Dear followers
First of all, apologies to those of you who were expecting a frequent flow of finger on the pulse live travelogues from the Sage during my five weeks in India. Despite my best intentions, intermittent half hours of internet browsing seemed to evaporate into a flurry of Facebook updates and football score checking, leaving no time for more detailed (some would say bloated and verbose) musings.
Now I'm back on home soil and with plenty of time on my hands as I dip my toe unenthusiastically back into the employment market, I will do my best to update you on my travels through a series of unapologetically self-indulgent ramblings.
Rewind nearly six weeks, and I stepped off an overnight flight to Delhi and ambled straight into my first experience of the Indians' impressive persistence in trying to sell you things you couldn't possibly want. After introductory pleasantries (where are you from, what is your job, are you married, what are the names of all your family and their life stories etc) I was asked by my taxi driver if I wanted to go and buy a carpet as he could get a very good price. Now let me think about this. I've just got off a 9 hour flight, I've been up for nearly 24 hours and I probably smell. So, with the greatest of respect, I think I'd rather just go to my hotel and get some sleep, thanks all the same.
"How about a scarf. I have very nice scarves, very good price." Errr... still no I'm afraid. "Perhaps a shirt for you sir, very good price." That's very kind, but I have everything I need thanks, please can you take me to my hotel now. "Yes sir, no problem sir. But first, do you want to buy a carpet?"
I was begrudgingly dropped off at my destination and the first person I met as I stepped out of the cab was a beggar with no legs. "Welcome to India sir," he said in flawless English. Delhi is certainly no place for those in search of a sanitised, perfectly manicured city break. The roads are a chaotic maelstrom of honking tuk tuks, fume-spluttering cars and kamikaze cyclists, with no traffic system whatsoever to control it. I swiftly learnt that the only way to get anywhere was to simply stride out confidently into the sea of vehicles and hope they decided to drive around me rather than through me. Surprisingly, this system works rather well for both pedestrian and motorist, and I found that in India in general the kind of hair raising incidents that would provoke severe road rage in the UK are simply shrugged off as part and parcel of trying to get from A to B.
Delhi is also widely considered to be the most polluted place on earth, and after a few hours there, my throat felt like I'd gone back to my 20 Marlboro Reds a day habit of my student years. The city's pavements also need to be negotiated with care, not just because of the yawning potholes and cracks big enough for an elephant to fall down, but also the streams of urine sprayed onto the street by the local population, who seem willing to unzip with a cock-flapping abandon that rivals the most weak-bladdered Saturday night drunk. And then there's the grinding poverty, not just individual beggars, some with horrific deformities, but whole families living together in makeshift shacks of cloth, wood and scrap iron, mothers cooking and children playing as the rest of the world walks past seemingly oblivious to their desperate yet strangely orderly lives.
Despite all of these things, I loved Delhi. There's no better place to immerse yourself in the whole spectrum of Indian society, which lest we forget has more dollar billionaires than the UK and one of the fastest growing economies in the world as well as an estimated 250 million people living below the poverty line. New Delhi's grand government buildings and wide, leafy boulevards would not look out of place in Paris, while the old city's labyrinthine bazaar, ancient mosques and temples are typical of India's rich cultural heritage. Historical sites of interest are everywhere, from the serenely peaceful Gandhi Smrti (where the great man was assassinated) to the awe-inspiring Qutb Minar mosque complex, which boasts the world's tallest minaret.
I could quite happily have spent another few days exploring India's capital, but the tour I'd joined was now underway and my next stop was Jaipur, the famous Pink City of Rajasthan. This really is the quintessential India many of us will have seen in the history books - impossibly grand and colourful palaces and forts, occupied by fierce native princes perched imperiously on their war elephants. India's a republic these days, but many of the old royal families still reside in their ancestral homes, making sure the memories of their illustrious past are kept alive.
While there was much to see and enjoy in Jaipur - I made a characteristically uncoordinated attempt at Rajastanhi folk dancing, and even tried on a sari - the city will for me forever be associated with my first (and thankfully last) bout of Delhi Belly.
I was sticking to my pre-trip pledge to go veggie, and had sailed through my first few days in India without the slightest hint of a rogue bowel movement. But as I sat down to my aloo gobi after a most enjoyable evening at a Bollywood cinema (watching, somewhat bizarrely, a Hindi film about a British Asian cricketer in London) I knew that something was wrong as I felt a surging sickness moving up from my stomach. I barely left the bathroom for the next 9 hours, which developed into a ghastly combination of an industrial mudchute on overdrive and an audition for the part of the possessed girl in The Exorcist. The next morning I was so drained I could barely pack my suitcase, and it took all my remaining energy to drag my Immodium-riddled body onto the bus where I lay pitifully hoping that my pants would survive the forthcoming three hour journey.
I later concluded that the culprit was not some devilishly spiced Indian concoction, but rather a humble vegetarian pizza , consumed in a supposedly reputable Jaipur restaurant which also claimed several other victims in our group over the next 24 hours. The Sage spent the next 24 hours on a frugal diet of water and rehydration tablets, weary but determined to mount a full recovery as his visit to the Taj Mahal drew ever closer.
TO BE CONTINUED...
