and people selling s**t etc.)

I’ll hammer out the next city. I’ve got an hour and a half before I can get out of work and I’m already in holiday mode since we’re off for Chinese New Year after today, so I’m not looking at any of the work that needs doing.

Day 5 – Jaipur

The next day was Christmas Day and, as I have done for the last few years, I filled it with random s**t. This was an early morning check out of the hotel to get the train to the next place. I got to the next hotel around 11am I think, and I was prepared to leave my bags and go out for a bit, but they let me have the room early.

Jaipur is famous as the “Pink City”, but to be honest that’s only applicable to one small area of it. The hotel wasn’t too far from that area though, so I walked down. I should’ve got a taxi really since there was f**k all to see on the way and walking was a pain in the arse thanks to pavements being used as extensions for the s**t from the shops behind them or as parking for scooters.

There are a few gates that look like this and act as entrances to the pink city area:

First stop was the City Palace complex. As usual with EVERYTHING in India, once you’ve got your ticket and are inside, it’s lovely, but it’s nothing but noise, dust and hassle until that happens.

There were a few different areas of it and it was all very impressive. As I said though, this is all inside a ticketed complex, so when you see gushing praise of “The Pink City”, you’re mostly seeing stuff from inside a gated tourist site and not the real city as it is now at all.

I went out through a different gate and walked a few minutes to another famous site, the Hawa Mahal. Again, despite this being incredibly close there was constant annoyance from tuk tuk drivers trying to insist that it was too far to walk and that you needed a ride. Stuff on the way:

The Hawa Mahal then. Turns out that this famous view of it is actually the back of the building.

The entrance was around the corner despite the shop keepers trying to tell you it was, somehow, via their shops (no, I didn’t fall for it, but it was amusing watching stupid people who did). Again, once you’ve got your ticket and are inside, it was lovely. It was pretty busy though and felt even more crowded since it’s not particularly big. I didn’t bother even attempting to get to the top of the tower because the number of people trying to get up, and the shoving, was just ridiculous. F**k that s**t honestly.

I’d bought some combo ticket which included this next thing, which was a bunch of old astronomical instruments. No idea really.

It was back to the hotel from there.

Day 6 – More Jaipur

I’d done the pink city area the day before, so had this day to kill. There is, apparently, a small park outside the city, but it was 40 minutes away, only had a powered coaster and had a strong chance of being closed since, like Drizzling Land, it was mostly a water park.

I headed out to (another) fort instead which was a good choice I think. It was lovely, but VERY busy. I ended up ditching the Uber and walking the last 500m or so since the traffic just wasn’t moving. I got a better view of it this way anyway.

There’s a bunch of (I assume old) walls along the various hills, and another fort up on a nearby hill.

The inside of it then, which was all very nice. As I said, it was busy, but there were plenty of quiet areas since it was so big.

I still had an afternoon to kill, and there was another fort (imagine!) included in the combo ticket I’d bought the previous day. This one was very close to the city centre, so it was no hardship to head there on the way back anyway. The drive up was actually really nice, and the views from up there were great despite the fort itself being a lot less impressive than the one I’d just come from.

Getting out of there was a major pain in the arse though. The phone signal was very patchy making it pretty much impossible to connect to Uber or Ola. The tuk tuk drivers were clearly very aware of this and were asking for ludicrous prices to get out of there. After trying a couple of them, I decided to just walk down the hill and get a car from the bottom. Turns out this was a piece of piss since there was a traffic-free walking/bike trail right there anyway.

There are two cities left of this trip, both with parks in them, but I’m off on holiday again tomorrow, so it’ll be a couple of weeks before I get this report finished. Do try and contain your excitement for reports of a relocated Boomerang before then.

 

[davidm]

Some cracking old sh*t buildings there. Disappointing that you have not taken a Tuk Tuk (yet)

 

[Gavin]

There are two cities left of this trip, both with parks in them, but I’m off on holiday again tomorrow, so it’ll be a couple of weeks before I get this report finished. Do try and contain your excitement for reports of a relocated Boomerang before then.

Well, it’s only 4 months on I guess.

This is my second day back at work since then, so I can crack on with this now. I couldn’t possibly have done it while I was off work, what with fabulous brunches with other people “working from home” and Netflix existing.

My memories are all a bit hazy now, but hopefully the pictures will jog them a bit, and Imgur’s reordering by file name should get the chronology right at least.

Hyderabad

If I remember correctly, I had a mostly lazy day in Jaipur, having done all the tourist stuff easily in the previous days, and an evening flight to Hyderabad. The only real reason for it was for a park, but I ended up quite liking the place. I don’t think I did anything that first evening. I’m going through old Booking.com bookings to even remember where the f**k I stayed, and remembering now that it was in a kind of upscale district, but not particularly near anything of any note. Anyway, according to the order in which I took photos, I headed to the park the next morning.

Wonderla

I’d done the Wonderla park in Bengalaru a few years before and quite liked the place. This one was about an hour south of the city, and I think I got there shortly after opening. I remember it seemed pretty busy at the entrance (actually fine inside), so I splashed out on a fast track wristband for about 5 quid which allowed unlimited queue skipping.

