The Travel Independently Blog

So how does one get from Seattle to Sikkim?

Starting from SIkkim, I note there is no airport in Sikkim. The closest airport is Bagdogra. It’s about a 4- 4.5 hour drive by Jeep from Bagdogra to Gangtok. It’s less than 70 miles “as the crow flies” but the winding road through the mountains makes it both longer and slower. The closest international airport to Bagdogra is Kolkata.

Kolkata has good international connections from major cities in Asia. Since we use either Bangkok or Singapore as our entry point to Asia, I checked flights from Singapore to Kolkata and from Bangkok to Kolkata. As usual, Thai Air out of Bangkok is much less expensive than Singapore Air out of Singapore.

Our plan is to fly from Seattle to Bangkok (via Tokyo), arriving about midnight. We’d like to get to Sikkim as soon as possible, so we would stay at the Novotel at the Bangkok Airport and fly out the next morning to Kolkata, with the goal of being in Gangtok by nightfall.

The Thai Air flight leaves Bangkok just before midnight, so that won’t work. A bit of checking reveals that both Kingfisher Air and Jet Airways fly between Bangkok and Kolkata and between Kolkata and Bagdogra. A look at the schedules makes Jet Airways the winner. The Kingfisher flight gets to Bagdogra at 4:25 pm, too late to set out for Gangtok. The Jet Airways schedule looks perfect: we’d leave Bangkok at 9:20 am, arrive in Kolkata at 10:20 am; leave Kolkata at 12:20 pm and arrive in Bagdogra at 1:20 pm. The last bit of driving will likely be in the dark, but that seems not too bad. One of my Fodors friends notes that there is a helicopter connection of Gangtok. It’s difficult to get, and I won’t count on it, but it takes 45 minutes rather than 4 hours. I’ll certainly see if I can book it.

Each move from one location to another is a long drive, 3 to 5 hours via jeep. So for that reason as well as that we like to spend some time in each place we visit, I want to minimize the number of moves we make. I’m sure the scenery will be spectacular; I’m also sure the ride will be uncomfortable.

On the way back out, we’ll fly from Bagdogra to Kolkata and spend a few days there, then onward to Bangkok for some time with friends there, then back home to Seattle.

So the transport looks like it will all work… as long as there isn’t a bandh.

Technorati Tags: Airlines, Asia Travel, calcutta, Independent Travel, india, international travel, kolkata, seattle, Sikkim

Input from other travelers is helpful. And for me, the Fodors forum is especially helpful. I’ve been posting there for years, as have many others. And many of us have met each other at get-togethers all over the world. So I have a cadre of fellow travelers whose opinions I respect.

It was from my request for input that I was referred to the blog post of a fellow Fodorite about her experience on the Darjeeling Toy Train. That, combined with other research convinced me that the Toy Train might be fun, but I shouldn’t count on it as reliable transport. Another Fodorite suggested I consider Darjeeling and Sikkim. Sikkim has been on my list of places I’d like to visit since I was a child. I’d looked at it briefly, but it appeared to be too cold in November-December for what I’m looking for.

Still, it was something to put on the list for future consideration. Another poster noted that Assam is less-touristed than Darjeeling, which is what I’d concluded. So I received a variety of responses to my request. Some of the info provided confirmed my sense of the places, some dis-confirmed, and some raised more possibilities. I did a bit of further research on all of the salient points raised by others.

I had timed all of this data-gathering to be done when we left for our annual trip to Kauai. This was a time to think and talk about the options and come to a conclusion without the tasks and pressures of day-to-day life. I took my Lonely Planet Guide and we had a laptop and free wi-fi, so we were set to work out a plan.

I’m the travel planner, but my partner and I are true travel partners, so we make our travel decisions together. I presented Cheryl with the info I’d gathered and the Lonely Planet and she took some time to digest it. Then we talked together about our thoughts and feelings about the destinations.

Cheryl’s reaction to Assam was that it would be interesting, but not exciting. Darjeeling and Sikkim sounded exciting to Cheryl. Darjeeling, and especially Sikkim sounded exciting to me, but the weather was a concern. The Tibetan Buddhist influence is something we are both interested in. So it was time for more research.

