HELP!I'm going to india!!!

**BlueGirl** · February 2nd, 2006 07:49 PM

sekiyu--thanks!

Kanina galing nga ako ng indian embassy..masungit nga yung babae dun!!!babalik pa ako sa tues ng hapon para kunin passport ko...

**number001** · February 4th, 2006 12:49 AM

BlueGirl and anyone else going to India,

Here are some places that you may consider exploring, in case you have free time. Enjoy!

Originally Posted by STAN SESSER, WSJ ASIA

Land of plenty

A snapshot of changing India
By STAN SESSER
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
February 3, 2006

Jaipur, India -- A decade ago, Mannish Bharadwaj had to make the supreme sacrifice when he started work as a tour guide: the loss of status in a country where status means everything.

"I was educated in good schools and a good university," says Mr. Bharadwaj. "But five years ago, when I wanted to get married, I was turned down on quite a few offers. Being a tour guide carried a stigma."

Today, however, Mr. Bharadwaj's fortunes are markedly different. He runs a successful tour agency in Jaipur, Innovative Destination Management Co. -- and he's happily married. "I've even seen doctors quit to become tour guides," he says.

Mr. Bharadwaj's career climb serves as one glimpse into the flood of change that is sweeping across India, as tourists come in record numbers to the world's largest democracy. Once known mainly for backwardness, poverty and crumbling infrastructure, India has seen its image transformed in the eyes of potential visitors into a nation of prosperous high-technology companies, universities turning out talented graduates, and a government introducing sweeping free-market reforms and pouring billions of dollars into new highways, airports and other improvements.

From the beaches of Goa to the palace hotels of Rajasthan to the Ayurvedic spas of Kerala, tourists from around the world are suddenly discovering India's considerable charms. In 2005, India reported four million foreign tourists, up 15% on the previous year, coming on top of a rise of 25% in 2004. This boom is thanks, in part, to government initiatives, including the Department of Tourism's two-year-old "Incredible India" campaign -- which includes a Web site listing city highlights, accommodation and government-approved tour guides.

The top hotels in India have often been among the world's most attractive. But my two-week swing of five Indian states last month showed some major infrastructure improvements as well. Highways are being built everywhere; for instance, a four-lane expressway from Udaipur to Jaipur, the two biggest destinations in Rajasthan, has cut travel time almost in half to five hours. Although the projects for privatization and new terminals in Mumbai and New Delhi have just gotten off the ground, many other airports around the country are already benefiting from modernization. The infamous, two-hour-long immigration lines at Mumbai airport are a thing of the past.

In addition, a slew of new domestic airlines are making travel both easier and cheaper. The Center for Asia Pacific Aviation says five airlines have started up in the past two years, with another five slotted for this year. Competition is heating up: Jet Airways, for example, India's largest domestic carrier, recently quoted me a fare of $520 round-trip from Kolkata to Hyderabad. But on the Internet, I was able to book two one-way flights on two new low-cost carriers, Air Deccan and Spice Jet, for a combined round-trip fare of less than $100.

But in this teeming country, whose economy is only now emerging from decades of lagging growth, lots of problems remain. Wrenching in-your-face poverty is still a fact of life in major cities like Mumbai and Kolkata. Touts are everywhere, following Westerners down the street with dogged persistence. Most taxis, trains and intercity buses are hopelessly antiquated. Despite an invasion planned by foreign hotel chains -- Paris-based Accor S.A. alone is considering as many as 50 new hotels for its Ibis, Novotel and Sofitel brands -- a shortage of hotel rooms is proving a major hassle. Two years ago, I was able to book my favorite Mumbai hotel, a renovated British-era apartment house called Shelley's, just a week in advance for the peak New Year's weekend. This year, Shelley's was filled weeks ahead for the entire month of January, and so were six other Mumbai hotels I called.

Here are snapshots from four of India's more popular destinations, and how the changes sweeping the country are transforming them:

Mumbai

Sporting a shaved head and a thin gold earring, Rajeev Samant is one of the new breed of yuppies who, along with the Bollywood movie stars, call Mumbai, the commercial and financial center of India, their home. Although he's 38, he still prefers dating to marriage, a fact that is causing no celebration in his more traditional Indian family. He recently moved from south Mumbai to the northern suburb of Bandra, where, he says, "the new bars and dance clubs are always buzzing until 4 a.m." Although he holds an engineering degree from Stanford University, he came back to India as a pioneer of sorts, to start a premium winery named Sula.

We're dining on such dishes as tea-grilled quail with basmati biryani at the Mediterranean-fusion Indigo Restaurant, where every seat is filled although it's a Monday night. "Five years ago they'd be happy to sell one $100 bottle of wine of month," Mr. Samant notes of Indigo. "Today they sell two or three most days." Mumbai, he declares, is "a boom town. Everyone eating here has their favorite French restaurant in Paris and London. Art prices have gone through the roof."

