Anyway, with our tour complete we headed back out and down the hill to await our taxi back to Agra. We bundled into the taxi with a different driver and headed back. After about 20 minutes our driver pulled off the main road and into a small restaurant, where he announced that due to union rules he had to have a half hour break. What this essentially meant was that the restaurant we had stopped at was paying our driver a kickback to bring tourists to them. Unfortunately for our driver, who disappeared into a back room, the four of us sat down for half an hour and had one bottle of Pepsi between us. After half an hour (presumably during which time our driver was getting a bollocking for bringing tight-wads to the restaurant) we set off again. Driving past the small shanty towns the amazing thing was the amount of advertising. Nearly every settlement had adverts for Pepsi or Colgate on the sides of the shacks, not papered up like we're familiar with, but painted on. The odds of such products being available in these shanty towns was slim to none. When we got back to the air-conditioned luxury, Emma and I decided to take to the streets and explore Agra by foot. When we reached the hotel gate we were faced with a 50:50 left-right choice. We made the wrong choice. After about a quarter of a mile, the only things we had found were a dead, bloated dog in the drain and a very annoying cycle-rickshaw driver who followed us for about a mile and a half as we doubled back on ourselves and headed the other way. He seemed quite insistent that there was no point walking and that we should pay him to drive us. Eventually we lost him down a narrow side street. The city is basically a sprawl around its cultural sites and there really isn't much else on view bar open sewers and poverty. We caught site of monkeys leaping from roof to roof and views into random bric-a-brac stores and homes. One friendly local approached us for a chat to practise his English, but were relieved to get back to the hotel: as the Wikitravel guide notes: "After getting off the streets of Agra and into your hotel, you won't want to go back anyway."
We head back to the station and got the train back to Delhi, which was livened up by some kind of creepy crawly crawling round the carriage. The following day, we headed out for lunch with more relatives I hadn't seen in years - this time a former Indian Ambassador. After lunch we raced back to the airport only to find our flight had been cancelled and we'd been shunted to the next flight.
The final week in Bombay consisted of seeing more relatives - some of whom looked very old and some of whom hardly seemed to have changed at all, eating a lot of good food and me getting a tailored suit made and, of course, swimming. Towards the end of the week Emma and I headed into town early to get the boat from the Gateway to Elephanta island - something else we used to do every year. The slow boat chugged out to the island for about an hour and then we walked up the long stairs to the caves where ancient stone carvings of the ancient gods Brahma (the creator), Vishnu (the preserver) and Shiva (the destroyer) which date back to the 9th century and have mostly survived despite the Portuguese using them as target practice in the 17th century. This time after fighting our way through the guides on the way up, we were met by an official guide inside (with a price of Rs 0).
After watching the local monkeys playing for a bit we caught the boat back to the mainland and had lunch at a local Chinese restaurant and an abortive visit the the famous (and now infamous) Taj Mahal hotel.
By the end of the week it was finally time for the dinner at the Racecourse to celebrate my Aunt's 70th birthday attended by several of my Aunt and Uncle's friends from the Willingdon club. With such an exclusive history and an even longer waiting list for membership, the club certainly hosts the elite of Mumbai. Finally it was time to head home. The chaos at the airport seemed to be worse than I remember. The airport still operates a policy of only passengers being allowed in the building so the drop-off area is overrun with relatives and queues to get in. This was going to be interesting since we didn't have a ticket (just our e-ticket number). Thankfully, the guard seemed to realise that the big suitcases we had signalled that we were going to be catching a flight and let us in. The terminal is still being "upgraded" and the place was simply a mess. An overrun mess. As in Schiphol on the way out, we all had to be interviewed by US security as we were flying a US airline and then finally, just before midnight we were off.
And that was it. But not quite. I woke up somewhere near Eastern Germany. With only about 90 minutes I assumed we had missed breakfast, but then something didn't seem right as the lights were still down. As we passed central Germany the lights suddenly came on and the flight attendants began serving breakfast. Luckily we were near the front of the queue, but before even half our cabin had even been served, the captain came over the intercom announcing we were beginning our decent into Amsterdam. As we slowed and descended over northern Holland, the stewardesses began saying "Someone should call him!" to each other. Eventually, everybody had been served, but then the captain came back over the intercom to tell the flight crew to take their seats. For a second it looked like we'd be making a landing with our breakfast. Even at the point the cabin crew seemed to think they'd be okay until the wheels came down and one remarked "We're not going to make it!" No kidding. Suddenly the engines roared as full climb throttle was applied and we overshot the runway in a missed approach after someone had presumably told the captain that the economy cabins were still tucking in to breakfast. After circling to allow the consumption, we finally landed at Schiphol. The crew didn't say a word as we filed off. When we arrived back into Birmingham the same weird sound and feeling that I remember from my previous visits came back. The sound was order: no horns blaring, no cars driving inches from where we walked, disciplined (sort of) driving and the feeling was cold. It's almost as much of a system shock returning to the UK after a fortnight in India as it is getting there in the first place!
No comments:
Post a Comment