The internet is a wonderful thing, but we can all be deceived by assuming the info is correct. I went back to my favorite weather site, then went on to several other weather sites to check the weather in Gangtok and Pelling. One problem with the data was that some sites only gave an average temperature for each month. At high altitudes, especially, that isn’t very helpful. If the average temp is 50 does that mean it varies between 40 and 60 or 25 and 75? We also discovered at least one weather site that had the centigrade temperatures listed as Fahrenheit – that makes a big difference.

After lots of research on weather and local news sites, and some posts from people who were in Sikkim or had been there in November through January, it began to look like the weather in Sikkim would be pretty good. Yes, it would be cold at night, but day times should be very pleasant, 65 – 70, and rain is scarce at that time of the year.

So now we had a first choice destination. Can we make the logistics work?

Technorati Tags: assam, darjeeling, Fodors travel forum, Lonely Planet, NE India travel planning, Sikkim

In the process of researching Assam, I kept my eyes open for other options. One that immediately popped up was Darjeeling.

A couple of years ago, I’d done some research on train trips in India. I was actually looking at a trip that went to various Buddhist sites, but I found lots of other trips as well. When I’m browsing travel options and I find something that looks interesting, I bookmark it. I may never do that specific trip, but it may have applicability to other trips I might take. Good trip planning has dead ends and detours. Notice them – they may be useful in future trip planning. So I went back to that India Rail website and took a look at their tours.

The Darjeeling Toy train looks like a fun little trip. It seems like a great way to see the scenery. Hmmm…. I notice the trip from New Jalplagri to Darjeeling is seven and a half hours! That’s a long time to cover not very much ground. I start to look for other travelers’ comments on the train. Accounts that I read indicate that many people take just a small segment of the trip. And a friend’s blog indicates that the train is not reliable it may or may not run. It looks like the toy train is one of those things that sounds great but may not be so great in reality. So if I want to ride it, I think I’ll take one of the short loops.

Darjeeling itself gets somewhat mixed reviews. Some people love Darjeeling, some people say it has been ruined by too many visitors. It has some great places to stay, and it looks like it would have views, shopping, and some Buddhist sites. It also has a separatist movement that periodically calls a bandh – a strike – that stops all transport. When I turn up something like this, I try to read as much as I can about it so I know what the issues are. While it may not help me predict if and when a bandh will happen, but it will help me understand the issues involved and the history of how they have gone – do they last for weeks, days or hours?

So, if we went to Darjeeling, where would we stay? The two places that appeal to me most are The Elgin and the Windamere.

Next, I asked my fellow travelers for their thoughts on Fodors, and got some interesting input. It’s all more “grist for the mill.”

Technorati Tags: assam, Buddhist sites in India, darjeeling, Darjeeling Toy Train, India Buddhist sites

What did we do before the Internet? Honestly, I can barely remember. For popular travel spots, guidebooks were adequate. But more off the tourist track places it was hard to find information. Now there is so much information at our fingertips – literally!

So, if we go to Assam, how do we get there? Bangkok is our usual gateway to Asia. It has great connections to most Asian cities. And we love Bangkok, so we always plan to spend some time there. As I looked at flights, the logical routing was from Bangkok to Kolkata then to Guwahati. Air was going to be easy.

After reading about Assam, and figuring out transport, I wanted to see what kinds of accommodations I could find. Here’s where Google and Bing really shine. Now, both search engines turn up a lot of garbage as well as useful information. And often you have to be willing to go a few pages into the search results to find what you are looking for.

One of the websites I found was one I’d known about in its periodical form, back before the web is Sawdays. Now this is the kind of website that has done some pre-screening for you. While I always want to sort through the searches myself as well, in case they’ve left out some real gems, these kinds of websites can be very helpful. So I did a search on Sawdays for all of the properties in Assam and came up with an interesting assortment.

Next, I read everything I could on each of the properties that sounded interesting. That meant checking the Lonely Planet, searching the travel sites like Fodors and Thorntree, and even the dreaded Tripadvisor.

