Jaunted

Tags: Dangerous Travel / India Travel / Twitter / Peter Greenberg / → All Tags

So, Just How Safe Is India?

Not long ago, the BBC reported gunfire at New Delhi's Indira Gandhi International Airport. But now reports indicate that it was merely a scare, easily understandable in the wake of last week's terrorist attack on Mumbai. So with tensions super high and governments warning about continuing dangers, it's fair to ask, just how safe is India?

The conversation, as usual, is on Twitter, where Budget Travel magazine says:

Peter Greenberg had bad timing in defending travel there in his newsletter today.

A few others agree, but while we said an airport shooting would be "the last thing India needs right now," we also have to get behind Greenberg's call that the Mumbai attacks shouldn't deter travelers.

As the "Today Show" travel editor points out:

The very best time to go somewhere is after there’s been a civil disturbance, a terrorist act or a natural disaster, because … these countries derive the bulk of their foreign exchange from travel and tourism. It supports their economy. The worst thing you can do to a country is to disrupt their travel and tourism if you want to shake their economy to its foundation.

Are the odds of something terrible happening in the next few weeks in India greater than the odds of a terrorist assault on Des Moines before Christmas? Probably. But should we all cross the country off our lists for the foreseeable future? Probably not.

Related Stories:
· Surveying Mumbai After The Terror Siege [Jaunted]

[Photo: Stuti ~]

Tags: Amazing Race 13 / Amazing-Race-13 / Chasing Racers / Television Travel / TV Travel / → All Tags

My Nose Is On Fire

Chasing Racers is back, with a brand new Amazing Race 13 mashup. This map will update the morning after every new episode. Send along tips, rumors, gossip, locations and spoilers to our map editors, become a member and comment on the stories below and add to the Jaunted-Flickr photo pool to get in on the fray.

Remember to zoom in, out and around on the map--with so much happening in each episode, it's easy to miss a map point.

Well race fans, it's hard to believe, but we're getting down to the last few exciting episodes: Only six teams remain in the quest for the million dollar prize. Last week, Ken and Tina lucked out on a non-elimination leg, but they face a Speed Bump, an extra task that only they must complete to stay in the race. Will they be able to overcome the setback and charge ahead--or will they self-destruct? Can Kelly and Christy build on their second-place finish last week and stay ahead of the pack? Will Starr ever give Dallas her phone number?!

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Tags: Amazing Race 13 / Chasing Racers / Television Travel / TV Travel / → All Tags

Please Hold Me While I Singe My Skull

Chasing Racers is back, with a brand new Amazing Race 13 mashup. This map will update the morning after every new episode. Send along tips, rumors, gossip, locations and spoilers to our map editors, become a member and comment on the stories below and add to the Jaunted-Flickr photo pool to get in on the fray.

Remember to zoom in, out and around on the map--with so much happening in each episode, it's easy to miss a map point.

Well, race fans, we're basically left with two types of teams: Pretty and pretty annoying. This week, teams depart Cambodia for New Delhi, India and a whole new world of challenges. The clock is ticking, and with only six teams left, every decision is make or break.

Will Kelly and Christy serve Nick and Starr a big heaping plate of revenge? Can Ken and Tina continue to work through their extramarital issues and power through to the end? Will Toni and Dallas keep focused on the race, or does Dallas have Starr in his eyes?

LET'S FIND OUT

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Tags: Street Art / Art / Public Art / → All Tags

Street Art Travel: C215 First to Bomb India?

C215 is a talented street artist from Paris. His code name references his real name--and possibly the number of a jail cell he spent time in. He primarily creates evocative portraits of people he encounters on the streets in remote and downtrodden neighborhoods.

He recently took a trip to the Karol Bagh District of New Delhi to create a series of street portraits. C215 may be the first street/stencil artist ever to paint on the streets of India. It was a challenging endeavor, he says, as he was occasionally threatened and usually drew large crowds who wanted to watch the action.

Related Stories:
· C215: India [Flickr]
· C215 [Flickr]
· Street Art coverage [Jaunted]

Tags: Animals / India Travel / Asia Travel / → All Tags

Monkeys Menacing New Delhi

If you want to see the world's most street-savvy monkeys, book your trip to India soon. The government of New Delhi is finally dealing with the city's primate problem, finally fed up with the thousands of critters that have taken over as urban sprawl eats up their habitat.

The catalyst for the crackdown was the late October death of the city's deputy mayor who fell from a balcony fighting off a pack of primates. Though New Delhi has tried for years to eradicate the macaque menace, lack of funds for animal control and devotion from Hindus has kept the population from shrinking. All the while, the animals have been on the attack, biting park-goers, invading hospitals and rampaging through neighborhoods, rich and poor.

So until the city can round up the primates and restore order, what's a New Delhi visitor to do? Animal rights activist Sonya Ghosh has some tips for avoiding trouble:

The only way is to ignore them. Never look a monkey in the eye, never raise your eyebrows at one: it's interpreted as a challenge.

