GapFiller 2023

This trip has been designed to visit sites which we hadn't been able to see on previous trips, either because we didn't have the time or because they were too difficult to reach.

We covered a lot of ground, starting in Delhi and making a big loop to finish in Mumbai.

Full map of all GapFiller 2023 pages

Other Things

Thinking of our next destination: Italy and Portugal come to mind, or maybe the time has finally come for a US road trip…

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Introduction

(vero;2024-Feb-29)

We had been in India in the Spring of 2023 exploring the north eastern states and since our visas were valid for one year, we thought we should make the best of it, return to India before they expired and visit some places which we had not seen on previous trips, either because we didn't have the time or because they simply did not fit into our itineraries at the time.

Vrindavan, Uttar Pradesh: group of pilgrims listening to their guide in the Ranganathji Temple. We started in Delhi and headed east via Mathura, Agra and Varanasi to the states of Bihar and Jahrkand where we went a bit off the beaten track to explore Rajgir and its surroundings (Nalanda among others) and follow Jain pilgrims up Parasnath Hill. We then made a big jump to Puri on the coast of the Gulf of Bengal just to see the temple of Konark (which we found disappointing), then crossed the Deccan Plateau to Warangal and Hyderabad. A night train took us to Tirupati for yet another crazy pilgrim experience to the temple of Tirumala. From there we continued to Mysuru before moving on to the coast of the Arabian Sea for Kozhikode (Calicut) and Mangalore (to see the temple of Udupi) and starting our way back to Mumbai via Kolhapur and Pune.

Distances covered were huge but this was made relatively easy by the extensive use of night trains (6x), one overnight bus and many day-time train journeys.

You can retrace our route on this map showing our itinerary.
See the Blog section for some stories and trip details.
We have many pictures to share in the Photos section.

Finally, we have a full site map of all GapFiller 2023 pages; the other sections have local maps (see Blog Map and Photos Map and index pages (see Blog Index and Photos Index).