Mumbai is a city plagued by contrasts that can cast a pall over any vacation here. A visitor can't help but be stunned by the gap between the newly affluent and the long-time poor. Directly across from the Taj Mahal hotel, a little girl sleeps alone on the sidewalk under a filthy blanket. Beggars, some holding emaciated babies, pound on the windows of taxis occupied by Westerners stopped at traffic lights.

While there's no easy solution to the poverty, Mumbai is being swept by change, with hotels, roads, and airport facilities under construction or on the drawing board. And in a country that once saw thousands of university graduates each year unable to find work, hoteliers are facing a very new problem. "We want the MBAs to consider the hotel business rather than technology, the call centers and the growing airline sector," says Raymond Bickson, managing director of Indian Hotels Co. Ltd., which owns the Taj hotel chain.

PLUS: Although this is where the trendy scene is happening, Mumbai retains the architecture and much of the flavor of the days of the Raj.

MINUS: Hopelessly antiquated transportation infrastructure, from airport to taxis to roads.

HOTEL: Taj Mahal Palace & Tower, Apollo Bunder, Colaba. Tel: 91-22-5665-3366. Rates from $250. A bit lacking in personal service, but the palace rooms are impeccable.

RESTAURANT: Trishna, Sai Baba Marg, Kala Ghoda. Tel: 91-22-2261-4991. Astonishing seafood; tears come to my eyes when I think of the king crab with butter and garlic.

Goa

The local cash registers were ringing furiously in December when the top executive of an Indian conglomerate decided to celebrate his 50th birthday in this former Portuguese colony, best known for its beach resorts. "His guests wiped us out," says Claudia Ajwani, who runs Sang Olda home furnishings store as well as a boutique hotel, Nilaya Hermitage, in Goa. "One of the guests, an Indian who owns an (information technology) company in California, furnished his entire California office from us," she says. "He wanted to 'Indianize' the office."

The Nilaya Hermitage's rooms are often fully booked in high season -- despite the $500-a-night rate. Shops offering Indian designer clothing and furnishings are springing up everywhere; new restaurants specialize in everything from French to Tex-Mex. But it's no thanks to foreigners. "Goa is targeting the cheap charter flights from Europe who bring in the wrong kind of tourist," says Cezar Pinto, who owns a clothing and antique furniture store, Casa Goa. "Most of my customers are newly affluent Indians."

Even French restaurants rely on the Indian tourist trade. "Goan families, wealthy from tourist income, are traveling around the world and discovering French food," says Axel Tardy, a Frenchman who started Poisson Rouge at Baga beach two months ago. "And Indians are coming here from Bangalore with IT money. Goa is now like Cannes to Indians."

The attractions of Goa are considerable. Goans are known as the friendliest people in India and almost everyone speaks English. The isolated beach resorts, like the 28-acre Taj Holiday Village where I stayed, are magnificent, and a bargain compared with many other tourist destinations in India.

But Goa can be a downer at the same time. The narrow, potholed main road running along the beach towns of northern Goa is filled with bumper-to-bumper traffic, including beefy tattooed Europeans on motorbikes. The beaches are jammed with people, littered with discarded plastic and lined with tumbledown shacks selling food and drink. But many tourists consider the tawdry side of Goa an attraction, insists Santosh Kutty, general manager of Taj Holiday Village. "Goa used to be considered a hippie destination," he says. "This is all part of the ambiance."

PLUS: The high-end isolated hotels make for lovely beach resorts. Portuguese influence still lingers in the food and the old buildings.

MINUS: The roads are jammed and some beaches are overcrowded and dirty.

HOTEL: Taj Holiday Village, Sinquerim Beach, North Goa. Tel: 91-832-564-5858. Rates from $175. Luxury cottages and other facilities spread out on 28 beachfront acres.

RESTAURANT: Le Poisson Rouge, Baga beach. Tel: 91-832-394-5800. An innovative chef from Normandy doing French-Goan fusion.

**number001** · February 4th, 2006 12:50 AM

Continued...

Part II

Originally Posted by STAN SESSER, WSJ ASIA

Rajasthan

The 28-room, $70-a-night Garden Hotel in Udaipur -- one of Rajasthan's most breathtaking cities -- is definitely not one of the luxurious palace hotels that make the state of Rajasthan the most popular draw for tourists to India. Although the Garden Hotel is clean, comfortable and quiet, it pales in comparison to its opulent neighbor a short drive away, the Lake Palace, the ancestral home of the Maharana of Udaipur, where rooms go for $525 to $2,200 (and they don't even throw in breakfast).

