A Passage to India

With one-week of holiday entitlement remaining I will travel to neighboring India. It would have been nice to wait until the temperatures cooled and the monsoon season ended, but that doesn’t align with my work schedule and preparing for my departure from Pakistan.

India is a vast and diverse country and I know that I will only scratch the surface on this visit. Fortunately, my travel goals are quite modest, with my strategy basically being to see the Taj Mahal and then hang-out in the lower Himalayas.

My India holiday schedule is as follows:

- Saturday, August 26 – Fly to Delhi via Lahore.

- Sunday, August 27 – Visit Delhi.

- Monday, August 28 – Day trip to the Taj Mahal in Agra. Return to Delhi and catch the night train to Dehardun.

- Tuesday/Wednesday, August 29/30 – Visit Mussorie in the lower Himalayas. The town is known as the Queen of the Himalayas, though the mountain views are likely to be covered by monsoon clouds.

- Thursday, August 31 – Travel to Haridwar, on the Ganges River, and visit the temples, the ghats (river steps/landing) and attend a sunset ceremony at a Ganges temple.

- Friday, September 1 – Visit Rishikesh (where the Beatles once hung-out with their guru Maharishi Mahesh Yogi) and attend another sunset ceremony at another Ganges temple.

- Saturday, September 2 – Drive to Delhi and fly home to Islamabad via Lahore.

- Sunday, September 3 – Back to the office for month-end accounting.