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Published: November 16th 2010
After having somewhat fortuitously made it back to India from Nepal, it could be said that this is now my third visit to the country. Regardless of semantics, I have now spent many months in this most beguiling of countries without yet having had to stay in the infamous tourist ghetto of Pahar Ganj. On my travels in India I usually try and spend as little time as possible in her megacities, visiting them only when circumstance dictates that I should; in this case it was the arrival of my brother Miles from Hyderabad that necessitated my coming to Delhi. I have been here before, briefly, at the end of my last visit, but I did not stay the night and so I was unsure of what to expect. I suppose, from all I have read and the stories I have been told, that I was expecting something a little like the Khao San road in Bangkok, only dirtier and with far more hassle. What I found was something akin to a war zone.
We arrived at dusk after a long and exhausting bus ride from the border town of Banbasa on a bus seemingly not fit for twenty kilometres,
let alone the four hundred that it surprisingly managed. It was a shame, however, that it could not be bothered to travel a couple more, as Anny and I, along with fifty other disgruntled passengers, were made to get down at the city's perimeter, a good twenty kilometres from the centre and coincidentally right next to a swarm of waiting rickshaws. We made the journey, paid the rickshaw-wallah, shouldered our packs and went looking for a hotel. I had barely taken three steps when, low and to my left, I saw a blinding flash of brilliant white light which was almost instantaneously followed by an immense boom. Seconds later another, closer this time, literally shook the ground beneath my feet and had me spinning round to Anny, my heart thumping against my breast. Soon the whole street was illuminated by concurrent flashes that were so close together that the flashes created a stroboscopic effect that made the crowds of people that were running about seem as though they were from an ancient black and white movie; only definitely a talky as the sound from the explosions was deafening, disorientating. Khao San road this most definitely was not.
Those who
understand India and who have checked the date this blog was posted will know that rather than describing a war zone, the previous paragraph was an attempt at describing how it felt to arrive in Delhi during Diwali, the Indian festival of lights. At this time of year Hindus celebrate the victory of the female warrior God Durga over the demon Ravana, the prevailing of good over evil, light over dark. It marks the longest night of the year and is celebrated in many ways, often with just the family, but the most apparent manifestation of this important festival being in the lighting of candles and literally millions of fireworks, firecrackers, cherry-bombs and, so it seemed, dirty great sticks of dynamite! It was a spectacular welcome to an otherwise fairly dour city and a great reintroduction to India; her population being given greater license than usual during this festival to exhibit and unleash their inner child and latent eccentricity. We got very little sleep that night.
In the morning on the way to meet my brother, with the streets relatively empty and only a few bangers still being lighted, the street looked entirely normal, for an Indian city anyway,
and nothing like as bad as I feared, or was lead to believe. It had none of the neon-glamour of the Khao San road and it lacked a little of the charm of Thamel in Kathmandu; but it was cheap, well connected, and friendly. I wouldn't say I was smitten, but I'll now take its side in an argument and gladly defend its honour against any further malicious attacks on its integrity that I hear. However, this blog is not supposed to be about Delhi, but rather about another much maligned character who, much like Pahar Ganj, is a little dirty, a bit worn around the edges, very accommodating to weary travellers and always appreciative of a good flash followed by a big bang: my brother Miles; it's just that it can sometimes take me a while to get to the point which is something that I've been reliably informed cannot be said about him.
We met Miles at Delhi's domestic terminal and immediately went to grab some lunch. I deliberately chose the grubbiest little Dhaba in the area in an attempt to shock him a little, but my dastardly ploy did not work. He loved the food, was
charmed by the filth and even went into the kitchen to take some pictures on his I-phone; the better to convince his friends back in New York that he had indeed eaten in such an "authentic" establishment. Miles had already been in India for almost four weeks when we met him, working in Hyderabad doing some kind of finance type thing, but had, excepting a trip to Mumbai, been living mostly in his five star hotel and at the office. I must admit that finding my attempts to discomfort him prove unsuccessful rattled me somewhat; I resolved to try harder. My next attempt to unsettle him involved a train trip from Delhi to Kota. I should have booked us all in general class, as 2nd class sleeper had as little effect on his sensibilities as the grubby Dhaba in Delhi had. Thankfully, the three eunuchs that sashayed over to us on the platform for backsheesh had him momentarily discomforted, but as soon as they proved themselves friendly he was happily posing with them for photos!