Related Stories:
· Monkeys in The Parks, Monkeys in The Palace [NYT]
· India Travel coverage [Jaunted]
· Animals coverage [Jaunted]

[Photo: Japs - TheGypsy]

Tags: Airplanes / Strange Things / India Travel / HOWTO / → All Tags

HOWTO: Fly Without Taking Off

Some of us jump on and off flights so often, it's easy to forget that plenty of people might never get the chance to set foot on a wobbly set of aircraft steps. But an enterprising retired Indian Airlines engineer named Bahadur Chand Gupta has come up with a neat solution to help spread the joy of sitting in a cramped airplane cabin eating horrible food.

Gupta bought an old Airbus 300 a few years ago and has now assembled it in a Delhi suburb. Now he, his wife and a few staff pretending to be airline stewards don their uniforms every Saturday for the flight that doesn't fly. They sell tickets for about $4 to people who want to experience life on an airplane but can't afford to get airborne.

Gupta makes pilot announcements (including turbulence warnings), his wife and friends serve airplane food and push their trolleys up and down the aisles and the plane goes nowhere. It's better that way: The aircraft's missing a wing and half its tail. But that doesn't stop the enjoyment. We're wondering if they make the experience more authentic by throwing in the odd vomiting passenger or screaming child.

Related Stories:
· Tickets Take Off, Plane Stays Put [news.com.au]
· Don't Catch a Plane, Pull It [Jaunted]
· Travel Stories in New Delhi [Jaunted]

[Photo: Keenan Pepper]

Tags: Airports / Airport Hell / Strange Things / → All Tags

Life in an Indian Airport

We've seen it before, both in real life in Paris and on the silver screen with Tom Hanks: occasionally, people get really, truly stuck in an airport.

It's happened again, this time in New Delhi, when two Bangladeshi men without the right visas got sent back from Saudi Arabia sans passports, and India wouldn't let them back in without them. So instead of getting rich in Saudi (that was the plan), the two men spent 48 days of boredom in a Delhi airport terminal. And we can't even find any evidence of WiFi there. That's terminal boredom.

[Photo: seaview99]

Related Stories:
· Delhi Airport Hosts "Terminal Men" For 48 Days [Reuters]
· Bunnies and Airports [Jaunted]

Tags: Celeb News / Celeb Travel / Angelina Jolie / Brangelina / → All Tags

Angelina Jolie Weekends in India

What did you do this weekend? Football with friends? Borat? Boozing? If you're Angelina, you took time off from filming A Mighty Heart in India, to travel to the country's refugee camps and meet refugees from Afghanistan and Burma, while simultaenously voicing your support and concern for their condition.

The superhumanitarian hottie hit up a camp in New Delhi and met India's Junior Foreign Minister Anand Sharma. Maddox accompanied mom all over, as she also met with a woman living in a one-room home who had fled Burma.

Wow, we sorta feel inadequate about our weekend right about now. Oh! And not to worry, Brad was not around, ONLY because he was forced to attend the premiere of Babel in LA. Damn movies, getting in the way of the weekend family tour of India.

No word on where mom and Maddox stayed before returning home to Le Meridien in Pune, but if Angie stuck to her habit of hitting up the best hotel in town, it had to have been the Oberoi.

Related Stories:
· Angelina Jolie and son Maddox visit Sikh Afghan, Myanmarese refugees in Indian capital [IHT]
· Angelina and Maddox Meet Refugee Children in India [Hello!]

Tags: Restaurants / → All Tags

Bukhara, New Delhi

The restaurant Bukhara, inside a business-class hotel in a heavily manicured section of Delhi, gets the sort of press that other restaurants would kill for. Fodor's says the food is "so mind-blowingly delicious that it hasn't changed in years"; the Eyewitness guide calls it "one of the finest restaurants in the city." But either the place has gone south or a recent visit found it on a really bad night -- the food and the service weren't at all worth the cost, which hovers around $40-$50 a head, booze not included.

Decorated with what Concierge.com aptly called "Flintstones-style decor, with stone walls and mock log-top tables," Bukhara is a manly place, where long rows of business guys and IT professionals can hunker down and run up a large bill. With the farcically high prices, especially for wine and cocktails, this is not hard. But if you're in a smaller group, it's likely you'll find yourself ignored for the bigger tables.

The food, modeled on typical tandoori dishes served near the Pakistan--Afghanistan border, is big, brassy and meaty, but strangely bland as well -- maybe this is what Bukhara thinks its many fans want. Vegetarians have options, but they all seems beside the point in the face of heaping plates of mutton and chicken. If you must go here, get someone else to pay.

Related Stories:
·   Bukhara [site]
·   Bukhara [Chowhound]
·   Bukhara [Concierge.com]
·   Bukhara [Fodor's]