Huge day. Today we saw in the wild the following: A leopard Elephants Spotted deer Langurs A serpent eagle We are staying inside the Bandipur Nature Reserve in the Western Ghats area of Karnatka state. The resort is called Windflower, and the rooms are absolutely beautiful. Today we were taken by local guides inside the…

A very full day. We came outside to find some monkeys on the play equipment! We set off in our van to visit a tea plantation. We learned a lot about how tea grows and how it is picked. Also about how the different parts of the tree are used. Then we went to the…

A day of travelling. Up early to catch to the train to Coimbatore. About 4 hours travelling through tropical farmland and a few towns. Reaching Coimbatore, which must have the longest railway station platform in the world (we walked miles), we picked up our van and went off for lunch. We had a thali, a…

First day travelling with my new group. Again, we are eight women with a female guide! This time, I am far and away the oldest (by at least 20 years). Age range of the others 25-45, at a guess. Aussie, English, German and Chinese. We set off on foot and then caught a local bus…

Update on Day 19: Last night we had dinner at Moti Mohal Delux, the restaurant where they supposedly invented butter chicken. It was walking distance from our hotel in South Delhi. Exceptional. Day 20 began with packing up and checking out, as the textile tour was ending and we were going our separate ways. We…

Relaxing with a chai before going out for our final group dinner. Today we packed up early and headed for the train station, leaving behind our beloved Khandela Haveli. We got a porter to move our mountain of bags into position to get on to the train for Delhi. Absolutely chaotic, but we made it.…

A bit behind on blogging but here I go catching up. Yesterday we travelled to the village of Bagru, outside Jaipur, to meet a leading exponent of the art of block printing. Suraj Narayan is internationally famous for his natural dyes and original designs. We looked at his museum, and thoroughly enjoyed watching his team…

A day of wonders. In the morning we were driven out of town to the original capital of Rajastan, a town called Amer. Along with thousands of other tourists, we exchanged our bus for some 4x4s, and were driven up the steep incline to the Amer Fort. The scale of the place is incredible. Built…

We started out a bit later today. We are leaving Lucknow on a night flight so had to pack and check out. We visited another of Lucknow’s architectural marvels, the Bara Imambara. It is a huge complex of buildings built in 1784 as a famine relief project. The local Nawab of the time kept the…

A later start. We drove west out of Lucknow to a village called Mohaan to see people working on traditional Chikan Kari (pronounced “chicken curry” ) embroidery. It is a small agricultural village which relies on seasonal crops such as mangoes. Along the way we passed through a pottery village. First we visited a house…