We arrived in Kota pretty late and decided that to get a quick but expensive taxi to Bundi was a better option than the
longer, but cheaper bus that I had planned. Unfortunately, due to it still being Diwali, there were no taxis to be found, so we were left with no choice but to revert to the original plan. This proved to be a blessing in disguise though, as Indian driving, a phenomenon that I'm now thankfully entirely inured to, had Miles gripping his seat in abject terror each and every time the bus made a ridiculously dangerous overtaking manoeuvre. I smiled a satisfied smile. I was worried that as we were arriving so late in Bundi that we would struggle to find any accommodation. This fear was indeed momentarily realised, as my preferred Haveli, the one I've now stayed at twice, had its gates locked and firmly secured, but ultimately proved groundless as, from a window above us and across the street, a women called out and beckoned us inside her home. She had two rooms available in which we could sleep and, even more generously, offered to cook us all a thali, even though by then it was almost midnight.
The best thing about travelling with my brother for four days, apart from the obvious pleasures of catching up with
each others lives, sharing experiences and causing mischief, was to be able to view India vicariously through his fresh and unsullied eyes. Sights, which for me have become so common as to be almost normal, had Miles staring goggle eyed in amazement. I took such great pleasure in watching my brothers reactions to all the crazy minutiae of India which, these days, can often seem to me almost mundane. Waking up that first morning in Bundi was a perfect example. My brother and I ordered some chai and climbed onto the roof of the Haveli to watch the lazy winter sun climb out of the mist and into the pale blue sky. We could see the immense palace to our left, the lake to our right, and in between them a jumble of flat blue roofs of various heights across which vast troupes of Langur and Macacques marauded. Miles was completely enraptured with the mischievous simians and so, thanks to his refreshingly innocent pleasure in what is, no matter how jaded I have become, an amazing sight, was I.
After a delicious breakfast of Aloo Parathas and some incredible homemade Gulab Jamuns, we hired a couple of scooters and
sped off on a tour of the beautiful countryside that surrounds Bundi. Here again, the regular sights and sounds of normal Indian country life had Miles almost stacking his bike on numerous occasions, and in the process allowed me to fall in love with the country anew. Bullock carts trundled past with huge loads of hay, being driven by sun-blackened men in Dhotis and with the oxen's horns painted blue and the bells about their necks softly clanging; buffalo, goats and cows were constant obstacles to avoid on the road, as were speeding buses which carried hundreds of grinning Indians on the roof; men women and children bathed, washed clothes and played in the lotus covered lakes while kingfishers buzzed overhead; men at the chai stalls inundated us with friendly but personal questions; monkeys grabbed at our bags of prasad as we climbed the steps of a temple; and little boys squatted by the side of the road to shit, waving at us with their free (right) hand as we passed.
That evening, acting on a tip we received from the effeminate and friendly artist whom Anny and I had commissioned to paint our portrait, we rode our scooters
to the small village of Barudia, where we were told we would find an interesting local festival. After driving for a while down some increasingly narrow and rutted country roads, we knew we were nearing the village when we were joined by a whole squadron of other bikes, most of which were carrying far more people than I believe was strictly safe and whose passengers were all in very high spirits and clearly heading, or returning to, the festival. We parked our bikes in a ditch with several hundred others and made the rest of our way on foot. The first sight that greeted us was that of a large crowd gathered round something that I could not see for the teeming mass of bodies. I squeezed my way into the throng and found that they were all gazing reverently and boisterously at a huge rock that was covered in vermilion tika and sitting in the middle of the road.
We left this enraptured group to their rock watching and walked a little further into the village, passing as we did some beautiful but simple Rajasthani farmhouses and all the while finding more and more inebriated revellers, forcing us
to jostle for space in the village's narrow streets. It was getting almost uncomfortably crowded so we were very relieved when a kind woman made some space for us on the steps of her house; a little bit of compacted mud from which we were able to view the increasingly strange happenings in relative comfort and safety. I cannot tell you the genesis of this festival, its name, its history, nothing; all I can say to you, as I did to Miles' frequent pleas for an explanation to the weirdness, is that I have no idea what this is about, but what I can say for certain, is that it is most definitely absolutely mental. If the proceeding few days had been for me a simple jaunt through the known, loved and understood, that evening was to prove its antithesis. I had not a clue as to what was happening and loved it all the more for this reason. If I believed that my many months in India had inoculated me against her beautiful weirdness then this festival was very quickly proving the medicine entirely ineffective; this was very, very strange indeed.
