India Part 3

On our final day in Agra, we took a trip out to Fatehpur Sikri about 30 miles away that is a town founded by a Moghal Emperor and then mysteriously abandoned 15 years later. As our booked taxi driver dropped us off at the foot of the hill, a Rickshaw took us up to the gates of the city. Again we were "compelled" to take a guide with us, and we explored the first few areas of the city. The weather was beautiful and cool and the city serene. That is, until we approached the final section of the city set next to the main road. The area was sprawling with hawkers who followed us round all the way up to the entrance trying to sell us tat. Things didn't improve that much on the inside as a whole different set of hawkers attacked us. As we approached Tomb of Salim Chishti, where you can attach a thread to make a wish we were informed that to make a wish you had to buy a cloth from the hawker (an official person our guide informed us). After picking a purple silk-style handkerchief we were informed that this particular "cloth" would cost us over Rs: 1200 (about £30). Unsurprisingly we passed on this "offer" and even though we were told this was a "very reasonable price" we moved on. Most upsetting for my mother who had come back to untie her thread as her wish (to return to Fatehpur Sikri).





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!

India part 2

We woke up feeling refreshed - if a bit sweaty. The time of year we had visited was the awkward change-over between the humid and wet monsoon and the cooler "winter". We were still in the humid period so had to sleep with the window open and, of course, with a festival going on meant that firecrackers were let off until the early hours. The house certainly hadn't changed in the plumbing department, with the bathing options being a weak dribble of water from a shower head, or a bucket bath. Venturing out into Dadar soon revealed that apart from the flyover that had been built over the circle, nothing much had changed at all. The weird store that seemed to sell everything was still there, the grocery stores were still there. The flower sellers were still there and the beggars were still there. Actually - I'll embellish a bit - the flyover now meant you didn't take your life into your hands (as much) every time you crossed the road. The lack of patience combined with the driving attitude means that if you are half way across a road and the lights turn green, the drivers won't wait for you...



Today was the last day of the Ganpati festival where people took their Ganpatis (idols shaped like Ganesh, the elephant-headed god) and cast them into the sea. This lasted all day with various vans and carts heading towards the sea loaded with clay Ganpatis and whole families. This carried on into the night with bright lights, music and many more firecrackers.



The rest of the week involved getting reacquainted with the city - from the area around the house to downtown. The restaurants, the hanging gardens and Marine Drive and the planetarium (complete with the school tour from hell). Then there was The Club. Every day, my aunt and uncle go to the prestigious Willingdon club where my aunt plays cards and my uncles plays snooker. As a child, we used to go to use the open-air swimming pool. Some years my father actually became a temporary member so we could go more often and children were never allowed in the clubhouse itself. Now I could finally see what all the fuss was about. After a visit to the nearby museum, we arrived for a swim as guests. I haven't swum in years, but it all came back instantly. This time, instead of sitting around the pool afterwards, I was thrilled to finally see the inside of the club. The bar was a modern area with plasma tvs and sweet, sweet air conditioning. Meeting other members of the club reinforces the exclusivity. You may think that a members sports club in a country where many people survive on less than $1 a day would be affordable for a young professional such as myself. I think it's safe to say Emma and I were gob-smacked to find membership cost upwards of £10,000 a year!



One of our tasks for the week was to sort out an excursion. Even though I had been to India many times before, I'd still never been out of the state of Maharashtra. This would change as, combined with the power of the internet and the abundance of low-cost airlines we sorted out a few days in Delhi and Agra.

After experiencing Ryanair, I didn't have high hopes for the Indian variety, but Kingfisher actually puts KLM to shame. New planes, seatback tv screens even on internal flights, good quality food (with metal cutlery) and good crew. Upon arriving in Delhi we were met by our host, my father's nephew Indivar who is an academic at a local university. We piled into his small Tata car and set out across Delhi. After leaving the airport, it immediately became clear that while it was obviously still bonkers, Delhi was a lot less intense and mad than Bombay. The university itself is set in - what to westerners - appears to be a massive amount of wild countryside.



Around Indivar's university-provided accommodation was a family of peacocks, several of which made an appearance. Indivar showed us around the sites, including a Sikh temple and an iron pillar that despite being constructed in 1600-odd years ago hadn't rusted. Sadly, the "magic" reason seems to have been unravelled. We enrolled on an official whistle-stop tour of some sights - including the red fort and Ghandi's tomb that were conducted at break-neck speed.



The trip to Agra would be by train. We had booked first class, but I don't think Emma was ready for what that entailed. As we arrived at the station early in the morning it was already a hive of activity. After finding our platform we discovered it was littered with travellers carrying more baggage that could feasibly fit into the train, hawkers selling their wares and the odd rat running around. As we boarded the train, all thoughts of a western-style first class didn't so much fade from our heads as they were crushed with a mallet. It was like economy on a plane, but without padding on the seats, broken recline mechanisms, tray tables that fell down every five minutes, a lack of A/C and the only entertainment consisted of the sellers that would come through the carriage every so often selling dubious-looking food and drink. After a few hours we arrived in Agra and took a taxi to our hotel for the stay, The Taj hotel. As we entered the hotel, it was like walking into an oasis. Clean white marble, gentle A/C and a good shower. The hotel was called the Taj View and as we reached our room we were happy to discover the hotel lived up to its name.



After an hour or so to enjoy our first decent shower in ten days, we headed back out into the madness and heat to take a rickshaw to the Taj. Rickshaws are awesome fun - it's basically a small moped with a 3-(small) person seat at the back. This means they have the turning circle of a unicycle and combined with the driving discipline meant the we were frequently in danger of falling out as the driver pulled off another ridiculous cornering move.

As we arrived at the drop-off I was amazed that India's best-known tourist attraction and one of the wonders of the modern world can only be accessed by small back streets. We had a few hundred yards to walk through a bazaar full of merchants all of whom didn't seem to want to take no for an answer. As we approached the entrance a new nuisance became evident in the "local tour guides" offering to give us a narrated tour. If you've seen Slumdog Millionaire, this isn't too far from the truth. After paying about 20 times more to enter the grounds than Indians (surely I should have had half off?) we were suddenly in a different world. Yes, there were lots of tourists and their guides, but the oppressiveness of the small streets had given way to a large court yard and as we walked towards the archway the famous view of the gleaming marble shrine came into view. Somehow marble manages to change colour in different lights in a way few other materials can manage. The monument itself seemed to gleam.





Emma and I left my parents to their guide (you have to give in to them else they will follow you round the whole thing - it's easier just to give them 50p and take their narration). After slowly walking around and through the Taj Mahal the sun had shifted and the monument took on a golden appearance as we headed out. The incredible thing about the Taj Mahal is that it is situated in the middle of an industrial city. In fact, from the Taj View, the Taj appears nestled among towers, chimneys and factories, but when you in the boundaries of the Taj you simply can't see any of that - it's as if the Taj Mahal grounds are surrounded by trees. The view across the river is to the proposed site of the black Taj Mahal that was planned as the mausoleum of Shah Jahan - the man who built the Taj Mahal as a mausoleum to his wife. Unfortunately he was deposed and imprisoned in the nearby Agra Fort by his son. Our trip took us on to the Fort and then back to the hotel for an awesome world-cuisine buffet.