Travels in India with too many books

I've been procrastinating writing this as we've covered quite a lot of ground and I wasn't looking forward to going over everything. However, I believe it can quite easily be summarised by the following: go to North India, see what you have to see, and get out of there. To linger is to be a masochist.

We caught the train to Agra and arrived, naturally, a couple of hours later than expected. Pulling up at our hotel around 11pm feeling grimy and exhausted, we checked in and happened to see some people that we met briefly in Pushkar. Stupidly, we stayed up talking and drinking rum until about 2am. After 4 hours sleep, we awoke and went to see the Taj Mahal, something I've been looking forward to.

Despite the cloud that obscured the Sun as it crept above the horizon, the Taj didn't disappoint. It is simply one of the most, if not the most beautiful buildings I have seen. The symmetry and proprtion of the domes and minarets are incomparable. As the Sun gets higher, the colour of the building reflects the changing daylight. I'm sure that on a clearer day it would have been even better. The entry fee, about 30 times greater to us foreigners than for Indians, is a bit steep, but you know you can't go to North India without going in, even if you can get a decent view from some of the guesthouse rooftops and from the river at the rear.

The rest of the city is another big grimy sprawing mess. However there are a couple of other must sees. The mausoleum of Emperor Akbar (the grandad of Empereor Shah Jehan who built the Taj), about 10km North of the city, is a must. The Islamic patterning on the outside and inside, and the vast interior gardens where deer run about, make it a welcome break from the outside. The Red Fort is a slight improvement on the equivalent in Jaipur as there is a lot less mess, but equally here as with there, the bare marble walls fail to give an impression of the opulence of the Royal household that resided there.

And that's it really. The 'Baby Taj', the mausoleum of Shah Jehan's Vizier, is simply a let down compared with the other two. You can easily visit these things in a day. So, after a day in Agra, we boarded the 7pm train to Delhi. At about 8:30pm.

About 5 hours later in pulled in to Nizamuddin station. There we encountered the most difficult attempt to get a taxi yet. First we bought a prepaid rickshaw ticket with another Brit couple. Both rickshaws seemed to have drivers that had been drinking: I could smell it on his breath. After getting our money back, with difficulty as nobody seemed to speak any English, we were approached by a taxi driver who said he could take all of us for 200 Rs. I was thankful for this, it seemed reasonable, cosidering it was midnight. The other couple tried uselessly to reduce the price, and then the girl tried to get our driver to walk the straight line to check he wasn't drunk. Much amusement ensued for the Indians present. Our patience was wearing thin at this stage.

All hotels in Delhi are shit. Ours was no exception, although we'd payed more than the other couple. We wondered what on Earth they were experiencing. It was almost clean, by Indian standards, but quite depressing. Our attempts to find an even more expensive but reasonably pleasant room the following day met with little success.

I'm sorry if I sound negative, but Delhi in general and Paherganj in particular are not nice places. Paherganj is a dirty, seedy, tourist trap. The rickshaw drivers are rude and ludicrously overpriced, catching tourists as they fall into their lap from the airport. We tried many times to get a reasonable fare, and failed. The area has none of the friendly, lively traveller atmosphere of say, the Khao San Road in Bangkok. New Delhi is a bit better, as there are modern cafes and restaurants you can go into to escape from the rest of the madness, but it is nothing more than a crumbling remnant of British occupation.

In the evening we escaped into a nice cinema in Connaught Place, and watched a popular new Indian film called Salaam-e-Ishq. It was in Hindi, but the plot wasn't too difficult to follow even so. It seemed like a Hindi version of Love, Actually, with added dance routines.

We ended up staying four nights in Pushkar, moving hotel each night as everywhere decent seemed to be booked up. The one really nice place, called Seventh Heaven, only had a room for one night, but what a nice room it was! The owner, who seems to have built up a relationship with most of his guests through their repeat visits, lords over the place like it is his castle, waking up late and mingling with guests over his freshly prepared orange juice every morning, and absent-mindedly petting his fat dogs that never seem to leave this sealed oasis, an old stately home (called a Haveli).

Perhaps because we were only guests one night, we came to feel that we weren't 'in the loop' at this place, and the cliquey atmosphere made us slightly uncomfortable. But maybe that was just us. We didn't have a fantastic time in Pushkar, mainly because (a) we were ill; (b) we kept moving hotels; and (c) we spent 3 days in a travel agent arranging and rearranging our trains for the remainder of our trip. This took so long because we didn't know whether to travel to Udaipur to pick up our passports, get them to send them to Jaipur, or wait until we see our friends who have them in Goa. In the end, we decided on the latter. But the point is, after we informed our travel agent we weren't staying in his good friend's hotel Seventh Heaven, he stopped being straight with us. In the end, he tried to rip us off in about 3 different ways, and we caught him out with 2 of them. We were still overcharged, but not nearly by as much as he tried to. The most irritating thing was, even when we caught him out by showing him the rules on the Indian Railway government website, he tried to squirm his way out of it, refusing to give us a straight answer when we asked him if he was cheating us.