I am not a fan of TripAdvisor. Why not? First off, I find the incredible proliferation of advertising so distracting that all I want to do is get away from it. Second, they do silly things like naming the #1 rated hotel in each place (as well as all the other numbers). They have no system to sort the various accommodations. So you have 5-star resorts and the barest-bone hostels on the same list. It’s like rank ordering apples, oranges and rocks. Third, there are often rave reviews of places on the site before the hotel even opens. Now how do you think that happens? So I view all of what is written on that site with a critical eye. Sometimes I find some useful information. More often, I rummage through some posts and decide that there is nothing very useful there.

So, at this point, I have the following places that look like good options to me:
Thengal Manor and Diphlu River Lodge.

I’d love to do a short cruise on the Brahmaputra.

So I now have some puzzle pieces to put together. It looks possible to do, and the combination of Assam with a few days in Kolkata seems like a great combination.

So now I’ve done my research, it’s time to book – right? Well, no.

Technorati Tags: assam, darjeeling, independent travel planning, india travel planning

I consider this part of trip planning to be a real luxury. To simply think about the many options available… I bought an atlas many years ago that billed itself as a list of options.

Sometimes the question of where to next answers itself before I get home from the last trip. I’ve always had a long list of places I wanted to see. Some are written down, some are in my head.

This year, I went back to several lists and looked at ideas. One idea that has been with me for a long time has been Machu Picchu. I’d planned to take that trip a decade ago. But before the trip was planned I was in an auto accident. While I wasn’t badly hurt, my back was injured enough that long walking was clearly not in my near future. My plan for Machu Picchu had been to walk the Inca trail and enter through the Gate of the Sun. That plan had to be put on hold. As the years have gone by, my back is better, but I don’t think I’ll ever hike the Incan Trail. An easier Machu Picchu option is likely in my future. But Machu Picchu hasn’t struck me as being the right trip for this year. And there are mudslides blocking the railway.

So back to my lists. India has long been on my list. But it’s so huge and varied – what to tackle first? One of my lists had Assam on it. So I started doing some research.

I started by doing some reading on my favorite travel boards and buying a guidebook. The guide I could find with the best info (and still, it didn’t have a lot) was the Lonely Planet Guide to Northeastern India.

Assam sounded good to me for a number of reasons. Our last trip was to Burma, and Assam shares a border with Burma. The there are shared history and customs among the people on the two sides of the border. It seemed like a natural extension of our time in Burma. Assam offers the opportunity for a variety of interesting activities. National parks offer wildlife viewing. There are tea plantation, temples and markets. And my favorite weather site, weatherbase.com confirms that it will be a pleasantly warm break from November‘s rain and cold in Seattle.

Technorati Tags: independent travel itinerary, independent travel planning

A few months ago, we bought new luggage, the Delsey Hyperlite. I said I’d report back about our experience with it, so here’s my assessment: great luggage!

First of all, I really do notice that it’s lighter than the old luggage. We were easily under the luggage limits except for the intra-Burma flights, where we were just a bit over, but were not charged.

It’s easier to fit into a taxi. It also fits well into my car’s trunk when we go off for a weekend somewhere.

I like the various inside pockets and dividers. It’s easy to pack, and has small pockets to hold those tiny things you want to be able to find quickly. It also has large spaces so I can pack sizeable objects I pick up in my travels.

So far, it’s been very durable. There has been no damage nor any notable wear.

Would I buy this luggage again? Yes, no question.

Technorati Tags: Delsey Hyperlite luggage, lightweight luggage

As a child, I remember seeing a photo of the temples of Bagan at sunrise, peach-colored mist rising among the towers… I knew I had to see the place with my own eyes. It took many twists and turns of fate and probably 5 decades for me to finally get to Bagan.

A number of months ago, I wrote about places that are as wonderful as we thought they would be or are disappointing to us – Larger Than Life or Smaller Than My Vision. I think that places we have dreamed of for years are especially in danger of disappointing.

