It didn’t take long to remember how to travel in Asia. Walk with your eyes down (avoiding the eyes of beggars, touts and rickshaw-wallahs, and to avoid stepping in or on something or someone) and with your mouth closed (your nose is a filter – you should have seen all the black stuff I’d blow out of it at the end of each day). Haggle at length, keep your sense of humour, don’t lose your temper, don’t drink the water, take advantage of every clean toilet. But most importantly, DO NOT FART. And finally, it’s OK, indeed mandatory, to discuss your bowel movements with complete strangers. It’s also OK to write about them at length, as you will discover.
My journey began in New Delhi. New Delhi is the capital of India, and, believe it or not, has a layout based on that of Canberra. Or maybe it’s the other way around. Anyway, my point is that the similarities are striking. Yeah right. One’s a stinking quagmire that is testament to the depths that humanity can plunge and the other one is in India.
In New Delhi, as opposed to Old Delhi, which is more crowded, noisy, smelly, polluted and interesting (and has more open-air urinals), I stayed at the Park Hotel (lobby like that of a 5-star brothel) and quickly fell into my routine of following my partner, her head buried in the Lonely Planet, from site to site while thinking about food. Fortunately, our different philosophies of travel complemented each other quite well. My partner would study the history of a city before seeing it. I’d study the menus and try to convince her that it was OK to eat things covered in wasps. The touts and most other Indians would practice their English and test our spending power by asking where we're from. They have no sense of humour though. They don't know where Latvia is and never believed I was Steve Waugh, though they did want to take our photo. I still don’t understand why us? We tried asking one gentleman why he wanted a photo of us with his daughter. “Because it’s her birthday”, he replied. Well, you can’t argue against logic like that.
Delhi, like all of India was covered in sites with this description:
“Built in the 12th/13th/14th/15th/16th/17th/18th century, this impressive/outstanding/excellent/crumbling/former Mughal/Arab/British Fort/Palace/Mosque/Temple was reconstructed 7/8/9 times. Invaded by the Mughal/Arab/British/Tourist invaders in 1450/1569/1670/weekly, the impregnable/pregnable Fort/Palace/Mosque/Temple was finally abandoned/turned into a hotel.”
This description was at its best when told, via an expensive audio system, by the current Maharajah (or perhaps it’s Kamahl), his booming Indo-Oxford accent struggling to comprehend how it had all come to this, and wishing he’d only been born a couple of centuries earlier.
It was in Delhi I began my love-hate relationship with Indian food. I was grateful for the air-conditioned South Indian Pure Vegetarian Family Restaurants which closely resemble Australian North Indian diners but without the Butter Chicken (which doesn’t really exist in India). I also stumbled upon the joy of Dosas (mega-crepes filled with anything) and the all-you-can-eat for 70c Thalis (veg curry, dahl and other slop served on a segmented metal plate with rice and the ubiquitous chapatti – a flat brown tasteless bread common all over India because, being made essentially of sawdust and sand - perhaps, they cost nothing to make). Only one Samosa made me sick, though they were all awesomely delicious. A Tibetan restaurant in Jaisalmeer in Rajasthan was out of Fing even though they didn't know what it was ("We have no Fing").
My favourite dishes though were the local specialties – Laal Maans (extremely spicy mutton – mutton is usually, but not always, goat), bean curry and cashew curry in Rajasthan, seafood and Chicken 65 (I don't know either and neither do any waiters, but it was very spicy) in Goa, fish kebabs and crème caramel like deserts in Kolkata, sugary syrupy things of all shapes everywhere. I also drank loads of Pepsi, Coke, 7th up soda water, Thums up (sic) cola, and Frooti and Maaza mango drinks. And of course about 15 different varieties of bottled water of which Aquafina, owned by Pepsi, was the most common and the worst tasting (of chemicals and plastic) of the lot.
After Delhi we spent two weeks in Rajasthan, admiring (and in my case envying) the palatial decadence of the Mughal (Muslim) Emperors and various Maharajahs. Back when every city here was the capital of a nation and the threats weren't from hordes of tourists and capitalism but each other, the Emperors and Maharajahs spent most of their time attempting to kill each other and now extinct wildlife while exploring their vanity and their concubines. I don't know how they managed it. I've only got one concubine and that's a full time job (not to mention my partner – boom tish). It’s very difficult to tell a Maharajah from a Mughal Emperor. Each sprouts an identical luxuriant moustache (the local Rajput men still do - I tried to grow one but fell short by 10cm and many years) and have the same imperial nose which was repeated in artwork for centuries.
We travelled on all possible forms of air-conditioned and non air-conditioned Indian transport except elephants. This is where we differed from Maharajahs who mostly travelled on non air-conditioned elephants. We spent a few days in the Targ desert on a camel safari. Camels are as uncomfortable as they look and smell like off cabbage. They also don’t have air-conditioning. The trek was conducted under the roaring jets of the Indian air force and in full view of the thousands of windmills that power the electric fence and lights that run along the India-Pakistan border. It was while being sandblasted, melted, sunburnt and jolted into another dimension that I came to view camel riding as a pointless and painful way of going from one place to another. Give me a 4WD any day. An air-conditioned one.
