Family Vacation - Traveling around Uttarakhand

This is a rush effort blog. My parents and cousin recently came for a 2-week vacation where we toured Northern India, mostly in the state of Uttarakhand. It was a lot of fun! And it was great to have my family finally see what I've been experiencing!

I will just list the places that we went:

RED FORT IN DELHI -- of course, a fort that is red!

INDIA GATE -- looks like the Arc de Triumph

QATB MINAR -- reminds me of "Close Encounters of the Third Kind"

LOTUS TEMPLE -- kind of the like the Sydney Opera house

TAJ MAHAL -- oh yeah, looks just like the Taj Mahal! "Taj" means crown.

(dig the hair)

camel ride to parking lot:

SOME KIND OF FAMOUS TOURIST SITE IN AGRA - We opted with the free admission route, from the street. What a nice view.

CORBETT TIGER RESERVE - Searching for a tiger in the wilderness is like trying to find a leprachaun under a four-leaf clover. Good luck!

Tiger claw mark.

On our day 1 Safari, a group of elephants got kind of alarmed by the jeeps and started slowly charging/walking towards us. They formed a mob, and hidden in the middle was a baby elephant that they were trying to protect!





Elephant safari on second day morning. We rode a domesticated elephant, who liked to munch on grass and "grass". In the picture of the mud, is a tiger paw print at the bottom.

Jeep safari on second day towards the wetlands:

Other creatures:

GANGOTRI - holy site of first major tributary of the Ganges River. There is an older blog entry from when I went there in October. This time, we were shrouded in fog. We hiked for 9 hours.

Darab later shows us on the map, where we were hiking.

AT THE VILLAGES -- we visited our friends at Khass Kudoan and Sarab Talla. Sanjeev showed us around.

It was also really great to hang out with Darab's family, Radha's family, and Shikha's family! Thanks! Yay! Stay tuned for links or guest blogs from my cousin Nancy. You will probably hear her describe more of the smaller things in life, like bugs, monkeys, and food.

CLICK HERE for the entire set of India June 2009 - Family Vacation pictures! Above is only about 10%!