As we neared the festivals epicentre the
first man who greeted us was wearing a ridiculous hat, an outrageous false beard, had a manic grin on his face and was pointing an archaic rifle directly at our heads whilst laughing manically. This was but a taste of the madness to come. Hundreds of other men were dancing in the streets to the rhythmic banging of drums, most of whom were clearly off their rockers on bhang, opium, or perhaps just possessed by the insistent thumping of the tablas. Everyone was dressed up in some form of costume: some were made up as Rajput warriors, riding on elaborate hobby horses that they bounced and rocked along the street; others were wearing huge conical hats that bobbed and swayed three feet above their dancing heads; we saw a scary bear and a man, I assume it was a man, in a full tiger costume; some had huge great parasols that they waved and swung as they jigged; most had giant lathis that they would wave ecstatically in the air and one man, in lieu of some bamboo was waving a florescent tube with relish. The drummers drummed, the dancers danced, the gunmen terrified us, the tiger leapt and roared
and everyone watching cheered them on till the frenzied atmosphere degenerated into near anarchy.
Amongst all the dancing horses and crazed, possessed men in hats, were a line of some twenty pairs of enormous bulls who were yoked together and joined by two thick, long ropes. The bulls were all fantastically decorated, with brightly painted horns, liveried heads, jewelled necklaces, and all of them had been entirely covered in Henna, leaving their bodies dyed with beautiful pink whorls and intricate Indian symbols. We were stood in the relative calm of a side street watching the unfolding madness when from behind us rushed a group of Indian men, quickly followed by a pair of the most gargantuan bulls I have ever seen. These creatures, with testicles as big as watermelons and horns as long and as thick as my arm, were being pulled, greatly against their will, towards the village's main street to be harnessed in line with their bovine brothers. I was almost gored by the lunging horns of the angered lead bull and was saved only by a friendly villager pulling me up and onto a wall. It transpired that the reason for this line of tethered bulls
was for them to attempt to drag the huge rock that I mentioned earlier, the entire length of the village. The reason for this I could not fathom, nor did I care to ask, but at the first attempt the combined muscle of the assembled cows was such that it snapped the two inch rope clean in half.
After my near miss we decided that enough was most definitely enough, and in the last remaining light of the day we braved the traffic and made our way back to Bundi; a journey that was made comparatively tame by the sights we had just witnessed. To calm our nerves we decided to dine in the garden of the Lake view paying guest house, which is our favourite place in Bundi to eat, thanks entirely to the exquisite skills of the chef Tony (Pravesh Kumar Sajni). If you are in a hurry then this is absolutely not the place to eat, you will only become frustrated and loose whatever appetite you had. Tony takes pride in cooking all his dishes to order from scratch using only perfectly fresh ingredients. Unfortunately, most of the time he has forgotten to order very many
of these and each meal normally requires him to take at least three trips to the market to replace those items he's forgotten. But, if you have the time to put up with his aberrations of memory, then I can assure you of a genuine culinary blast.
Try the incredible pumpkin curry which is a spicy dream with heady notes of ginger and cardamom or, if you have at least two hours in which to wait in the gorgeously shanti garden by the lake, then try his Rajasthani Special Thali. He will freshly bake huge, individual rounds of delicious brown bread; you will get the best Vegetable Biryani you have ever tasted, decorated with pomegranate seeds and coriander; you will drool as you tuck into the finest dhal and an exquisite vegetable curry and be amazed at the delicacy of his curd raitha. All this will be served with a choice of homemade pickles and followed by a selection of homemade sweets. If you are able to finish this incredible spread then you are a better masticator than I; and I've not met many who are. This being our second stay this trip in Bundi and my third in
total, we have had the pleasure of becoming very good friends with Tony, his incredibly beautiful wife Chatna (see the pics) and their twin sons Laya and Kush. If I did not have to act as Miles' tour guide then I'm sure that Anny and I could of happily spent our entire time here under the spreading tree in the Haveli's garden chatting to Tony, playing with his kids, enjoying his food and laughing as he chases monkeys out of the tree with his monkey stick and unique monkey-scaring-mantra.
