INDIA 2025: FROM LOS ANGELES TO AMRITSAR

 November 20-22, 2025

In December 2024, Bob and I and my sister Chris and her husband Stan had a wonderful trip to India that included time spent in Guwahati, Kaziranga National Park, Delhi, Varanasi, Agra, and Jaipur. We checked many things off our bucket list, but one remained: to see a tiger in the wild. In spite of five or six safari drives in Kaziranga National Park, the big cat escaped us.

Foreseeing this as a possibility, Bob had purchased a five-year, multiple-entry visa instead of a 30-day, single-entry visa. I think his plan (unbenownst to me) was always to go back and try again. I think it may have been on the flight home that he suggested another trip.

We reached out to our reliable travel partners from the first trip and also included my brother Dave and his wife Bonnie and proposed traveling over the Thanksgiving holiday when I had a full week off from school and could add a few extra days. Both couples enthusiastically agreed, and Bob started planning.

Dave and Bonnie left three days before we did so that they could squeeze in some of the experiences, like the Taj Mahal, that we had on our first India trip. The plan was to meet up in the Delhi Airport on November 22 and fly from there to our first location: Amritsar.

With a time change of 12.5 hours, it takes two-and-a-half calendar days to get to Delhi from our home. We left the house on Thursday morning, drove the two hours to the Los Angeles Airport, left our car in the LA Hilton underground parking lot, and boarded a Virgin Atlantic flight to London at about 3:40 p.m.

A good omen?

The flight was 10 hours and 20 minutes long, and we arrived in London on a beautiful day with blue skies and a great view of the Thames curlicuing its way through the city.

We could even see the London Eye on the South Bank:

When we were able to check our messages, we learned that Chris and Stan had missed their flight and their new plan was to meet us in Amritsar rather than Delhi. They would lose out on a half-day of sightseeing, but at least they should make it in time for our visit to Amritsar's main attraction--the Golden Temple. 

Three couples from three cities trying to meet up on the other side of the world can be a challenge.

We were supposed to have a layover of over two hours in London, but we were a little late and we had just enough time at the Heathrow Airport to rush from our landing location to our boarding location. We made our connecting flight to Delhi with very little time to spare and settled in to "enjoy" another nine-hour flight, arriving at 2:40 a.m. local time.

We were pretty tired by the time we landed (Who sleeps on a plane?) and not happy about this crazy line at passport control that we remembered from our first trip, but luckily we made it through much faster than we had the previous year.

Of course, there was no rush as we had a SIX-HOUR layover. What can one do for six hours in the Indira Gandhi International Airport? Check out the pastry shop, of course, and indulge in a Dutch truffle pastry. It cost 157 rupees, or $1.70 USD.  Not bad.

I chased it down with the Coke Zero I poured into the insulated drink container I specially (optimistically?) decorated for this trip. 

As we waited at the departure gate for Dave and Bonnie to join us for the last leg of our journey, this cute little girl approached me and started up a conversation. Her dad stood about five feet away, listening and monitoring the situation. I think he was encouraging her to practice her English, which was quite good. I can't remember how old she was, maybe six? We talked for twenty minutes or so about California (which she knew all kinds of facts about, including its location on the Pacific Coast and its capital) and other places in the United States. I was blown away by her knowledge. She knew far more about the U.S. than I knew about India. We did tell her we were going to Amritsar, and she said, "That's on the border with Pakistan. They are our enemies!" That shocked us a bit. Nevertheless, I was impressed by her and by her father, who no doubt was her teacher, and who was giving her a unique opportunity to learn.

Dave and Bonnie arrived at our gate with an hour or two to spare, and we finally boarded the Air India flight, ready for the last 1 hour and 10 minutes of travel time. Looking out the airplane window at the morning view, we were not surprised by this layer of thick smog that buried any images further than about 100 yards away. We'd seen similar pollution the previous year.

What we weren't prepared for was breakfast! When was the last time you had breakfast on a flight this short? The food was not bad--an interesting blend of European and Indian flavors.

FINALLY, about 29 hours after we had left our house, we landed at the Sri Guru Ram Das Ji International Airport in Amritsar in the Indian state of Punjab. It was the first place we actually left the airport.

A driver was waiting for us and took us to our hotel, Ranjit's Svassa, to drop off our bags and wash up before leaving on a city tour.

The check-in/lobby area was over-the-top glamorous, far more than we are used to, but nothing that I couldn't get used to, given the opportunity!

This photo in the lobby reminded me of . . . 

. . . a photo Bob used to have hanging in his law office of his grandfather in prison stripes (seated in the center):

I've grown quite fond of Ganesha, the pot-bellied, elephant-headed son of Indian deities Shiva and Parvati, on display in multiple forms in one of the Ranjit's Svassa Hotel hallways:

We accessed our room from a private veranda. Yeah, I'm sure I could get used to this. 

But we couldn't really kick off our shoes and relax. We dumped off our luggage, did a quick wash-down, and headed out. There were Things To See.