But Bagan was no disappointment. That first morning, we took a horse cart to watch the sunrise over the plains of Bagan. Standing atop a temple, I looked out over the seemingly endless array of temples in the rosy mist. It was an echo of the photo I’d seen as a child. As we left that temple in the horse cart, over the dusty lanes, I felt I was breathing in the atmosphere of that photo. I realized that just that experience was enough – it fulfilled the dream. Of course, we spent the next three days visiting dozens of temples and loved every minute of it, but the experience of simply being there is what stays with me most.

Technorati Tags: Bagan, Burma, Myanmar, pagan, SE Asia Travel

I gain so much from my travels. And I’m always grateful for how open people are in sharing their culture and experiences. While I can pay people for their services and tip generously or offer small gifts, it never seems like enough to me.

So before I go or when I return from a trip, I always look for a local charity or an international charity that has a project in the area.

Typically, this is an easy task. One of my favorite international charities is Heifer International. In addition to their gifts like a flock of chickens or a goat or a swarm of bees that can help people become more self-sufficient, they also have larger projects. You can choose a project to support. So last year, after our return from Kathmandu, we chose a project in Nepal to support.

I have often given to Doctors without Borders and Mercy Corps. They offer medical care in areas that otherwise have no care available as well as intervening in cases of natural disasters.

A favorite local charity of mine is the Ponheary Ly Foundation (PLF). It’s a charity started by a woman I know from the Fodors board to support education for Cambodian children. It buys school supplies and uniforms for children, augments the salaries of teachers, purchases bicycles so children can attend high school, even brings in a doctor to treat sick children.

Trying to find a charity after our trip to Burma was not as easy. As you may know, Burma has long blocked international charities from coming into the country. Indeed, in the aftermath of hurricane Nargis, they would not allow ships or planes to land carrying food, medicine and aid workers. We did eventually discover that Heifer has a project (Myanmar Agriculture and Livestock Development Project) based in Thailand that reaches into Burma to supply animals and economic development assistance to hill tribe people in Burma. While some projects are set up so you can find them directly, this one was not.

We met a woman in Bagan who had been sponsoring a child near Mandalay through Save the Children for ten years. She had traveled to Burma specifically to meet this child, a very moving experience. We also saw a building in a village on southern Inle Lake that said Save the Children on the sign, so this charity has managed to work inside this country that has traditionally been rejecting of outside help. The picture to the left is of a Save the Children building in Sankar Village, Myanmar.

Some people prefer to takes gifts of school supplies to local schools or medicine to local clinics. These are all ways to give back to people who have so generously shared their lives with us.

Technorati Tags: doctors without borders, Heifer International, International Charities, Mercy Corps, Ponheary Li Foundation, save the children

You can’t get there from here or trying to travel independently in a place that doesn’t want you to be independent.

It’s been a while since my last post here. I have to admit that I got caught up in planning my next trip to my favorite part of the world, SE Asia. Finally, I decided to visit Burma. I won’t go into all of my machinations about whether or not to go, as that debate spanned some twenty years, but I do want to tell you about my experience booking this trip.

When Burma first opened to tourism over two decades ago, they allowed only group tours to enter. At first there was a strict limit of 7 days in the country. As time went on, the rules loosened gradually, but even today by far the majority of travelers to Burma go as part of a tour group. If you aren’t going as part of a tour group, they would prefer that you have a travel agency just book your itinerary for you.

I wanted to travel according to my own plan so I really had to work to get the travel arrangements I wanted. I usually book all of my own flights and all of my own hotels over the internet. For Burma, this was a real challenge. Because most email is blocked in Burma, emails to hotels may never be received. E-mailing is often an exercise in frustration. I was able to book one hotel directly via e-mail; another I found a Thai booking site where I could reserve and pay by credit card in advance – a great advantage in a country where credit cards are basically unusable. And my third hotel I was able to book via a phone call to The Leading Hotels of the World.

Air tickets were harder. There is no way to book intra-Burma flights online. Indeed, it was impossible to find a current timetable, let alone one for a month or two away. Eventually, I found a posting of what flights flew last week. I have a travel agent in Bangkok I’ve used for booking intra-Asia flight when needed. I wrote to him, and after several weeks of trying, he told me he was unable to book my flights. At that point, I emailed a travel agent in Yangon. They were able to tell me the times of the flights and book them.

