Planning the Trip or How to Fill the Gaps
Following is the full text of an email we sent prior to the trip to describe our itinerary.
Date: Mon, 24 Nov 2023 17:28:23 +0000
Dear all, And yes, we're off again; as our visas for India are valid for a year, we've decided to make the most of it and go back before they run out. Departure this Sunday, return Monday January 22, 2024, one day before they expire. We've called this trip "GapFiller23", the idea being to build our itinerary around sites we haven't been able (but could or should have) to see on previous trips, either because we didn't have the time or didn't feel like it at the time... We'll be doing a lot of miles, but this time, the long distances will be covered by train (5x) or overnight bus (2x), which should be less tiring than our trip to Northeast India earlier this year. We'll start in Delhi, where we'll stay for 3 days (hello pollution), followed by two days in the city of Mathura, where Krishna was born, which of course involves numerous temples and a supposedly very good museum. We'll continue to Agra and Varanasi, two cities we already know well, but from which we intend to explore sites/cities we don't yet know. Besides, we can't get enough of Varanasi ;-) We'll travel between the two by night bus. We'll take our first overnight train from Varanasi to Rajgir and finally see the site of the ancient Buddhist university of Nalanda, which was on our itinerary in 2013 and which we had dropped at the time as the detour seemed too complicated (we wanted to get back to Nepal as quickly as possible). From there, we'll head for Parasnath to join Jain pilgrims and climb to the top of a sacred hill full of temples (750m ascent), apparently with beautiful views. A second night train will take us all the way to Puri for the famous Konark temple, which has been on our minds since 2013: it too was on the itinerary, but we hadn't been able to get there due to a general strike that paralysed the state of Orissa for two or three days and stranded us in Bhubaneshwar. Another night train takes us to Warangal, a town with a fort that Vero had had to eliminate from our 2013 itinerary for lack of time, but which she hadn't forgotten: it was only a rematch! Next will be a few days in Hyderabad, a city we are already familiar with, but as Thomas had been ill when we were there, we didn't have very fond memories of it: we owe the place a second chance! Then another night train will take us to Tirupati, north of Chennai. Here, it's going to be interesting and a bit crazy: another hill with Jain temples, this time with 1000m to climb and 5000 (!) pilgrims a day (7000 on weekends) with whom we'll tackle it. We've already experienced such climbs in Gujarat and have fond memories of them. We go for the scenery, but also for the very special atmosphere of such pilgrimages (excellent for meeting people and observing). Our last night train will take us to Mysore, a friendly town we have fond memories of and which we'll be glad to return to, and from where we want to visit a few new sites in the surrounding area. A few days in the mountainous Coorg region for a few hikes, then on to the Arabian Sea for Mangalore and the Udupi temple. An overnight bus will take us to Kolhapur, an obvious stop on the way back to Mumbai, which we don't know much about, but which looks nice from what we've read. The next stop will be Pune for a few days before heading for Mumbai, the final leg of our journey. As usual, we've prepared a map which you can consult by following this link: https://trvl2.com/=GapFiller23 (the blue markers are our stops, the red ones are excursions). The itinerary is fairly fixed, as we've already booked our night train tickets; it's only after Mysore that we'll have more flexibility if we feel like it. We don't intend to send any emails during this trip, we stay in touch almost daily with close family thanks to WhatsApp and that's the main thing. In the meantime, we have quite a few new pages on our site about Flanders and its museums we visited in September: follow the link, especially if you like Flemish primitives: https://trvl2.com/main/Belgium-tags Happy holiday season...! Veronique and Thomas
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$ updated from: Blog.htxt Wed 17 Dec 2025 16:13:39 trvl2 — Copyright © 2025 Vero and Thomas Lauer unless otherwise stated | All rights reserved $