As a traveller, two things excite me – a new destination and a new smart phone. I was in Bikaner sightseeing last week and armed with my new Honor 7X, I saw the royal city with a complete new pair of lens. I have been a Honor user for a while now. From Varanasi to Pondicherry, the Honor phones , be it a Honor 5C or a Honor 6X have been my travel companions. Honor is a subsidiary of Huawei and I was introduced to the HuaweiP9 on a trip to Indonesia. I always feel good to explore a new city with a brand new camera. So, here are some places to see in Bikaner captured by the Honor 7X camera.

But before I begin to review the Honor 7X, lets take a visual tour of Bikaner and do some virtual Bikaner sightseeing.  I saw the city through the prism of two main perspectives – The monuments and the markets.

In the former, there were usually stately monuments with a royal touch that stood for lost grandeur. Stately and proud, the silent walls told a story. The palaces and the havelis are some of the main places to see in Bikaner.

They may be palaces of kings or havelis of merchants, but they take you down the bygone era. Some of the palaces have been restored as hotels like the elegant Narendra Bhavan, which was the home of the last reigning ruler Narendra Bhavan ji and the opulent Laxmi Vilas Palace where none other than the British royalty  were guests at one time

Bikaner sightseeing is not complete without a visit to the Karni Mata Temple and the Junagadh Fort but for me it was the foundation of Bikaner that beckoned me.

The havelis bring a dash of colour to the narrow lanes and bylanes reminding you of the days when Bikaner was a princely state. And the chhatris or cenotaphs pay a tribute to a king who wanted to get away from the shadow of his father and start his own kingdom. It seems only natural that Rao Bika.’s chattri stands on a site where Bikaner or Bika’s settlement was founded 500 years ago. It is one of the places to see in Bikaner.

The markets however give you a much more vibrant perspective. While the royal past is steeped in the past, the markets are very much rooted in the present. The people, the food, the colours, the energy – everything is so distinctly Bikaner.  Bikaner sightseeing is not complete without some jalebis and bhujiya. And you can see the two distinct flavours captured so well by the Honor 7X

Honor 7X camera review

The Honor 7X has a dual camera set up with a single 8MP camera on the front and a 16MP +2MP camera on the rear.  The Honor 6X had a 12 MP as the primary camera . I particularly love the depth sensor and you can play around with it in the wide and portrait aperture modes. The bokeh effect is particularly very good with this camera. The camera is a delight to work with in daylight as it focuses very quickly and you get very sharp pictures with great depth of field.

In my Bikaner pictures however, I tried a variety – from auto to pro, portrait to good food to wide aperture modes.  I also tried night photography for the first time with the night mode but the lack of a tripod was an issue. It is mandatory to carry a small tripod if you are using night or low light photography. The Honor 7X is also great at recording full HD videos and I tripped on the slow mo mode. The UI of the camera is one of the simplest  and you can set your image size or play around with the modes.

If you are comparing the Honor 7X with the 6X, it wins hands down on its design. Sleek and sturdy, it has a massive display with a 5.93 inch LCD and the screen is protected by Gorilla Glass. For someone like me who keeps dropping my phones, this one is rather durable. As for other features, it has  as an upgraded Kirin processor and is available in India in two versions – 4GB plus 32 GB storage variant and the other with 64 GB . Priced between Rs12999 and Rs 15999 it is a very perfect smart phone for your holiday .

This post was written in collaboration with Honor and I was given the Honor 7X to review its camera as a travel photographer. I was hosted in Bikaner by Narendra Bhavan.