Travel expense to Kanpur and back

Prasadam from the pujas

Prasadam from the pujas

Approximate Cost Totals to each person who goes with us to India. You are responsible for all your own costs. This is just an example of what I expect it to cost me to make this trip.
$1400 planes
$53.34 trains
Touring cars $53 + $53 = $106
Taxis $50
Hotels in Delhi $78.81 + $78.81 = $157.62
Food in Delhi $80
Tips & gifts ~ $200
total ~$2050
Plus extras which are up to you.

I expect to invest about $3000 total in this trip. If you’d like to tag along as a friend and fellow explorer, drop me an email so we can get organized. hunner@charter.net

I’ll post some of the schedule I expect to follow while in India, next.

Planes and Trains

Here’s a little picture of what you’ll see on your way out to the Ashram.

Clothing stand on road from Kanpur

Clothing stand on road from Kanpur

Downtown traffic is interesting too:

unusually light traffic near Kanpur on the way to Brahmavarta, India

unusually light traffic near Kanpur on the way to Brahmavarta, India

Usually the road is packed with 5 or 6 lanes of people, bikes, motorcycles, moto-rikshaws, cars, trucks and buses!

Planes and Trains

I have my plane ticket.

Kayak.com helped me navigate all the online resellers and find a good price and more or less acceptable itinerary.

Meet me in Detroit Thursday, March 11th to catch KLM Royal Dutch Airlines Flight 6052 (Delta Flt 252). It leaves at 4:00 PM (1600 hrs) EST. Or, meet me in the Amsterdam-Schiphol (AMS) airport to catch KLM Royal Dutch Airlines # 871 at 11:10 AM (1110 hrs), March 12th. This is the flight that goes to Delhi arriving at 11:30 PM (23:30 hrs) on March 12th, at Indira Gandhi Airport in Delhi.

It gets in pretty late so we’ll go straight to our hotel to sleep. Mr. Ashish Tiwari will meet us and take us to visit a Temple or two. We’ll find a pleasant place to have a meal. Then find something else interesting to do in the afternoon.

It will be a gentle day because we will have just flown half way around the world.

In 2008, I flew from Newark to Delhi in about 15 hours. I was on the road for about 12 hours before that. So it took me a bit over 24 hours to get there. This type of traveling is tiring for me as I don’t sleep well sitting up. :-)

Therefore, we’ll get to bed early on the 13th. Next morning we’ll be up at 0500 AM (0500 hrs) and at the train station by 5:45 AM (0545 hrs). The Lucknow Swarna Shatabdi Express leaves for Kanpur at 6:15 AM (0615 hrs).  The official Indian Government website to buy e-tickets is http://www.irctc.co.in/ They require you to register and set up an account for free. This allows you to purchase e tickets.

The easiest site to find train information on was Indian Rail Info.  It’s an ad-free, non-commercial website. It is not affiliated with the govt. operated official website.

http://indiarailinfo.com/search/664/452. This link will take you to the page for Indian Trains in general. Look for train #2004 in the left column. Click on the row and a drop down window will show you that it is a 5 hour, 5 minute ride to Kanpur Central from New Delhi. Dig a little deeper and you’ll see that it costs 1180 Rupees (Rs.) for First Class AC. The food was quite good last time I rode that train.

We’ll arrive in Kanpur around 11:20 AM. It averages being 4 minutes late. From there, we’ll thread our way through the trafi

Note that the train station code we want is NDLS for New Delhi and CNB for Kanpur Central.

Please email me to let me know that you are coming. . . goldenspirit-at-jyotish-yagya.com