Our time with Miles being short, our plans unfortunately necessitated us leaving earlier than we would ideally have liked, to catch the night train to Agra. The journey, even though it was on an incessantly stopping slow passenger, passed in relative ease; with Miles most definitely having the most fun, this being his first night on a train. We arrived in Agra at 6am and, having been there before, I had Anny and Miles suitably forewarned about the hassle that lay ahead and we were all braced for the worst. Sure enough, seconds after disembarking we were met by a rickshaw driver offering to take us anywhere, wherever we pleased,
just so long as we went with him. In India, indeed when travelling anywhere that is new and foreign, the only sure measure of a situation, or a person, are your instincts, and mine were telling me to trust this guy. As we had a train out of Agra at 2pm that afternoon I asked him to take us to Agra Cantonment station from where we would be later departing, as I wanted to place our heavy bags in lugged storage, the better to allow us to enjoy the few hours of hectic sightseeing we had planned for the day.
Ameen, for that was our drivers name, immediately rubbished our plans and quickly suggested an alternative, something that always has my bullshit radar pinging furiously and normally has me shouting back, "could you please kindly just take me where I want to go". But, as he gently explained, a much better option would be to take a single room for 100INR at a hotel he knows and to store your bags there, that way saving a long return trip to the station and also giving you somewhere to freshen up. I'm sure Ameen got a little kickback from the
hotel, and well he should, for his suggestion saved us a great deal of time and money. Ameen was keen for us to hire him as our driver for the day, something that I was initially reluctant to agree to, but after this show of honesty I decided that it would actually be to our benefit, but only at a reduced rate from the one he initially wanted. He easily agreed to the new terms and just seemed genuinely happy to have some custom for the day. Again, my now well tuned Indian instincts proved invaluable as Ameen was a funny, honest, genuine, caring and intelligent guide to the several sights of Agra which we rushed around to see.
We saw, briefly and in no particular order, either chronological or of importance or grandeur; the Taj Mahal, the Baby Taj, the Red Fort, the Yamuna river and a couple of lovely eateries. They were all what they were and were all there to be looked at. The Taj is, you know, very impressive and stunningly beautiful, especially in the early morning light in which we viewed it. Trouble is, when all is said and done, it is only a
building and my memories of the Taj are now mostly of messing around with Miles, taking pictures of him and Anny in the funny red bags that we were forced to wear on our feet to enter the main tomb. Such are the vagaries of the human mind; ours anyway. The same was true for the other sights we saw; at the Red Fort we had more fun playing with the incredibly tame palm squirrels than we did marvelling at the size and strength of India's premier fort, and my abiding memory is of Anny being pressed ganged into a group photo with a bunch of friendly, but entirely unknown Indian tourists. At the Baby Taj (my architectural favourite) I remember a persistent postcard seller of ten or so who, with his quick whit and fierce intelligence, managed to persuade me to buy a book of postcards that I really did not want nor need. It was a fun day, but we all agreed that in hindsight we'd happily have swapped it for another day in Bundi.
After all the sightseeing and playing at being tourists was over the incomparable Ameen drove us to the station where we thanked
him, tipped him generously (for me) and went to enquire about our waitlisted train. I was a little worried that we would not have any confirmed seats, but in the end my fears proved pointless as it transpired that our train was running several hours late. This was a shame as we had hoped to get back to Delhi in time for a final meal before Miles' flight the following morning, but it was looking as though this was going to be an impossibility. We got lucky though. While waiting forlornly on platform three a train, bound for Nizamuddin in Delhi, came to a very brief stop before slowly pulling out again as it was not scheduled to stop there. We made a very hasty decision to grab our bags and make a run for the moving train, hoping that if we got on we would be able to somehow blag ourselves a seat. We managed to haul ourselves and our heavy bags on board before the train had gained too much momentum and thankfully found the carriage to be almost empty. We sat next to a young lad who was travelling to see his sister and he informed us
that we were on what passes for an express in India, and that we would arrive an hour earlier than the train I had a reservation for. Better yet, no inspector troubled us for our tickets so we made the journey entirely free of charge.
