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Published: February 4th 2008
We arrived late into Mumbai and got a taxi straight to our hotel (Pals Hotel). We'd booked our hotel through the internet and knew it was a little bit out of the way but the reviews were ok and it was cheap for Mumbai. In the morning, when we left to explore, we quickly realised that they don't get too many foreign visitors in this neighbourhood. Everybody had a curious face as if to ask ‘what are you doing here’? The young kids playing in the street stood motionless, staring as if we'd just landed on a space ship.
We strolled up to an intersection, sharing pleasantries with the bemused locals and jumped into a cab and headed for the Fort Area. The first thing to strike us about Mumbai was the noise. Taxi's, trucks, buses and bikes use their horns to compete for the road. Buses and truck's horns sound like they're off 'the Dukes of Hazard'. The locals must be immune to the blare or they have just gone deaf.
Occasionally you see traffic lights but anybody who's foolish enough to stop at them gets a torrent of abuse from the vehicles behind. It's a battle getting
through traffic and only the stray cows are sacred. They seem to safely meander where they chose, chomping on whatever they’ve scavenged for breakfast.
Mumbai was a crazy place and you can easily spend hours standing on the roadside trying to make sense of what is going on around you. We spent a couple of days there before heading to Rajasthan. The highlight of our time in Mumbai though was catching a commuter train into town (cost 4 rupees - 5p).
The trains are rammed and for the first couple of stops you literally hang onto a pole on the side of the train, trying to squeeze more of your foot onto the hotly contested ledge below. It’s easy to see how 10 commuters die everyday doing the same journey as it would be easy to lose you grip and you have to pull yourself in every so often to avoid telegraph poles.
Mumbai CST station is the busiest station in Asia with 2million people passing through it every day. You’re herded out like cattle as people stream down the walkways. A stray dog was sleeping in the middle of the walkway without a care in the
world, oblivious of the thousand of feet traipsing past every minute. He woke up every 10 minutes or so, had a look around, a scratch and then went back to kip.
Other highlights included; watching local kids playing cricket at the Oval Maidan, a few hundred kids generated more atmosphere than 30,000 people at the MCG. Eating spicy veg samosas at a roads side café, we quickly got into the habit of eating curry for breakfast lunch and dinner.
We also visited Elephanta Island and got our first lesson about India - you rarely get what you pay for. We paid the 150 rupees for a guided tour of the cave sculptures on Elephanta Island. The boat took us across Mumbai harbour and when landing at the Island, our guide was no where to be seen and we had to pay a further 10 rupees tourist tax to get onto the island from the walkway. After we made our way up to the Cave’s entrance we were then told we had to pay another 250 rupees to see the caves and a guide would cost another 100 rupees on top of that.
We had a guide book
so didn’t bother with the guide and in hindsight we should have trusted our instincts and left before paying the extra 250 rupees. The cave sculptures were disappointing to say the least. Most of them had worn away and some had steal supports which belied their 1600 year age. The 410 rupees we paid each (about 5 pound) hardly dented our budget but it did leave us a bit miffed that we’d been conned or misled. The commuter train cost 1% of that and was 100 times better.
When crossing the harbour to get back from Elephanta Island, you realize just how polluted the city is. In a similar way to the Salt Flats in Bolivia, the horizon disappears as land and air merge into one. However unlike the Salt Flats where the phenomenon is caused by the sun reflecting off the salt, in Mumbai the horizon is lost as the choking smog settles on the toxic gray waters of Mumbai harbour.
In Mumbai Gemma was given the name ‘freak show’ by Tom as everybody stared at her (women, children, dogs but mainly men.) Gemma was a bit freaked out by it as she was dressed conservatively. Tom’s
Look out world .....
Tom's learning how to cook curry.reassurances, that it was because she looked exotic, did little to ease how uncomfortable she felt.
Even though Gemma was wearing a baggy jumper with a high neck, most of the men still tried to ogle her tits. There was one instance, as we were waiting to meet Tom’s old work mate Devanshi, which had Tom in hysterics. A creepy old man lingered next to us pretending to look at the shop sign above us and then when he thought we weren’t looking, stared directly at Gemma’s chest from about a foot away. He was as unsubtle as you could get and should have just stood and stared like everybody else.
Gemma’s freak show circus was gaining momentum and when we were waiting to get the bus up to Rajasthan, a small group of people gathered to stand and stare. We were tempted to start charging or put a tin out for donations, but thought better of it.
It took 19hours on our ‘sleeper class’ super deluxe bus to get to Udaipur in Rajasthan. Our compartment was the size of a coffin and made us feel like we were in a fish bowl, as we were surrounded
by Perspex and everybody who got on the bus had a good look at us.
We basically had to lie down the whole time, which was ok as it was mostly at night and it made it easier to sleep. In the morning we watched out as the sun rose over the rugged Rajasthan desert.
Udaipur was a magical place. It’s focal point, Lake Pichola, has two palaces built on islands in the middle of the lake; the Lake Palace Hotel, famous from the James Bond film ‘Octopussy’ and Jagmandir Island, where Tom’s friend Devanshi was lucky enough to get married.
Surrounding the lake are numerous other palaces, including the largest palace in Rajasthan , the City Palace. We spent a few days in Udaipur having a look around the palaces and watching the sunset over the lake from one of many roof top restaurants.
Udaipur was our favourite place in India for a number of reasons, excluding the beautiful palaces. We did a cooking course in a local lady’s, Shashi, house. We learnt to cook many of the staple Indian foods including chapattis, pakora, naan, the basic masala curry paste, chutney, biryani, masala tea and
paneer. The 5 hour lesson was enthralling and we not only learnt about food, but also got an interesting insight into the local life.
