When vacationing in India, the land of spices, there are so many different things that one could see and do that the list could be seemingly endless. A country this big certainly has much to offer any person that chooses to visit here.

India happens to boast thousands of kilometres of shoreline and some of the most beautiful beaches of any nation; beaches that serve as the primary attraction for millions of vacationers annually.

But when you are not soaking up the sun on the beaches, or enjoying the luxury five star resorts that have been specially designed to accommodate foreigners, or shopping at one of the many bazaars, there are some historical places that you should really jot down on your list of things not to be missed when here. To better help you along the way, here are the top four.

India Gate

Located in Rajpath, New Delhi, India Gate is a prime attraction, and should also be at the top of your list. Also called the India War Memorial, this monument was created to honor the memory of the fallen soldiers – around 90,000 of them – who sacrificed their lives for world freedom during the First World War; it’s also a memorial to the second war in Afghanistan (1919). The gate, comprised almost entirely of sandstone, is approximately 42 meters in height and was first constructed in 1921 by the Duke of Connaught. It was officially dedicated to India by Viceroy, Lord Irwin in 1931. A popular recreational site, you will find a plethora of picnickers here during the warmer months, as people remember their history and freedom, the price of which can be seen in the thousands of names of the fallen that are inscribed on its sandy walls.

Bodhgaya

Bodhgaya is a spiritual haven for religious Buddhists and attracts hundreds of thousands of the devoted to its sacred monument each year. Located just outside of Niranjana, this site is considered to be one of the holiest of pilgrimage centers, as history purports that this site is where Buddha attained his enlightenment. The world famous Bodhi tree grows in a garden here; the tree under which Buddha sat as he attained his enlightenment; a genetic descendant of the original tree grows here, and is available for tourists to visit. The Mahabodh temple is a prime attraction, and offers a rich taste of religious history and the undying message of peace that Buddhism represents.

Khimsar Fort

Originally constructed in 1523 AD by famed architect Rao Karamsiji, should be on your list of must-see places when on vacation in India. Situated on the Great Thar Desert, and still occupied by the 20^th descendent, it’s more like a palace than it is a hotel. Khimsar Fort has been entirely preserved and features authentic ramparts, turrets and the scars of many historical battles. Ranked as the most desirable Royal Retreat that you can stay at while visiting, the hotel features 50 ultra luxurious rooms outfitted with all of the amenities, from hot and cold water, to air conditioning and even 24-hour room service.

Konark Sun Temple

Positioned in Orissa just outside of the city of Puri, Konark Sun Temple is considered to be a “medieval masterpiece” that represents the rich architectural heritage of Indian culture from this time period. It’s estimated by historians that King Narashimhadev I had the temple built in AD 1238-64 to honor the Sun God and to appease him. Made mostly from intricately hand sculpted pieces and segments, the temple was constructed to represent the chariot of the Sun God, complete with 24 wheels (each one about 10 feet in diameter), and inclusive of elaborate details like the spokes. Two fearsome lions guard the temple’s entrance, there are seven horses pulling the chariot, and rearing elephants welcome visitors to the main steps that lead to this preserved temple in India.

[Erica Gustafson is a freelance writer and consultant for Expedia. She had the opportunity to visit India and it ended up being one of her favorite countries of culture.]

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A popular cliché that relates with Mumbaikars is that working professionals spend almost a quarter of their life commuting through the crowded local trains/buses.

Indeed, Mumbai is unique. Unique in the sense that – every morning there are over 10 million train commuters and bus passengers making interminable trips to offices mostly located in the South Mumbai. Eeh!… Not to forget about the return journey for the same herd towards the other pole, at dusk of the day.

Thankfully, the other side of Mumbai, the Vashi-Panvel zone, is developing by leaps and bounds and is acting fruitfully in cutting the commuting time and diverting traffic, at least partially – for a target group of people working across the belt. However, Mumbaikars still spend maximum time commuting, over their counterparts in other major metros, thanks to the massive traffic hurdles in the city.

Having said that, long-distance commuting is still the norm with as much as 26% public in India still travelling over 90 minutes everyday. Moreover, a survey points out that the average commuting length in India is 29 minutes, but a minority 12% of commuters travel more than an hour, up and down, which afflicts pain and an unproductive wastage of time.

In India, only 67% of the respondents owning a car asserted at driving to work. In my opinion, this could be on account of major traffic snarls (if you are on twitter I am sure you heard the word “traffucked”) during the peak morning and evening evening; not to mention the woes of car parking and related costs. Globally, cars are most popular form of commuter transport.

