Best Of

Tdelliot71- take the early morning photo trip to the Taj. It leaves quite early but you get there before any large crowds. There’s a young photographer there (provided by the local guide) that will take your phones and take some pretty interesting shots, the one you referenced he took one for everyone. Then go back during the Tauck tour for any other photos.

Here's what we did in Jaipur - https://www.mikeandjudytravel.com/2024-3India-02.htm#Jaipur

The link is to our first day in Jaipur. Follow the link at the bottom of the page to get to day 7. We went back to the hotel. I don't remember if they offered people the ability to stay in the city.

On our tour they offered to stop downtown at a jewelry store for people that wanted to shop. My wife still gets ads and thank you emails from the shop.

@tdelliott71 - what I do to make my blog is fairly geeky, meaning you have to know a fair amount about doing webpages and hosting them (I spent my career as an electrical engineer and am comfortable on a computer). And there are costs involved in hosting the blog (maybe $100/year), plus the annual cost of the domain name.

But there are some sites that make it easy. One I know of is blogspot.com, owned, I think, by Google. There are others. If you search for something like "who will host my blog" you should find them. They're free but they put some advertising on the side of your blog. You get the middle of the webpage and they get the sides (if I remember correctly).

I created our blog because our extended family is all over the US - it was the only way to share our travels with them. I have privacy objections to Facebook, but I looked at them to see if I could do what I wanted to. Didn't see any way to do it on Facebook.

Many people post pictures but they don't include text to explain what and where about the pictures. What I do is attempt to tell a story in text and photos. When I'm taking pictures, I'm thinking of the story, thinking about what pictures I need to show what's going on. I often "think" the story (which will become the text) as I'm observing and taking pictures.

I bring a small computer (13 inch screen) with me on the trip (it stays in the hotel room) and I try to write the day's story each night before I forget what we did, saw and felt. Judy often helps me with the story. I post process every picture through PhotoShop and/or Luminar neo to crop, straighten, sharpen, and adjust lighting and color. You can do some amazing things with Luminar neo.

It is a lot of work and it keeps me busy on a tour but I found that I couldn't write the story if I waited until we got home. I would have forgotten too much - I mean like "What did we do in Jaipur? (for example).

I don't know if my family is really interested in what I write but I do it anyway. It's valuable for Judy and me to use to go back and remember our travels. People outside our family have commented positively about it.

And I enjoy being a writer.