Northern India Tour Trip

I apologize for my lack of blog posts lately! I’ve been very busy here, but I’m finally getting some time to myself since the school year ended and I completed my tours. We’re just entering summer now, so the climbing temperatures are probably also contributing to the slowing down of life here.

It’s already been 3 weeks since I returned to Surat from our 17 day trip through Northern India, and they were definitely some of the best weeks of my life. It was a dream to be able to spend two and a half weeks with the 18 other exchange students living in my Rotary district, and to see so much more of this beautiful, diverse country.

The trip began with a 27 hour train ride (and a 3 hour bus ride after that) to reach Dharamsala, a Northern city in the Himalayas which is the residence of many exiled Tibetans and the Dalai Lama himself. Amazingly, we were able to witness a small part of one of his teachings, and got to see him up close. (He and I made eye contact!) The next city we visited was Manali, where we rented snowsuits and played in the snow. We stopped in Agra to see the Taj Mahal, and spent a few days in Delhi to witness India’s capital city in all its glory. Our next stops were in the state of Rajasthan, which holds India’s deserts. We visited forts in its capital city Jaipur (‘The Pink City’) and rode camels through the sand dunes in the Thar desert in the city of Jaisalmer. We spent two nights at a camp resort in the desert, staying in large tents in the sand. Finally we visited Jodhpur, the Blue City, and took another long train ride to our respective cities in Gujarat.

Since it would be impossible to explain everything we did and how much fun we all had, I put together a short video compiling clips I took throughout the trip.

Enjoy!