So we got the train to Jaipur. It took considerably longer than expected, but we arrived at about 11pm and, exhausted, checked in to the best room we've had so far. Sometimes it's worth paying a little biut extra, just to escape from the madness on the streets outside. The place, called Madhuban, is a calm, gated compund with a pleasant garden and, compared to what we had experienced, excellent rooms with a comfortable bed! The only problem... no beer. Not even in a teapot (beer is served in this way at the local Italian place, we discovered a couple of days later).

Jaipur turned out to be a little disappointing, sights-wise. The Hawa Mahal, the so called Palace of Wind, where the royal ladies of yore supposedly sat and watched the world go by, made me think of a particularly ornate tube station/public toilet that had somehow grown upwards. Perhaps this was the graffiti on the walls of the corridors. The fort had impressive views but was poorly tended. There seemed to be electrical cables and building work going on everwhere, which kind of spoiled the imagainative leap required to see it in its former glory.

However, it was kind of a relief to be in a big, busy, stinking city after Pushkar, if only because it had... restaurants! With four walls! That served meat... and beer! Plus there was a McDonalds! We made use of the latter several times for lunch. (I feel no shame in admitting my enthusiasm for this. See if you don't crave a McChicken Sandwich, fries and a coke after a few weeks of curry).

One of the best things about Jaipur is the shopping. On our sightseeing day we gave in to our rickshaw man who took us to an emporium selling carpets, wall hangings, etc. Knowing we weren't buying anything, we reduced the salesman from 6000 to 4000 Rs for an item. The next day, we went to Nehru bazaar, where we discovered that these items can be purchased for a fraction of the cost, but they still tried it on with us even there. One man started asking a hundred dollars for a patchwork wall hanging. After we finished laughing at him, we got him down to 1500 rupees, then walked out. As had happened in each place, as soon as you do that, they run after you, dropping the price withn each step, until it gets down to a tiny fraction of the original.

This turned out to be a lot of fun! We bought a load to stuff for next to nothing, and sent it home for about the same.

Leaving the imposing desrt fort of Jaisalmer, we made our way down to the stinking bus depot late afternoon. The bus was, even at first glance, disappointing. We had bought the ticket from straight-talking Ganesh Travels, but the reality did not match the photograph we were shown. After dumping our hand luggage on one of the dusty, probably flea-infested mattresses, we were informed we had to move to the back of the bus as a couple of Korean or Japanese girls were allocated that particular bunk. We made a short attempt at defending our right to the seat as no-one had told us this before, then gave up when it became apparent, after a confusing bout of proto-English, that these girls wanted a seat by their friend on the other side of the aisle.

Defeated, we made our way to the back. Our new home for the next 10 hours was a small cupboard, with glass on both sides but the curtains long since gone. The aisle side window refused to shut properly despite a heroic effort by both of us, so we were treated not only to the smells of the unwashed masses as they periodically clogged up and emptied from the aisle every few stops, but their unwelcome stares. The window to the outside world had to be opened every so often so that we felt we weren't breathing in the dust left by all the passengers that had occupied that cabin since the buses construction, circa 1970.

To illustrate further the joy of this particular journey, imagine being trapped in a small box with another person while an earthquake of approximately 5 or 6 on the Richter scale goes on. While you're trying to read and then sleep. For ten hours. Every time I got into a sitting position, the knackered suspension would encounter a pebble on the road and send my head careering into the roof.

Somehow, we managed to get to sleep, several hours after the electric light in our cabin mysteriously cut out and removed the possibility for reading (even though that was painfully slow anyway since the words of my book formed a constant vertical blur).

At about 3:30 am someone woke us up announcing we had arrived at Ajmer, about 35 km from Ajmer. This was our stop. We groggily got off. Of course (and fortunately for us) there were some rickshaw drivers outside, capitalising on the lucrative middle of the night business from tourists. Upon bartering one down from 500 to 300 rupees (I know, a lot, but it was 4am). We rode the 35 km to Pushkar.

So we found a place, and stayed a few hours. Wanting to move closer to the center of town in the morning, we went to check out. That's when we realised we didn't have our passports.

Understandably, we freaked out. We went first to the tourist info centre, who couldn't help us as he didn't have a phone, then the police, who couldn't help us as we thought they'd been stolen in Jaisalmer, and told them as much, and they said the police there had to deal with it. We phoned the British Embassy in Delhi and Mumbai, seeing what we would have to do. It would take 10 working days and 8000 rupees each, they said. As well as messing up our travel plans as we would have to go to Mumbai to collect our exit visa.