Awful 4D cinema which for some reason I did first. Thinking back, I guess there were timed shows and I was walking past as it was about to start:

There were a lot of similarities with the Bengalaru park, especially this “Termite Train/Termite Coaster” combo in a termite hill. One of them is a big apple and the other is some oval kiddy thing that circles the base.

The “big” coaster here is a Vekoma boomerang. This is its 4th home after starting at the World Expo in Brisbane before moving to the now defuct Wonderland Sydney and from there to Alabama Adventure. They’ve shoved the old train out front as decoration and replaced it with the same kind of lapbar train that Wiener Prater has.

Some other stuff that I mostly didn’t do. The domed building was a flying theatre and was being sold as one of the highlights of the park. I think I remember it being ok for what it was.

These things are EVERYWHERE in India, but at least Wonderla theme theirs. They’re such a ballache of a cred since they’re usually ridiculously wet.

Wonderla also like to put small Ferris wheels on top of large towers, so I did that for the views (actually better from the platform around the top of the tower than the wheel itself).

That was about it then. I didn’t do the waterpark or many of the flat rides, so with the fastpass wristband plus hanging around a bit taking photos and drying off from Water Splash, I was done in a couple of hours. If you just wanted the 4 creds and were prepared to spend the massive extra fiver, you could be in and out in an hour.

Touristy Stuff

I did very little research into Hyderabad before I got there, but had asked at the hotel the night before about stuff to see.

“We have Golconda Fort. It’s a very nice fort, sir.”
“No! A fort! Really?!”

I was sick to f**king death of forts by this point, so planned to skip this one, but I was out of the park by lunchtime, had the full day the next day, needed to fill my afternoon and it was pretty much on the way back to the hotel, so I just headed up to it. It was fab to be fair. It felt very different to the others and was spread out over a pretty big area. Picture dump:

I still had another day free for tourist s**t, so started off with Chowmahalla Palace (totally looking at Google Maps as I type this up to figure out where the f**k I went). I was there quite early, so it was really quiet (not sure if it ever gets massively busy, but still). It wasn’t that big, but was pretty fab, enough to kill an hour or two anyway.

It was just around the corner from Charminar (four minarets) which is a monument/mosque and, I guess, kind of the symbol of the city. There was a ridiculously busy market around the base of it, and when I saw it, I almost just turned around and got a taxi out of there.

It turned out to be fine though. Unlike the previous cities, there was no hassle at all. Not one vendor even acknowledged that I was there despite me standing out like a sore thumb. I’m putting it down to Hyderabad not really being much of a tourist draw compared to the others, so the whole vibe there (despite it being VERY crowded) seemed a bit less stressful. There was still the usual pushing and shoving, but no particular “targeting” of people trying to sell s**t or rip you off.

You can go inside, but I couldn't be bothered with what passes in India for a "queue".

I still had loads of time and there was a “famous” museum nearby, so I gave that a go.

Hated it.

It was just stupidly crowded (to be fair some areas were fine), pretty run down and didn’t have much that I found massively interesting.

This “double statue” thing was cool though; there’s a mirror behind it to see both sides.

They had the Mona Lisa as well which was impressive.

I’ve just remembered another reason this place pissed me off: pricing.

I’ll mention this now while I remember, but pretty much every museum/fort/monument in India has a dual pricing local/foreigner system. The first time you see it, you think “Ugh”, but you get used to it and, theoretically, I don’t mind it at all.

I’ve mentioned this in the past, but I think that locals of any country should absolutely have free/affordable access to their own history/culture. I don’t have a problem with foreigners being charged a bit more (just to clarify: definitely NOT at parks who try to pull that s**t though) to bring in a bit of extra revenue. India takes the piss with the markup though. Most places seemed to have a roughly 10x markup - which is already kind of ridiculous, but you get used to it and it’s still “cheap” - but this place was the worst offender.

Local price: 20 rupees (about 20p)
Foreigner price: 500 rupees (over five quid)

Yeah, f**k that place.

Next up: Kolkata

 

[Hixee]

Yaaay, Gavin is back. <3

 

[Gavin]

Here’s the final bit of this then.

For the first time (I think) ever, I f**ked up a flight booking. I arrived at Hyderabad Airport only to not be let through the doors since my flight was booked for exactly a month later. The s**ty airline wouldn’t change it, so I just bought a new one and got some of the money back by cancelling the wrong one later.

Anyway, got on the flight I was supposed to be on and got to the final city of the trip.

Kolkata
Or Calcutta if you refuse to give up British sovereignty. I can’t remember the exact details now, but I think I only had one night here, arriving quite late, with a flight out late the next night, only giving me one day. It turned out alright anyway.

The city is huge, but a lot of the main stuff is around the same area, around and in a big park/grassy area called Maidan, which is itself is pretty big, but walkable. My hotel was near the north of it, so I had a look around that area first, then along/through the Maidan itself to some other stuff at the south of it.

