Delhi Agra & Jaipur / Anuradha Chaturvedi, Dharmendar Kanwar & Ranjana Sengupta

I bought three travel guides for my trip to India last year. Two were Lonely Planet books, and then there was this one. Published by DK as part of their Eyewitness Travel Guides series, the cover promises The Guides That Show You What Others Only Tell You. In other words, there’s a lot more pictures here, and they are in color. Sadly, reality never really lives up to the pretty pictures you can find in travel guides. They have their pick of shots, and take the ones that show everything in their best light. This isn’t to say that India isn’t beautiful, but no place looks as good as it does in pictures all the time. That being said, this is a great book for getting you excited about travelling to the Golden Triangle. And if you are good at setting your expectations despite a good sell job, this books points out where you can find some really beautiful things.

What it doesn’t do is point out any of the pitfalls, and there are many in India. Oh, it tells you to negotiate your fare up front with the auto-rickshaws, but doesn’t point out which attractions you really want to see, and which ones really aren’t all that. For instance, the guide describes the Samode palace in glowing terms. But after a two hour drive, Samode palace is barely bigger than my apartment building and there are only a couple of spots worth viewing now that most of the place has been turned into a hotel. I enjoyed the experience, but didn’t come away with the sense of awe this guide imparts.

About the only thing I really like about the guide is that for major attractions it contains a 3-D cut away view of the location rather than just a flat map. On top of that the points of interest within the attraction are helpfully located. I got a better feel for places with that than I did with regular outline maps found in other guides such as Lonely Planet.

In the end, I left this book at home when I boarded the plane. I figured I would take my own pretty pictures and I required more practical advice on the road.

Authors: Anuradha Chaturvedi, Dharmendar Kanwar, Ranjana Sengupta
Title: Delhi Agra & Jaipur
Publisher: DK
Series: Eyewitness Travel Guides
Length: 320 p.
ISBN-10: 0-7894-9717-4
Subject: Delhi (India) — Guidebooks
Subject: Agra (India) — Guidebooks
Subject: Jaipur (India) — Guidebooks
LC classification: DS486.D3 D365 2003