The last few days in Rajasthan was spent tag teaming the toilet - up to that stage my biggest problem was actually constipation, but I more than made up for it. This made going to the Shiv Niwas Palace in Udaipur for my birthday meal a little problematic. The Shiv Niwas Palace is where Roger Moore cavorted with Octupussy, henchmen and bikini models but these days (and in reality probably in those days too) it is full of overweight middle aged Germans. All three of Udaipur’s luxurious palaces were built to take advantage of the glorious lake vistas. Today, there’s barely a lake and the palaces are 5-star hotels with restaurants to match. No matter - even if our chosen palace was the second most expensive place in town it still worked out at King St, Newtown prices. It was just a shame that I lost it all down the toilet an hour later (and for much of the next day).
By the time we reached Mumbai after three weeks and seven rolls of toilet paper (actually easier than it sounds – standard Indian bog rolls are all of about 30 sheets – the cardboard tube is almost thicker than the paper) we were more than familiar with all Indian forms of transport, the ubiquitous Tata buses and trucks, cycle and auto rickshaws and Ambassador Taxis.
Of all the buses the most frightening was also the most comfortable – the sleeper bus. Sleeper buses are great if you’re not claustrophobic or sick (which best described my partner by that stage). You travel in your own sealed and padded coffin while speeding along the highways and arrive refreshed, relaxed and hopefully not dead. If you’re really lucky you’ll have slept for a few minutes. The bus dropped us 40km short of our intended destination in Mumbai and the legendary bone-jarring three-wheeled autorickshaws descended like swarming wasps. Surprisingly, rickshaws, auto and cycle, are not allowed in central Mumbai. Ambassador taxis though, designed, and in the majority of cases probably dating from, the 1950s, are present in their thousands, though being bigger and largely black they swarm more like cockroaches in need of a good wheel balancing. Equally surprising, cows are also banned, and as a result of these proto and token attempts at town planning, the traffic successfully oozes along and you can even see the gutters most of the time.
Outside the city and everywhere else in India, the cows rule the streets much as a Maharajah would rule a nation, but without the concubines (but then again). Everyone knows that cows are sacred in India, including the cows. The natural habitat of the cow is highways and traffic islands, this way they can create the most chaos. They subsist on a diet of paper and cardboard. They tend to crap in your general direction and change their direction without warning, usually to the detriment to your car, bus or shoes. They’re treated by the locals more like dogs than the dogs are, which are generally shabby and mangy and pregnant. But again, except in Mumbai, where rich, fat Indians will happily power-walk along the waterfront in shorts and a t-shirt with two perfectly groomed corgis on a leash.
Mumbai is all about food and cricket and money, and we had plenty of all of them. Plenty of Chinese and Western Food (I finally cracked, had chow mein, fried rice and pizza and didn’t my stomach just love it) served by a plethora of hovering waiters. The menus of your standard Mumbai restaurant ran to over 12 pages and included hundreds of variations of everything meat and veg that had ever been invented in India and China. And for the first time I encountered a drinking culture, or at least lots of men in dark and smoky rooms drinking a nip of scotch with a litre of water or a Kingfisher beer by the longneck.
The ubiquitous Kingfisher beer, drunk all over the country, comes in a clear 650ml bottle. Strangely, it’s made to a different recipe in each state – in Uttar Pradesh it’s a caramelly brown with a yeasty bite, in Goa it’s a lemony yellow with a light refreshing taste. Whether this reflects the quality of the local water or the air is something best not contemplated. Each state controls its own alcohol tax, and hence beer is priced according to numerous factors, but mostly religion. The stronger the religion (especially in the Hindu Belt state of Utter Pradesh) the more expensive the beer and the more likely you to have to drink it out of a tea pot (Agra) or keep the bottle under the table (Varanassi). The less religious (especially in Christian Goa) the more likely that a longneck will cost $1 and you will spend all day drinking them on the beach.
We boarded the train from Mumbai to Goa and spent a night in a 3-tier (bunk) air conditioned carriage. Luxury compared to the sleeper bus. The next morning we leapt from the speeding train (almost literally - we had about 30 secs to get off) and caught a cab to Arambol beach. It only broke down once.
Once settled in at Arambol we hit the beach and the Kingfishers and then the Kingfisher hit us. My partner had her doubts about the beer from the start (Her: “Is it supposed to be green?” Me: “It’ll be fine, it has wasps on it”) but it was the only thing we both ate and we both got really ill that night. Without being too gruesome - oh stuff it why not - I endured a 12 hour colonic irrigation and my partner a 36 hour spew and poo. During the intermediate 24 hours I was forced to laze on the beach by myself and swim in the surf, drink, and eat delicious and only slightly contaminated seafood (I was tempted by the Tendor Lion Strogan Off but thought I shouldn't). When we left, my partner foolishly decided she was better despite not eating for three weeks and could handle the 3km walk to the bus stop. Unsurprisingly, she fainted just as the bus turned up.