The solution to problem of longer commuting hours certainly lies in easing of traffic snarls powered by well-designed infrastructural facilities, including multi-level car parking slots for the private vehicles.

In fact, speedy execution of ongoing projects related to roads and over-bridges could in itself serve the redressal to these traffic congestion issues. Announcements related to building of Flyovers provide visible symbols of achievement, and the government in power doesn’t want to be left behind in a want to score a brownie point in terms of project implementation – but, what about the executing them?

One can easily determine the above political drama – once stuck in the narrow streets of a metro city, clogged by traffic nightmares, over where one end of the road stays dug by local authorities while on the other side heavy construction related to the building of flyovers take place.

Aware about these unavoidable circumstances, most of the IT and call-centre companies situated in Mumbai are shifting their locations to distant suburbs such as Powai, Vashi and Thane among others, in a bid to come closer to the residence areas of the employees to save time, money and efforts involved in ferrying them, to and fro, from the office premises. Additionally, it also saves the company from the payment of exorbitantly high rental or acquisition costs involved in dealing with expensive commercial property prices in prime business locations.

So what about you ? How time do you spend traveling every day ?

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India is not known for its Marketing prowess, be it anything. Yes, we deliver quality products, but we not able to package and market them well -And that’s the reason why I am very happy with this particular award.

The Incredible India Campaign launched in 2002 has always stood out as one of the better ones that India has executed. However, World Travel Awards adjudging it as World’s Best Destination Marketing Campaign is really something that we should be proud about !

Incredible India campaign is different in many ways – Even their website stands apart from hundreds of drab Government Websites that we are so used to seeing. Although quite slow to load, the Homepage itself depicts what India stands for – Diversity, culture and colorful are portrayed in a way they should !

Couple of years back, when I happened to see a Incredible India Hoarding on New York Street Bus Stop – And let me tell you – not one person passing by would have missed that one.

The campaign is not only good, but it also has given great results. For past few Years India has been ranking amongst the top Destinations on travelers mind. I am sure the Incredible India campaign has a lot to do with that.

The World Travel Awards – one of the most respected ones, have also rated India as the Leading Travel Destination in Asia

Here are some of the other awards given by WTA:

• Asia’s Leading Hotel – Trident Gurgaon, India
• Asia’s Leading Resort – Taj Lake Palace, India
• Asia’s Leading Spa Resort – The Oberoi Wildflower Hall, India
• Asia’s Leading Themed Resort – Orange County Coorg Resort, India
• Asia’s Leading Tourist Board – Incredible India
• India’s Leading Business Hotel – The Leela Palace Kempinski Bangalore
• India’s Leading Conference Hotel – Taj Palace Hotel New Delhi
• India’s Leading Green Hotel – The Claridges, Surajkund
• India’s Leading Hotel – Trident Gurgaon
• India’s Leading Luxury Hotel – The Claridges, New Delhi
• India’s Leading New Business Hotel – Crowne Plaza Today Gurgaon
• India’s Leading Resort – Kumarakom Lake Resort
• India’s Leading Spa Resort – The Oberoi Wildflower Hall
• India’s Leading Wildlife Resort – Orange County Kabini Resort

Any of the readers lived in these hotels or resorts? Let us know your experiences other than telling us that you burned holes in your pockets staying there :)

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Travel Thursday is our weekly news Digest that brings you buzzing stories about Travel & Tourism in India.

We start this Travel Thursday with some great positive News !

Udaipur is Voted as the World’s Best city for travellers – WOW !

Now thats a real biggie and unbelievable to a certain extent. However it is true –

The recent travellers poll conducted by popular Travel & Leisure Magazine has voted Udaipur, India as the World’s best city for travellers.

Udaipur, also known as the ‘Venice of the East,’ took the crown by trumping last year’s winner Bangkok. Udaipur sure has done something right to its visitors to secure the top position from ranked nowhere last year.

The Top 10 cities in the world

Babu’s given order to travel only by Air India

Looks like a depressing news for our busy autocrats so addictive of the luxuries offered by this developing nation of ours.

For our readers knowledge this is a change from the government’s travel policy of at least three years that allowed officials to travel by private carriers as well.

This is one of many measures taken by government to put some life into diseased Air India run by National Aviation Co. of India Ltd. Although experts claimed that this measure won’t do any good for the debt stricken company.

Lets have a closer look on some of the Company’s attributes.