But the current Maharana (that's a ruler's title similar to Maharaja), whose family lost political power a half-century ago, is proving a shrewd businessman. He runs an empire of eight luxury hotels, and in October he added the downscale Garden Hotel as his ninth property, renovated from former workers' housing. Although it opened too recently to be in any guidebook, it's already completely full during the current peak season. "It's very difficult to get a room in Udaipur at this price," says manager Ranjeet Singh.

From Udaipur's stunning waterside vistas to Jaipur's colorful chaos, there are plenty of tourists keen to make the trek to Rajasthan. But -- except for the very rich who stay in the palaces and the backpackers who patronize little guesthouses -- there's no place to put them. "We've tripled the number of visitors in three years to 1.2 million in 2005," says Vinod Zutschi, Rajasthan's secretary of tourism. "But our future growth rate may be decided by the number of rooms we can offer." There are now 5,000 rooms in classified hotels, those good enough to be given at least a one-star rating by the government. "We have an immediate need of 10,000 more and further growth requires an additional 10,000 in the next three years," he says.

The hotel crunch might prove India's most insurmountable problem in upgrading its infrastructure to accommodate the new waves of tourists. Agricultural and forested land is strictly protected, while in cities, a single resident of an apartment building can hold up demolition for many years by challenging the eviction notice in court. The problem has already hit the wallets of travelers: Several hotels I called for bookings had doubled the rates quoted in the September 2005 edition of the Lonely Planet guide to India.

PLUS: Jaipur, the capital of Rajasthan, providing a colorful Old City and a good base for travel around the state.

MINUS: Two million people means ugly urban sprawl detracting from the historic areas.

HOTEL: Devi Gahr, Village Delwara, Tehsil Nathdwara, Rajsamand. Tel: 91-29-5328-9211. Rates from $150. An impeccably restored former palace outside Udaipur.

RESTAURANT: Niros, Mirza Ismail Road, Jaipur. Tel: 91-141-237-4493. Upscale Rajasthani cuisine.

Kolkata

With offices in three Indian cities plus New York, London and Chicago, D.K. Chaudhuri, head of the computer software company Skytech Pvt. Ltd., didn't have to choose Kolkata as his corporate headquarters. After all, Kolkata -- which used to be known as Calcutta -- is best known for Mother Teresa and abject poverty, and it's governed by an avowedly Marxist party that runs the state of West Bengal (where the city is located).

So why Kolkata? "(It) was a terrible place for so many years," says Mr. Chaudhuri. "But from 2002 everything started to change. Whatever it is, the government is as practical as hell. It's the most proactive government I've ever seen. They behave like capitalists, no matter what the rhetoric."

The remarkable transformation of Kolkata is one of the great success stories of India. It could well start drawing adventurous tourists who want to witness most dramatically the contrasts between the old India and the new -- as well as take advantage of the country's most vibrant cultural life, where literature, dance, modern art and music all thrive. Downtown, the buildings are grimy, the air is seriously polluted by the ancient buses and taxis, and the dust-covered sidewalks serve as sleeping quarters for thousands of homeless. A half-hour's drive away, in the spotlessly clean Salt Lake district, it's another world. Gleaming, modern buildings, reached by broad, tree-lined boulevards, house hundreds of IT companies.

"We are always ready to welcome foreign and domestic companies with a red carpet," says Nirupam Sen, minister of commerce and industries in West Bengal. "In Kolkata, we're building the infrastructure with growth in mind. We actually export power."

PLUS: An opportunity to see the old India (from Raj-era buildings and jostling crowds to outdoor markets) and the new India (gleaming high-tech zones).

MINUS: Appalling air pollution.

HOTEL: Park Hotel, 17 Park St. Tel: 91-33-2249-9000. Rates from $200. Modern and stylish.

RESTAURANT: Aaheli, in the Peerless Inn, 12 Chowringhee Rd. Tel: 91-33-2228-0301. Great Bengali food, with freshwater fish the highlight.

Note: Hotel rates listed are for the current peak season, which ends March 31. From April to June (hot weather) and July to September (monsoon period), specials can cut the rate by as much as half.

Write to Stan Sesser at stan.sesser*awsj.com

**BlueGirl** · February 8th, 2006 08:48 AM

thanks for the info number001..print ko at may mabasa ako sa plane...

mamaya na ang alis ko..may flight is 215pm..yung mga katext ko sa sun sa feb 17 na ulit ako mangungulit sa inyo..haha!mamiss ko magtsikot..may computer but then baka maging toxic ako dun..ang baon ko puro biscuits nalang hindi na ako nakapgdala ng canned goods...kwentuhan ko kayo pag balik ko..