Jaipur

One of the biggest treats, and conversely biggest disappointments, on the last trip to India was our visit to Jaipur. The biggest problem is that, like a lot of the trip, we just didn't have enough time.  Part of that is certainly on our tour guide, but clearly I have to take a big share of the blame for not being more involved in cleaning up or evening out the trip.  I kicked back a couple times on what I thought was an overstuffed trip, but I should have been more insistent.  It's difficult to get too worked up before you leave simply because all the things on the itinerary look amazing, and you somehow convince yourself that you'll able to see all of them (even though you know if your heart of hearts that it can't possibly happen). We spent too much time on buses, which meant that we saw a lot of India, and the students never complained, but I need to simplify the trip even more for next year's incarnation. I suspect I figured that since we were going from India and Sri Lanka to "just" India that the days would suddenly get longer or we'd wrestle the Time Stone away from Thanos or maybe I'm just an idiot (I'd bet on the latter). The students loved the elephant, which made up for the cancellation in Dudhwa (blogged about earlier), but it was painful to look at the Amber Palace from a distance.  Next year we're climbing up the hill and making it inside. Now, to be fair, part of the problem really rests with India; if it weren't so endlessly amazing and so chock-full of extraordinary things to do I wouldn't have these scheduling problems!

The Amber Palace.  Even if we could carve off half a day to spend roaming around the palace that would be wonderful.

The Jal Mahal, a combination of Mughal and Rajput architecture. Truthfully, I doubt if we'll make it out there, although the boat trip would be pretty epic.