The Golden Triangle Tour - Part 1

This past December on our trip to India, to attend my cousin's wedding along with my entire family, we decided to go visit some other cities in India besides Mumbai.

My sister in law made the arrangements through a tour company and we started our 5 day trip to go visit the many sites on "The Golden Triangle Tour". 

We started our tour in Delhi, where we visited Jama Masjid and Humayun's Tomb.

 We also drove by the Red Fort and other important political sites.

We were assigned a van all to our selves with a driver who drove us from city to city where a tour guide would meet us for the day. 

Our next stop was Fatehpur Sikhri and Agra to go see the Taj Mahal.

 On our way there, we took a detour to stop for a bit in the town of Mathura where Lord Krishna was born. 

We visited the local temple there and even tasted some of the world famous Mathura pedas.

After seeing the magnificent Taj Mahal, we drove to Jaipur where we saw some amazing places, forts, palaces, etc and even took an elephant ride. More on that later...

We then drove back to Delhi to catch our flight back to Mumbai.

Our trip to India was INCREDIBLE but as mentioned in earlier posts, quite draining.

 Eight months later, I am finally ready to share more on our trip.

 I have so much more to share and Inshallah (God Wiling), I'll be sharing the many images, impressions and experiences in due time.

For now, let me begin by sharing the beginning of our trip at Delhi Airport...

Delhi Airport is beautiful.
There are many diverse works of art throughout the airport.
Check out this wall of sculptors with various yoga hand postures.

So these are the public restrooms/ toilets/ washrooms.
I just thought it was so neat to have these gorgeous images to inform people of the ladies and gents toilets instead of a simple sign.
India has many creative ways of informing people of the different ladies and gents toilets.
I'll be sharing them as we visit the various places around India.

Here is painted mural in the baggage claim area. Isn't that just beautiful?

Another public restroom at Delhi Airport.

This was just sooo funny...we planned this picture to demonstrate what "tourists" we looked and acted like.
Here is a picture of my younger son Zayn with his camera, my sister in law, Zeenat with her camera and my eldest, Aly with his IPhone camera all taking pictures of each other...My brother, Karim looks on.
And of course, me taking a picture of all of them.

There are two types of toilets in India and most parts of the third world. 

They are the "Desi" toilet and the "English" toilet. 

The "Desi" toilet is essentially a hole in the ground with a normal flush system. 

The water tank usually sits higher up on the wall but in this case is built into the wall. 

This is an extremely CLEAN and NICE desi toilet. 

They are usually not this nice and clean.

Desi toilet.

Check out the hand held bidet.
99.9% of Indians don't use toilet paper.
They consider it yucky since it doesn't completely clean as well as water does. 

The "English" toilet introduced to India by the British when they came as guest and stayed on uninvited for much longer than necessary before they finally left in 1947.
Although they left India, they left behind a few good things, one of which is the "English" toilet.

So this young man from the tour company, Heritage Tours, was waiting to greet us as soon as we walked out of the airport after collecting our bags.
We followed him to this white van and he asked us to wait.
He reached into the van and started to place garlands of marigold around our necks.
This was a fun experience.

My brother Karim gets a garland.

Here is Aly with all of our garlands and a cup of coffee.

Here we are on the van off to go check into our hotel.


More to come...

Love and Light,
From one sufi to another,
Anita