The busy lanes and bazaars that made up the city centre were jam packed with touts, rickshaws, cows, donkey’s and the occasional elephant. Walking through them and especially watching down on them from a roof top restaurant, chomping on a veg curry, was great fun and our few days there seemed to fly past.
Remarkably in our first week in India, Tom didn’t eat meat once, probably something he hasn’t achieved since he stopped breast feeding. But with a great selection of lentil, chickpea and mixed veg curries, it was easy to see why.
We got another super deluxe sleeper bus up to Jaipur, but not before a quick ride with ‘The Power’ in his rickshaw. He sped us along in his pimped up rickshaw. It had leopard print seats, disco lights and speakers pumping out the theme music from ‘Top Gun’. Meanwhile ‘The Power’ rapped (very badly) over the music. It was one of the most surreal things we have done in the last 10 months and the memory will stay with
us forever.
Jaipur was our next stop and it is famous for the ‘old pink city’. Whoever named it pink must be colour blind as it’s more peach and not even a supernova could make those walls look pink. We got a tour around the city with a rickshaw driver called Lucky. He was a bit of joker until he got a ticket off a policeman and a 500 rupee fine. He wasn’t so funny nor lucky after that.
We visited the City Palace, its observatory and museum, as well as a couple of forts sitting on a hill high above the city. The whole day felt like we were ticking boxes on a list of sights. The museum had very little on the local people and lots about the Maharajah’s polo team winning World Cups.
The palaces and forts were a little run down and it was interesting to see that the only restoration work being done was by very young children, maybe 7 or 8, on one of the forts walls. I wonder if Prince Charles knows that one of his Polo fraternity uses child labour.
We only stayed a day in Jaipur before
The city palace Jaipur
This was supposedly pink like the rest of the city. getting the early train to Agra. The first hour of the train journey was bizarre. We were in the cattle class section with reserved seating. As the train arrived there was a mad scramble to get on. People were jumping through the windows and elbowing each other to get on board first.
Once on board the musical chairs started. Despite everybody having a reserved seat, people just sat where they liked. It was pandemonium, but slowly people sat in the correct seat as they were moved on by the correct ticket holder. The situation wasn’t helped by the lack of lights for the first 5 minutes.
The whole process took about an hour and at the end everybody was seated on the carriage with a few places left over. Maybe they just wanted to kill time so the train journey seemed shorter. One thing is for sure, if there was a musical chairs world championship, India would come last.
During the pandemonium Gemma had a guy grinding himself up against her and made Tom laugh with her retort ‘Please stop rubbing your little dick against me’.
Agra is home to the Taj Mahal, Agra Fort and
thousands of the most irritating touts, trying every trick they can muster to extract money from western tourists. Even the train guard at Agra Fort Station tried it on. He was pulling over every western passenger and demanding to see their tickets or they’d have to pay a large fine. Before you had a chance to get your ticket out he was demanding money.
We quickly found our tickets and told him where to go. Outside the touts were on us like flies around shit and Gemma had another opportunity to use her new favourite word, ‘chalor’, which an Indian travel agent told us roughly translates to ‘go away’ or ‘eff off’.
We visited Agra Fort and got a tour from an old bloke called Amit Khan. He was priceless and his tour was the best thing in Agra, including the Taj itself. He was a small elderly gentleman with purple eye liner, a walking stick and was kitted out in Islamic robes. His sentence structure was similar to Yoda’s and for 60minutes we were his pupils. He tested us on what he had told us and on various religious facts and traditions.
If we answered correctly
he said ‘bless you my child’ and shook our hands. If we were incorrect we had to guess again and he would give us more clues. With Tom’s listening skills and Gemma’s academic credentials, it was easy to see why our tour over ran by an hour.
He was most disappointed that we never guessed what the Taj Mahal was actually built for (a mausoleum just in case you didn’t know). Some of the stories he told us conflicted with what we had read and been told, but they more magical and you can’t argue with a Jedi.
We visited the Taj Mahal around sunset, as this is when the changing sunlight makes the white marble appear different colours. The consensus is; you rock up a couple of hours before sunset, soak up the atmosphere and enjoy the splendor as the Taj subtly changes colour. If you haven’t got time to do this, just look at it with and without your sunglasses on. It has the same effect and will save you a couple of hours.
The only other highlight in Agra was sitting in the window of a restaurant and being startled as three camels looked
in, eagerly sizing up our dinner.
We got the early train to Delhi the next day and should have gone straight up to Chandigarh, but our reservation was never confirmed. On the train a group of local lads tried to intimidate us out of our reserved seats. As they were only hassling us and none of the other Indian passengers, Gemma ignored her own advice - to ignore them and told the ring leader in no uncertain terms where he could go.
As we were coming into Delhi on the train, Tom looked out of the window and saw a bloke have a dump on the pavement at a level crossing and then watched him wipe his butt with his hand. Tom didn’t know what was more disturbing, what the bloke did (with a big grin on his face) or the fact that nobody around the lad seemed to notice or look remotely put off or offended.
Unfortunately that wasn’t the most disturbing thing Tom saw in Delhi. On the main bazaar near New Delhi station, a traumatised disabled bloke was getting harassed by a couple of kids. They were basically taunting him as they kicked his begging bowl away from him. The bloke had no legs and was obviously in distress.
The episode was troubling in itself, but was made worse by the fact the kids parents and shop vendors nearby were laughing at what was happening. It was one of the only times Tom has given money to a beggar, but he still felt angry after it had happened. Angry that people could be so callous, but also angry for not opening up a can of whoop-ass on them (although he probably would have got a kicking).
By now we’d had enough of the uglier side of India and holed ourselves up in a nice clean hotel with cable T.V for 24 hours. The only time we left was to get pizza, coke and lemon drizzle cake. Although this might not seem particularly cultural, it was to us.
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