Sr.	Name	Air India Limited
2	Ownership	State Owned
3	Main bases of operation	Mumbai (Chhatrapati Shivaji               International Airport) Delhi (Indira Gandhi International Airport)
4	Destination in India	Ahmedabad, Amritsar, Bangalore, Calcutta, Chennai, Delhi, Goa, Hyderabad, Kozhikode, Mumbai, Thiruvananthapuram.

Do you think with such confined network connectivity they would be able to cater to our babu’s/ didi’s (pun intended) whimsical and obviously URGENT travel plans?

Would like to support it with few facts I could gather

Say Mr. Narendra Modi wants to take up a flight to attend One Parliament session in Delhi. He’ll have to get up real early (which I doubt he would want to) and board one and only available flight at 8’ in the morning! U MUST B KIDDIN ME!

And say if some veteran actor turned MP from far south wants to attend the same session he’ll make his presence felt by spending minimum of 29 grands of Government ( or can say our money as well!) Gosh…29 grands just to see him on national T.V throwing his chappals on his peers.

Experts say the rot in Air India predates the financial crisis. Backed by powerful unions, the airline is bloated, badly managed and not held to account, they say.

Some of them are of view, "Air India is still an iconic brand, but unfortunately it has a reputation which is of an unreliable and shoddy airline."

So, the moral of the story is, Mr. Patel go and study what’s stopping your company to earn money rather then forcing people from your fraternity to direct the bailout money in bits and pieces to the ailing company. Throwing money blindly will only perpetuate the sick and loggerheaded management to loose more.

These tricks won’t garner votes neither will it do any good to those 31,500 employees living under the fear of being thrown out any minute. Shield our company from oil prices fluctuation then only may be we see any chance of flying via healthy and robust AIR- INDIA again.

Although the attempt to approach adept industrialist Mr. Ratan Tata is a thoughtful move, but bluffing is not acceptable as people are well informed now!!

AREN’T we?
(Guest post submitted by Kirti Agarwal)

Thats it for this episode of Travel Thursday. Catch up with us again next Thursday for more buzzing travel stuff !

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If you are new to Travel Thursday, here is a short explanation of what it is.

This will be the first edition of our Weekly News Digest of Travel Thursday.

Chartered Flights to Watch Solar Eclipse..WTF !

Yes, you heard me right, the notion of Solar Eclipse being a bad omen seems to be fading away.

Indians in large numbers, are now actually hiring Chartered flights to see Solar Eclipse, so that they can view it without any disturbance as for as long as possible.

Indian Travel agent Cox and Kings is chartering a Boeing-737 for the two-hour journey from Delhi to Gaya in Bihar so that passengers can follow the total solar eclipse, and seats are filling up fast.
[source]

And it not only Indians, Infact, astro tourism has been on rise in India since last couple of years and many foreign tourists are coming to India just to see this Solar Eclipse.

Interesting uhh… yes we do bring you some interesting stuff as well :) and there is more, read on…

Wine Tourism: Is it the new trend?

Just read this article on Wine Tourism, but I sure sure have my doubts about the wine manufacturing in India. We are probably infants in the art of wine making.

But effort by Karnataka Wine Board must be applauded to take this initiative of Wine Festival

Conceptualised by the Karnataka Wine Board on the lines of wine festivals popular in many western countries, the city’s first wine festival is targeted to promote wine tourism in the state. The three-day mela (festival) will be held in the Lalbagh Botanical Garden. [source]

So if you are in Bangalore, and are even remotely interested in wines, you must visit this mela. And if you do visit it, don’t forget to let us know about the kind of wines that you tasted.

I am happy about Wine Tourism, But this kind of tourism in India is not something that I am proud of at all !

..And here are some peculiar reasons to tour India

We have already seen Astro Tourism and Wine Tourism, but here is something that will surprise you even more.

Have you heard about Cemetery Tourism, yes, thats true!

Cemetery tourism is growing in India at a rate of 20% each year. The tourism department of Himachal Pradesh is ploughing a furrow with a little help from the British Association of Cemeteries of South Asia (Bacsa) to promote it in India. Read more about it here.

And there is something else called Caravan Tourism. Caravan Tourism is basically exploring the countryside using a Caravan or a RV.

The Indian Union tourism ministry has decided to announce policy initiatives for promotion of caravan tourism’ in its 100-day agenda. The ministry plans to explore Jaipur-Bikaner, Jaisalmer, Jodhpur-Mount Abu, Delhi-Sariska-Ranthambore, Delhi-Jaipur-Ajmer-Pushkar as the popular routes for the caravan journeys. Read more about it here

So there you have it, our first Travel Thursday News Digest. I loved writing this one. I came to know about  4 New Tourism concepts. Let us know what you thought about it.

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