Bunch of old colonial stuff (government offices and stuff) not far from the hotel, at the north end of the Maidan:

The Maidan itself should be nice - a huge patch of grass in the middle of the city – but it was f**king gross, just litter and crap everywhere. The air quality was dreadful as well.

There was some stuff I skipped (another fort, another museum) due to time, heading down to the Victoria Memorial at the south end.

It was really impressive to be fair. In some ways, I preferred it to the Taj Mahal since the inside is equally as impressive as the outside. It’s also much newer though, having been built in the early 1900s, at a cost today of around half a billion pounds, in memory of Queen Victoria, Empress of India, who loved the country and its people so much that she never set foot in it once. During construction, the capital was moved from Calcutta to New Delhi as well, so the final product ended up getting stuck in a provincial city.

Some church nearby. Couldn’t go in, but whatever:

I guess it was early afternoon by this point, and I had creds to get, so got a taxi to the outskirts of the city.

Nicco Park

I stupidly got a wristband that I definitely didn’t need, partly because I was only interested in the 3 coasters anyway, but mostly because the place was packed and I had no chance of getting my money’s worth out of it. No fastpass options (that I could see) at this place either.

First cred was closed:

They had a “River Caves” attraction which I really would have liked to have done. I came back to it a bit later, but the queue looked to be about 90 minutes based on how slowly it was moving and I just couldn’t be bothered.

The main reason for coming here though is the woodie, Cyclone, a clone of Southport’s old woodie of the same name, which I never got to ride before Mandy personally took her chainsaw to it.

I think I waited about 45 minutes for it, which was fine but I wasn’t going to bother with a reride with those times. I liked it though. There was some decent airtime and the restraints meant that you got thrown up quite a bit. It definitely wasn’t smooth, but I could have easily managed a few rerides had the queues been shorter or there was a fastpass option.

The third coaster. Ugh. I had to wait about 45 minutes for this as well thanks to a long line, one car and the fact that they sent it round twice every time. Luckily, it was nowhere near as wet as some of these are.

The other coaster had opened at some point. I’m guessing shortly before I was near it again since the queue was pretty short.

I’ll just throw in some more of Cyclone since it’s by far the most interesting coaster in this whole report.

I did the drop thing on the way out since it was some kind of upcharge which my wristband, but not others, allowed for, meaning there was little wait. That was it though.

I think I would’ve liked the park a bit more if it had been a bit quieter. I would’ve liked another ride or two on the woodie, and I was a bit annoyed about skipping the river caves, but it couldn’t be helped really. It was New Year’s Eve, so it was bound to be busy, but I didn’t really have a choice since that was the only day I was there. Still, I got the three creds.

I got a taxi back to this food/shopping area near my hotel and got dinner. It was getting PACKED for some New Year thing that was happening, so my 10-minute walk back to the hotel took over half an hour. I just picked up luggage there and headed back out to the airport.

Overall then. After this second trip there, I vowed that I was done with India. That was four months ago though and a lot can change, so…

Nah, f**king done with it.

On the plus side, it’s obviously cheap. Good hotels in nicer areas don’t cost much at all. Nice restaurants are also really affordable, with excellent food and some of the best customer service you’re going to get anywhere. There are some absolutely amazing things to see, absolutely incredible. All of those forts, palaces, monuments etc. are all really impressive.

There’s just a lot of stress and hassle to deal with in between all that good stuff though. This can only make me sound like a dick, but I’m generally really tolerant towards all that because I’ve been to lot of very crowded, noisy, busy places, but I really had my patience tested a few times on this trip.

I guess it’s just a very mixed bag. On my previous trip, I really liked Mumbai and hated Chennai, but I’ve got friends who will argue that it should be the other way around. On this trip, I found myself quite liking Hyderabad (which on paper is nothing special) and not thinking much to Kolkata, which actually has more to do/see. I had a couple of friends who were there at the same time as I was (never in the same city at the same time though), traveling around the country for two months and filling their Facebook profiles with Lonely Planet bull****. In their PMs to me, they were f**king hating it!

I don’t know. If that Indian theme park boom ever happens – you know, that one everyone insisted was coming after Adlabs Imajica opened 7 years ago – then I might end up back there, but, at the moment, the other Wonderla park in Kochi isn’t going to do it.

 

[davidm]

...ahh the original IAPPA(I)

Definitely some interesting sights there, not convinced the crappy coasters would be enough to make me put up with the faff to get to see them tho'.

As they say ; "thanks for sharing"

 

[Howie]

Haven't read it all yet, still on day 3, but I just had to comment on that ferris wheel. Like... WTF? ?

Some lovely pictures in there bruv, love looking at 'some old tombs', me.

 

[nadroJ]

You've pretty much confirmed my feelings/fears towards India here - I really would love to go for the culture, want to see the Taj Mahal and all that jazz, but it just seems like you're going to be harassed left, right and centre. How did you feel in terms of safety? Some of the pics look a little bit grim (like the big field covered in litter, vile) but from the way you describe it it seems like it was more annoying than scary?

 

[Gavin]

^Yeah, exactly that. I never felt even remotely unsafe at any point.