We spent the night in Panjim, capital of Goa and in the afternoon checked out the massive churches and Cathedrals of Old Goa, built by the Portuguese during their 400 year rule of the colony of Goa (until 1961 - more staying power than the British evidently). This included the Cathedral of St Francis Xavier whose supposedly undecomposed body is displayed every 10 years and which we missed by two weeks. This is apparently a miracle. The real miracle is that anyone believes it. I saw the photos and he looks pretty decomposed to me.
5 am the next morning we woke for a 7 am flight that arrived at 10:30. 11 hours, one late flight, one cancelled flight and one flat tyre on the hired car later (5 hours to go 150 km) we finally made it to Agra. Being short of sleep and still essentially ill, we went to bed early to be woken every 2 minutes by deafening explosions as another Diwali firecracker went off. Diwali is the Indian “festival of light” though in modern day India this has been translated to “festival of extreme and sudden noise”. This comes as no surprise. India is a land of extreme noise. There is no Hindi word for “whisper” (or “sorry”, “please” or “excuse me” for that matter). Indians talk incessantly and at volume, especially on their mobile phones (standard conversation goes “HELLO…HELLO…HELLO” etc). They sit on their car horns (it’s officially sanctioned – even the trucks have ‘horn please’ painted on the back of them), blow whistles constantly at the cricket, scream political slogans from jeeps with giant loudspeakers and play Bollywood songs and advertisements at ear-bleeding volume at kid’s fairs, markets and festivals. Sydney is a sleepy village compared to your average Indian city.
There is only one thing to do in Agra and that’s go to the Taj Mahal. The contradiction between Agra and the Taj couldn’t be starker. The Taj is stunning, so much so that it completely overwhelms the thousands of tourists milling around it – don’t believe the staged Princess Di images. Agra is a crowded polluted dump overrun with incessant touts that forever hound the few tourists that can be bothered staying in Agra rather than do the standard day trip from Delhi.
After Agra, checked out some smaller towns (in India this means a population under half-a-million) – Fatapuh Sikri is a poorly signposted (ie it isn’t signposted) massive fort and palace complex (with the standard history of emperors and invaders) surrounded by a mass of the above mentioned kids fairs. Orchha was, believe it or not, small, relaxed, isolated and pleasant. Orchha’s palaces and fort face each other across the river. Mostly devoid of tourists and undiscovered by the Indian Archaeological Society, the sites are future ruins just intact enough to let you scramble all over them, including on the roof. The surrounding jungle is full of temples. It’s all very Angkor Watt (Cambodia), though not quite as grand or on the same scale (and there are no landmines).
Khajuraho is home to the famous Karma-Sutra sculptures. If you’re not familiar with the sculptures don’t worry. Just think the kind of hard-core porn that could put you in prison or without a job in the Department of Education. The manicured lawns and peaceful surroundings (it’s too expensive for the locals) ensure a surreal experience and a slightly uncomfortable one for males. At least, that’s the idea, but I was sick again and nothing, except a flushing toilet and 2-ply toilet paper, could have turned me on at that stage.
The train to Varanassi was preceded by a three-hour taxi ride along the worst road in India and perhaps only second to the Highlands Highway in PNG as the worst in the world. The alternative was the 6 hour bus which came sometimes at 6am and other times not at all. The connecting train arrived three hours late, the last 145 km taking six hours. Being night time, Varanassi station had already taken on its alter ego of homeless shelter, and there are lots of homeless in Varanassi. There are also lots of cows, buffalo, dogs, pilgrims, burning corpses, monkeys, boat-wallahs and rickshaws all competing for the same dusty smelly piece of Ganges foreshore. The Ganges is lined with cement steps (Gats) that act as cremation site, laundry, bath, wharf and men’s urinal, often within (literal) spitting distance of each other. The continual cremations lend a permanent haze to the atmosphere while providing the only entertainment in town to the locals, though even as a tourist you get used to seeing burning legs poking out of a pyre or the remnants of a corpse being picked up on a stick.
Kolkata by comparison is party central. Being ruled by communists since independence and being disdainful of the federal government, almost weekly strikes (called bundhs) and go-slows organised by either the government or the unions ensure that not a lot gets done. Office hours are 10-4:30 with an hour for lunch. They’re also such appalling hagglers they’ll often sell things at marked prices – it’s easier that way. During the wet season the place floods and even less gets done. It’s no wonder the local pastime is eating, and they do that very well and very often (but don’t order a margarita – not unless you like warped martinis).
So all that was left was to brave the traffic out to the airport – a one hour journey in a rickety old taxi through the belching truck and bus fumes along non-signposted roads while hanging on for grim death for the first available toilet. A fitting end to an awesome trip.
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