India Golden Triangle in 2 Days - Part 1 Jaipur
During my first full week in Hyderabad, after my first weekend, another Googler expat who was only in the office for a few weeks from Dublin proposed doing the Golden Triangle trip in one weekend. The Golden Triangle is a trip through Delhi, Agra, and Jaipur that is normally supposed to take about a week. I had done it over 10 years ago, but the opportunity to get some great pics and join in with a fellow traveler meant I jumped at the chance.
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| From India Golden Triangle 2008 |
Here’s what we did: Friday after work, we got dropped off at the Hyderabad airport (1 hour drive), waited for our flight (delayed by 45 minutes), landed in Delhi, slept in Gurgaon, woke up at 5am for a drive to Jaipur (~4-5 hours), spent the day in Jaipur seeing the sites, drove to Agra (~5 hours), overnight in Agra, woke up at 5am to get to the Taj Mahal, first ones in and beat the crowds and heat, let Agra by the afternoon, saw the sites in Delhi as the sun set, slept in Gurgaon, and woke up at 4am Monday to catch a 5:30am flight to Hyderabad to get back to work.
Phew. Definitely not easy! The trip started at Hyderabad airport, which is the nicest airport I’ve seen in India. I didn’t mind the flight delay so much because it allowed me to get an iced drink at Coffee Bean. Yes, the same Coffee Bean from LA! After having terrible coffee options in Hyderabad, Coffee Bean is exactly what I needed to start a trip off right.
Driving through Gurgaon on Friday night was a trip. TGI Fridays, Ruby Tuesdays, shopping malls… Definitely not for tourists but probably a comfortable place for an expat to live for three months 
The guest houses were really nice, but we arrived so late that I didn’t really get a chance to walk around and check anything out.
I caught 3 hours of sleep and woke up for the drive to Jaipur. Our driver was a really great guy named Koogi who had a Toyota SUV, so I was glad it was going to be a comfortable ride. After a quick stop at McDonalds for breakfast, I spent the long drive in the back of the car checking NBA scores on my iPhone and going through my Google Reader (I can’t sleep in cars).
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| From India Golden Triangle 2008 |
We arrived before noon in Jaipur, but unfortunately the elephant rides had already ended. We spent the next few hours at the Amber Fort, Jal Mahal, and Jantar Mantar.
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| From India Golden Triangle 2008 |
Jal Mahal is in the center of a lake
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| From India Golden Triangle 2008 |
In terms of siteseeing, Jantar Mantar is my favorite part of Jaipur. It is a collection of astronomical instruments, and the size and accuracy of them is really a site to see. One of the sundials was accurate to within 2 seconds!
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| From India Golden Triangle 2008 |
The heat in mid-April was brutal but these sites were well worth worth putting up with the heat for. However, the thing that I remember the most from Jaipur is the food. I had a non-veg Rajasthani thali that had some of the best chicken I’ve ever eaten!
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| From India Golden Triangle 2008 |
Up next, parts 2 and 3 in Agra and Delhi