Daniel Sahib and Rachel Memsahib visit the land of the Kings (part one)

After three days of flying and sitting in various airports (including one leg of the journey on a private jet!), we arrived in Delhi at around 5 in the morning. This meant that our first view of the city was of a relatively calm and relaxed post-colonial town drowsing through the early hours. We checked into our hotel (one which I suspect was designed after reading an improperly translated description of a European ‘boutique’ hotel) and slept awhile. We woke to discover that first impressions are often wrong: Delhi is as chaotic and seething megopolis as I have ever seen. The hotel was in the Parharganj area, by the main station, and a haven, so the guidebook would have it, for backpackers. What the guidebook didn’t tell us was that Parharganj was in the process of being demolished (presumably to be rebuilt) in time for the Commonwealth Games this coming Autumn. I have lived in and visited many towns and cities where urban regeneration is the norm – London is continuously reinventing itself and you can’t drive away a parked car in Sheffield without someone building a block of flats on the space you vacate, but I have never seen an entire street being demolished while people walk along it and without any of the shops whose fronts are being reduced to rubble closing, even temporarily. After nearly being brained and sliced by falling masonry and glass, we gave up and returned to the hotel.


As you might expect from the capital (though only the third largest) city of a country whose population is conservatively estimated at 1.2 billion, there are people everywhere in Delhi. Cows too, but mostly people. I first looked out of our hotel window to see a scene of rooftops and the shells of buildings either half built or half demolished (difficult to tell which). Not a soul to be seen. Then, slowly, on closer inspection I saw a man sitting on a rooftop opposite. Then a family in a hollow half-built room. Then three teenagers disentangling a kite string. Then more and more and more. In what seemed initially like a scene entirely devoid of humanity, there must have been in excess of fifty people secreted here and there. And, indeed, everywhere.

In the light of the total otherness of India thus far, we quickly reassessed our ambitious plans to travel by rail and bus throughout Rajasthan and booked a two week tour with a driver and air-conditioned car via the hotel. This meant we had the driver for a day in Delhi, so we saw what sights there were to see – the arch the commemorates India’s war dead, the Lutyens-designed Parliament buildings whose grace and elegance seemed in direct opposition to the greed and bloodthirstiness of the men it was designed to contain. Our driver mentioned, in his fractured English, that the buildings were from where the British ruled the country. “Not good men,” I said. For they weren’t. “Yes,” said the driver, looking at me somewhat curiously, “good men!” This, of course, meant that I would spend the next fortnight trying to bring up the miserable history of the Raj so that I could convince the driver that I wasn’t an ignorant, imperialist pig. But then again, I had just hired an Indian to drive me and the Memsahib around, so perhaps I was an ignorant, imperialist pig. Who knows?

As I write this, I have few photographs of Delhi. In preparation for the holiday, I bought myself a new camera. It has a much greater zoom and is lighter and more portable than my old camera. It has zillions of features and can correct all sorts of user errors – it has two different sorts of anti-shake compensation, lots of different colour and white balance settings and automatic everything. It is very nearly foolproof. I did find one problem though. It has nothing to make sure that the stupid idiot of a photographer remembers to pack a memory card. Oops. Consequently, my first 40 photos of Delhi are stored in its internal memory, which I do not have the cable to access with me.

Delhi was a fascinating place and one I would like to spend more time getting to know. Unfortunately, I was not a good choice for our first experience of India – just too many people, too frantic and too overawing. Which meant I had high hopes for our second port of call – Agra. Famous for the Taj Mahal, Agra is on every tourist’s itinerary. And tourism is massive in India right now – with an emergent middle class still uncertain about travelling beyond their mother country’s borders, there are about a hundred times as many Indian as Western tourists. The Taj Mahal is astonishing. It would be astonishing were it built today. The detail and intricacy is beyond belief. It was the mausoleum built by a heartbroken Emperor Shah Jahan for his wife who died bearing their 13th child. He was later imprisoned in Agra fort by his son, from where he could sit and watch his creation every day until he himself died and was buried by her side.

Taj Mahal

Agra itself was a different matter though. The poverty was breathtaking. It looked medieval – people living in huts cobbled together out of dung and straw while pigs and goats and cows wandered the streets. Agra is in Uttar Pradesh – a state with a population nearly five times that of England. And it is one of the poorest in India. It didn’t make for a comfortable visit.

So, with Delhi and Agra palpably aggravating our already acute culture shock, we were beginning to wonder whether we had made the right decision visiting India at all. Next on our itinerary was Jaipur, a smallish town in Rajasthan with a population of over 5 million. That gives some impression of the overcrowding.