And no one told me that there are no non-stop flights among all of the major cities. Of our three internal flights, two had stops on the way. And there are few choices about when to fly. It is not uncommon to have only one flight a day between two of the four major destinations in Burma. So our time in each place was a little different than we had originally planned.

Still, we did eventually get all of our hotels and flights and we had a wonderful time.

But I learned that a country that would prefer that you not travel independently can make it difficult for even the most stubborn independent traveler!

Technorati Tags: Bagan, Burma, Inle Lake, Mandalay, Myanmar, Rangoon, Yangon

I was caught up in airline strike a on my way to a meeting in Toronto a number of years ago. As soon as there were rumors of a strike, I looked at other options, and settled on flying to Buffalo, New York. The airline wouldn’t change my flight to Buffalo when the strike was just a rumor, so as soon as the strike was called, I switched my reservation to Buffalo. We got the last two seats on the plane. An hour later, and this would not have been an option. I rented a car, and we easily made it to Toronto for the meeting.

Have a plan B, and do your research so you know your options. Don’t expect that airline personnel will necessarily know the best alternate routes to your destination or that they will know which other airlines fly to your destination.

Utilize your status with frequent flier and hotel programs

When there is a problem, consider what kind of leverage you might have. Being a member of the airline or hotel loyalty program is helpful, but it’s even more helpful if you are a premium member. If you have often stayed at a particular hotel, you can use that as leverage. When I say leverage, I don’t mean making threats “I’ve been staying here for years – if you don’t take care of this right now I’ll never stay here again!” If I were the hotel manager I have to admit I’d be saying to myself that I could only hope the nasty customer wouldn’t return!

Instead, take the approach that you have been a good customer and that you are sure the hotel wants to take care of the problem. Take the approach that you are working together to take care of the problem.

Airline problems are often due to weather delays or equipment delays. Conventional wisdom says to try to take flights early in the day so you can catch a later flight if necessary. Of course, that is not always possible. On my way to a meeting in Montreal, we landed in Washington DC for the connection to Montreal. There were thunderstorms in Montreal so the flight was delayed. It was getting late, and I expected we might not fly that night. I called an airport hotel, the Hyatt, and they had no space. At the time I was a diamond passport member, so they assured me they would find a room for me.

Soon, it was clear to me that the plane would not fly. I went to the Red Carpet Club and asked that they book me on the earliest flight out the next morning. I utilized my Red Carpet Club membership, my United Premier Executive status and my hotel loyalty program status, all of which paid off. I had a good night’s sleep and my flight to Montreal in the morning was as smooth as can be. The flight was overbooked – so if I hadn’t gotten my reservations as early as possible the previous afternoon, I wouldn’t have gotten on that flight.

How can you make your delay more pleasant?

We were flying from Kuching, Malaysia to Bangkok via Kuala Lumpur several years ago, when our flight out of Kuching was delayed. I wasn’t too worried, as I figured that there must be frequent flights from Kuala Lumpur to Bangkok, so we could just get on the next flight. Fortunately, we were flying in Business Class on Malaysian Air, so I knew they would accommodate us.

When we arrived in KL, I went to the Malaysian Air desk to get on the next flight, only to find that it was 5 hours later! My guess about how frequent the flights must be was way off. I checked on some other connection options, but turned up nothing. So what could I do in the Kuala Lumpur airport for all that time? Go to the Business Class Lounge.

Here is a real advantage to flying a premium class even on relatively short international connections.

The Business Class Lounge at Kuala Lumpur Internation Airport is lovely. We sat down and looked around. They have comfortable seating, lovely food, good champagne, and a spa! I have to say that was the most relaxing time I’ve ever had waiting for a flight. We had arrived hungry and cranky from a delayed flight that caused us to miss our connection, and by the time we left the lounge to take our flight to Bangkok we were relaxed and content. We filled our time with a visit to the spa, champagne and good food.

Next : Managing illness or minor accidents while traveling

Technorati Tags: airline reservation problems, hotel reservation problems