If you have ever wanted to experience something that's completely different from your average, "norm" kind of vacation, India would have to be it. Just stepping out of the airport, never having seen the everyday bustle, is enough of a culture shock. Now of course this depends on where you go, this country is big. Some regions are extremly modernized. While others (the fun ones) are getting there, such as Vadodara in Gujarat.
You cannot compare a European travel itinerary in even basics to one in India. For one you cannot rent a car and drive. If you even so much as think so, take a trip (it takes one) in a rikshaw. Don't try the buses (they are diminishing anyway) and do not take a car taxi, you need the tiny little bug-like rikshaws with the open air feel to get the full effect of Vadodara. The rikshaw drivers, fearless-born, will tilt and turn thru cars, bikes, cows, donkeys, motorcycles, pedestrians, trucks, buses and of course other rikshaws (with seemingly even more crazy drivers than the one you're with). At every turn you will be sure you will be crushed or crush some poor street peddler. Oh what fun!
Unfortunately, (but just for me and anyone else interested in architecture), all the beautiful old building are being torn out and redone. If you get lucky you can still see an odd old building stuck in the middle of the boring new boxes. Old carved wooden doors and balconies, rafters, windows, still stuck in time in the middle of tiny little gullies filled with homes and little shops. You have to be carfeul when ogling high up (where most of the older stories seem to be preserved), for myriads of motorcycles and rikshaws will not stop for pedestrians, and they will try to run you over (no, really). Nor are there street lights, and nor do they follow the painted lines of traffic lanes, and nor do they even follow the direction of traffic. Yeah, in case the last one slipped by you, that was one car going the opposite way in a one direction side of extremely busy road.
I don't know if I made India sound nice or not, but my writing is a bit lacking. So there you go.
You cannot compare a European travel itinerary in even basics to one in India. For one you cannot rent a car and drive. If you even so much as think so, take a trip (it takes one) in a rikshaw. Don't try the buses (they are diminishing anyway) and do not take a car taxi, you need the tiny little bug-like rikshaws with the open air feel to get the full effect of Vadodara. The rikshaw drivers, fearless-born, will tilt and turn thru cars, bikes, cows, donkeys, motorcycles, pedestrians, trucks, buses and of course other rikshaws (with seemingly even more crazy drivers than the one you're with). At every turn you will be sure you will be crushed or crush some poor street peddler. Oh what fun!
Unfortunately, (but just for me and anyone else interested in architecture), all the beautiful old building are being torn out and redone. If you get lucky you can still see an odd old building stuck in the middle of the boring new boxes. Old carved wooden doors and balconies, rafters, windows, still stuck in time in the middle of tiny little gullies filled with homes and little shops. You have to be carfeul when ogling high up (where most of the older stories seem to be preserved), for myriads of motorcycles and rikshaws will not stop for pedestrians, and they will try to run you over (no, really). Nor are there street lights, and nor do they follow the painted lines of traffic lanes, and nor do they even follow the direction of traffic. Yeah, in case the last one slipped by you, that was one car going the opposite way in a one direction side of extremely busy road.
I don't know if I made India sound nice or not, but my writing is a bit lacking. So there you go.