Our luck ran out though as soon as we disembarked, as the taxi driver who we hailed to take us to Miles' hotel in Delhi, who assured us that he knew its location, spent an hour and a half getting himself increasingly lost and frustrated. Right up until the last minute I was giving him the benefit of the doubt that he was trying his best to help us, but when he suggested we take a cycle rickshaw the final two kilometres as the road he wanted to go down was now barred to all motor traffic, and when upon asking a passerby if our hotel was indeed "just around the corner" as he said and finding out that in fact we were an hours drive away, I lost my last, hard earned and proudly possessed vestiges of cool and compassion and told him where to go. Not literally of course, as I had
no idea where the hotel was, but with a series of blunt, sexual metaphors. We grabbed our bags and gave him 200INR, rather than the 400INR we had previously agreed. To be fair to him, he took both my money and my abuse with considerable good grace. Across the road we found another taxi firm, and a comfortable hours ride in a yellow and black ambassador later and we were at the hotel where all three of us were to be staying under Miles' kind patronage, the Hilton Hotel, Delhi!
The proceeding three days were all about myself and Anny giving Miles a small taste of our lifestyle as poor, itinerant travellers; the night spent in the Hilton was all about Miles showing us what could have been possible if only I were as dedicated, studious and hardworking as he. To be honest, my bloody brother has gone and spoilt the entire rest of the trip for us. After the ridiculous luxury to which he so generously treated us, a 200INR room in a simple guest house is never, ever again going to be "not a bad room for the price". The room had everything; a huge plasma television;
a massive bed with the softest, whitest linen; a shower room with a rain shower, and curtains that descended electronically to either afford privacy, or a view of the telly as you took a long, luxurious dump. To our battle hardened bones it really was a room of quite exquisitely, almost excessively, plush comfort. Once the dust of three days were scrubbed, massaged and lotioned from our stinking bodies we repaired downstairs to the bar, where we sat and drank tall glasses of Gin and Tonics. Oh how my mouth aches for that crisp, sharp tang as I write this now; Miles you bastard, you've spoiled it all, ruined it all I tell you!
Gin followed gin, which was accompanied by nuts and a gorgeously voiced live singer, which was followed by a dinner of pasta, club sandwiches, curries and beer. After dinner we retired to our room, but not before availing ourselves of a final cocktail which we had sent up to our room, mostly just because we could. The best though, for me anyway, was saved for the morning. After a deliciously pampered night under a huge, downy duvet, we went downstairs to partake of the breakfast
buffet. Oh, what a selection of such long denied, heavenly pleasures were arrayed on plates and in platters for my blissful perusal and none to pretty consumption. I don't think I have ever eaten quite so much in one siting my entire life. Bacon, yes bacon, my love, my life, my lifetime breakfast partner from whom I've been so long divorced was lying there looking so beautiful and crisp, just waiting for a happy reunion with my slavering chops. Not only bacon but sausages, grilled tomatoes, mushrooms, hash browns, beans, brie, camembert, emental, danishes, salamis, ham, breads, juices, fruit, cereals..... I ate the lot, twice, and made a large doggy bag for later.
And there ended our little adventure with my brother Miles. It was such a pleasure to be able to show him a little of our life on the road and to share in his amazement at those things that, to my shame, I'd been starting to take for granted, and I know that he got a pretty big kick out of treating us to a night at the Hilton and showing me a little of how he lives. Unfortunately, after saying goodbye to Miles we had
only another hour in which to relax in our room, a hermetically sealed, air conditioned bolt hole from the madness of Delhi that lay under a cloud of smog, unheard, smelt or tasted just outside our window. I felt a little guilty about the luxury we had enjoyed those past few hours, more so than I usually do when faced with the abject poverty that is always present in India. To make some small amends, Anny decided to distribute our Hilton breakfast doggy bag amongst the street kids who we knew we'd find later that day at the station, and for my part, I rinsed room service for a bag load more toiletries that, though I'm sure the street kids could have found use for them, I'm sorry to say were purely for ourselves! We left the hotel, a little more apprehensively than usual, and made our way to New Delhi Station, where reality was to return with a vengeance in the form of a 26 hour train journey, but that, and the destination it eventually bought us to, are for the next blog, my final one from India. All that is left is to say a huge thank you to my incredible brother Miles for making those four days some of my best yet on this trip and to thank him for his amazing generosity. That and to again let him know that, with his above mentioned largess, he has fatally compromised the remainder of our trip! Bastard!
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Miles Tyrrell
non-member comment
Amazing!
I just read through this at work and at times was genuinely laughing out loud to myself at my desk as it brought back all the memories!! Really great narrative of our adventures together!! Again for the millionth time - thank you guys SO much for treating me to a slice of your travels! Great, great times :o)