Jaipur is known as the pink city. Because…it is pink. In 1876, to welcome the Prince of Wales, the local ruler had all the buildings painted pink, a colour linked with hospitality. And the tradition continued. Today, it is still pink and still quite welcoming. It also has a couple of world-class forts.

Amber Fort, Jaipur

The World's Largest Sundial - the gnomon is the little pavilion thing at the top of the stairs

Our travel arrangements included a guide to Jaipur for two days. We began to fear the worst when our driver started moaning about the guide and refusing to answer his mobile as we approached the city. The guide put me in mind of a Muslim, Indian Mr. Bean. He managed to be simultaneously interesting and a total pain in the arse. When he wasn’t filling in interesting facts about Jaipur and Amber forts (the former has the largest sundial in the world! And some truly fascinating astronomical and defensive features) he was trying to sell us a carpet or going on and on (and on) about how great he was (“I play all sports and am good at all of them. I am a great musician. I had only been learning guitar for three weeks when my teacher told me to take over the class” and so on). And he kept giving us quizzes. And making us guess things. “Guess how many knots there are in ine square centimetre of the rug”. And he wouldn’t accept “I don’t know”. And we had to guess at least three times each before he would tell us. And this happened every 5 minutes. But overall we were glad of his knowledge as there is a lot to see in Jaipur.

The hotel in Jaipur was a ‘homestay’ – something akin to a bead and breakfast 20 years ago in the UK. It was absolutely lovely, but we were the only guests and they only had 2 beers to go with our dinner (in the absence of anything else, Rachel has adapted well to Kingfisher lager with fresh lime). So the second evening we tried to go out. However, it had been raining and the puddles at the emd of the road defeated us entirely. I say puddles, they were big enough to accommodate a modest yacht. Not yet brave enough to try haggling with an autorickshaw driver, we dove into the hotel round the corner which had a dark and Indianful bar and stayed there till they closed.

Our next stop was for one night only in the holy lakeside town of Pushkar. Pushkar has one of only two temples in India dedicated to Lord Brahma. Which we nearly visited. I am ashamed to say that in the confusion of tourists and pilgrims, with no signs in English and suffering from AFTS (Another Fucking Temple Syndrome – much like Another Fucking Fort Syndrome, Another Fucking Mausoleum Syndrome and Another Fucking Palace Syndrome, all of which we have increasingly fallen prey to over the last fortnight) we went for a cup of tea instead. We both really liked Pushkar – it was the first town of a manageable size we had visited and the views from the rooftop cafes were excellent. It is a very holy town, which meant no meat, no eggs and no booze. Except we found a café that served us beer with our (delicious) vegetarian meal and more to take back to the hotel.

Pushkar, from a rooftop cafe

Flower sellers outside a temple, Pushkar

Produce sellers, Pushkar

Much like Nepal (report yet to come even though we went there in April…sorry!), distance and time don’t link up in India as they do in the west. Pushkar to Udaipur is about 170 miles. But that takes about 7 or 8 hours. The roads are far from brilliant – particularly in the monsoon season when small lakes appear restricting traffic to a few kmh. And we had to slow down further every half kilometre or so to allow for cows sitting in the fast lane. This happens a lot.

After Pushkar our hearts were further lifted by Udaipur – our very favourite town so far. Another small town based around a lake, Udaipur is known as India’s most romantic town. And it really is beautiful. Our hotel was less than inspiring – the first room we were shown had a filthy bathroom and frogs in the bedroom, the second was a little better but the aircon was asthmatic and the ceiling fan looked vicious. But the windows looked right out onto the lake and at the main part of town opposite. And thanks to the very heavy rains that had slowed our journey and curtailed our Jaipur explorations, the lake was full for the first time in months.

The view from our hotel, Udaipur

Our hotel as seen from across the lake. Our room had the three windows on the left in the middle row.

We dined that night in the Lonely Planet Guide’s ‘our pick’ restaurant which was a hundred yards or so up a very narrow road (one that earlier we had had to reverse right the way down due to an elephant coming in the other direction) and right on the shore of the lake overlooking the spotlit palace and fort opposite.

View of Udaipur Fort from the restuarant

Confronting an elephant on a one way street, Udaipur

Udaipur town was small enough to walk round and we quickly found ourselves a café as a base. The fort (AFFS was yet to set in) was beautiful and we both enjoyed the absence of a guide. There is a hotel on an island in the middle of the lake that is very expensive and in which much of the James Bond film Octopussy was shot (a great many Udaipur hotels show the film every night at 7.30). One day, we promised ourselves, we would return…

Lake Palace Hotel, Udaipur. One day...