travel to India in February?
As some of you know, I'm a member of the International Society for Folk Narrative Research (ISFNR). I've been to two of their conferences, in Tartu, Estonia and Athens, Greece, and they've always been a blast. I love travel, I love seeing my international colleagues, I love the feeling of scholarly camaraderie.
So I'm heavily inclined to go to the next interim conference in India. It's apparently in Shillong (closest major airport is Guwahati), which is in the north-east part of India. (holy crap, Guwahati is the capital of Assam! Assam = tea in my mind, which is all the more exciting) Shillong is the capital of the state of Meghalaya, which is apparently very hilly and scenic.
I think it's financially feasible, since I'd have help from a scholar I know in India with finding lodging and figuring out transportation, so most of the cost would just be the plane ticket, since apparently things are cheaper over there. But I also figure, if I'm making the effort to fly over there, I should stay a little longer than the half-week for the conference, and see a little more than just the one city where the conference is held. I've traveled by myself in Europe and am quite comfortable doing so, but India feels like a different sort of experience entirely.
Does anyone have tips for planning travel in India? I'm thinking I'll see if I know any other academics going to the conference, and see if they want to pair up and maybe spend a week seeing different parts of the country. Or maybe I'll book a flight to a larger city (Calcutta, maybe?) and hunker down there for a week before or after the conference to take in the sights. Any advice is welcome; in the meantime, I'll do some research on my own and figure out my options.
So I'm heavily inclined to go to the next interim conference in India. It's apparently in Shillong (closest major airport is Guwahati), which is in the north-east part of India. (holy crap, Guwahati is the capital of Assam! Assam = tea in my mind, which is all the more exciting) Shillong is the capital of the state of Meghalaya, which is apparently very hilly and scenic.
I think it's financially feasible, since I'd have help from a scholar I know in India with finding lodging and figuring out transportation, so most of the cost would just be the plane ticket, since apparently things are cheaper over there. But I also figure, if I'm making the effort to fly over there, I should stay a little longer than the half-week for the conference, and see a little more than just the one city where the conference is held. I've traveled by myself in Europe and am quite comfortable doing so, but India feels like a different sort of experience entirely.
Does anyone have tips for planning travel in India? I'm thinking I'll see if I know any other academics going to the conference, and see if they want to pair up and maybe spend a week seeing different parts of the country. Or maybe I'll book a flight to a larger city (Calcutta, maybe?) and hunker down there for a week before or after the conference to take in the sights. Any advice is welcome; in the meantime, I'll do some research on my own and figure out my options.