Then we phoned Ganesh Travels back for the second time. This time the boss was in - and the passports had been found in our room! We, dopy sods, had left them there, but no-one had told us despite our bags being left in the hotel all day while the room was being cleaned! Still, we were utterly relieved, especially as two friends of ours were still there and could pick them up.

That afternoon, my cold, which had already lasted a couple of days, got worse, and Emily started another bout of the dreaded Delhi belly. What a great day! Incredible India indeed!

Feeling better now, we plan to backtrack slightly to pick up our passports in Udaipur, then on to Jaipur, Agra, Delhi, Amritsar, back to Delhi, then Goa. We didn't plan to go to Amritsar but we have another 5 days up North as the train to Goa is unavailable first class until the 11th February. First class is expensive (as much as a plane ticket) but I think necessary for a journey of that length (about 25 hours). Experience is, after all what we're here for; and the last few days have given us that!

We took the train from Jodhpur at 0645. The Sun was rising as the train pulled away and we rolled across the desert. It was nice to be able to look out from the window of the train and watch the desert go by. At one point we saw another amazing looking temple somewhere that probably isn't in the guide book: they seem to be everwhere in India.

Arriving at Jaisalmer around noon, we were set upon by hordes of guesthouse touts trying to get us to stay at their guesthouse and go on their camel safari. At one point two well dressed men attempted to get us (including another couple we met on the train) into a snazzy looking jeep, saying they would take us all to town for only 30 rupees. It seemed too easy, so we found another jeep, paid for by the guest house we wanted to go to anyway.

Ganesh guest house turned out to be an excellent choice, although we actually stayed at another place (Siddartha) that was owned by his brother or something, as Ganesh was full, but that was good too, nice clean rooms for only 250 rupees. The owner, Ganesh himself, seemed to be one of the few straight taking Indians we've met. In very clear English he outlined exactly what we would get for what price. We decided to plump for the 2 day option, with one night in the desert.

The next morning we left Jaisalmer in a jeep and drove out to where the camels where. There were too guides, both of whom spoke decent English and were very charming. One of them was full of the English cliches and catchphrases that seem to have done the rounds to amuse tourists: "don't worry, chicken curry" (or a variant); "no woman, no cry, no chapati, no chai" was probably our favourite. At one point he changed from singing a song in hindi into a partial rendition of Barbie girl, the annoying pop song from a few years back.

Camels are even more bizarre than I thought. At the moment, they are in season, which means that the males, when feeling a bit horny, stick their tongue out and inflate it into a giant pink ball while frothing at the mouth. Apparently this impresses the ladies. Emily's camel was particularly horny, so much so she was afraid it would either start a fight with other males or run off and mount an eager female. Alarmed by this possibility, she sought reassurance from the camel men. "No worry, no chicken, no curry", she was informed "I tell him work now, woman later."

In the evening we all sat around the fire. Sleeping wasn't too bad, it didn't get very cold until about 5am. I wanted to see the stars unobscured by moonlight, but it was several hours after I went to sleep that the moon dropped over the horizon. At one point I woke up and got a brief glimse of the Milky Way but it wasn't long before I dropped off again.

The day after and we both have a cold, with the possible onset of Delhi belly in the making. This afternoon we leave for Ajmer on the sleeper bus, from which we can travel to the desert town of nearby Pushkar.

Today we explored the excellent Meheranger Fort in Jodhpur. The fort is built on a craggy mountain overlooking the city, a sea of mostly blue buildings. The views from the fort are excellent, and it has a nice accompanying audio-guide, which you can play as you feel when you walk around.

Just before we left, we decided to try the palm reader. Naturally sceptical but willing for once to indulge just to see how convincing he was, I let Emily go first. It seemed fairly convincing, in a superficial way. Emily wrote down the time of day, date, and place she was born, as asked. I asked him if, since I couldn't remember what time of day I was born, could he still read my palm? Of course, he said yes. He then rattled off an analysis that sounded largely similar to what he told Emily. Except that the stuff that was different, was totally wrong! I won't reveal exactly what for fear of broadcasting major personality flaws to anyone that might read this, although those who know me would probably agree.

He rarely offered any critical or negative points anyway, which is of course partly how these things work since people are more easily convinced by flattery. Some of it was a bit too obvious though, like the question/assertion "someone in your family has had allergies or cancer?" This was asked of both of us.

The point is that after Emily, it seemed pretty plausible, but after we had a chance to compare each others, it was clearly garbage. The funniest thing was though that during my reading, he kept falling asleep mid-sentence!