Indian Impressions

Well, India has been great. It is a country of so many conflicting things and stories that I hardly feel I have scratched the surface, despite having had a month here. Still, I have experienced so much since arriving.

One of the most amazing things I have seen here, the usually reported contrast between abject poverty and mind-blowing riches aside, has been the way people use motorbikes. No helmets, and a family of five can fit on a single 250cc Suzuki-type machine! The dad drives, two kids sit on the tank in front of him; mum rides pillion - side sadlle (side-sadlle!) because of her sari, whilst holding the youngest in her arms. Often along with the groceries. It's amazing. And not a helmet between them! Because of the traffic they rarely get about 20km/h, but still. I would never ride pillion without a helmet. Especially not when drunk in a strange town in India.

Anyway, another amazing thing has been shopping. Not just how much I can do of it (three saris, four salwar suits, three pairs of earrings, deoderant, other sundry items, and no pashminas), but how confronting an experience it is.
"Madam, madam! Please come, look at my shop."
"Yes? Please come."
"You are looking for pasmina shawl, silk scarf, bangle... beautiful punjabi suit, silk saree, please madam..."
"Sister, sister, yes"...
At first it made me not look anywhere, but I am used to it now. I think I will feel quite unloved in a western shops now! Especially if I try to tell them the price they are asking is ridiculous...

The people have been by turns both horrid and fabulous, the politics and culture has been fascinating, the beggars have been successfully ignored, and the food is better at home (it's true! Better for my western tastes, at least). I rather like India, and look forward to spending a bit of time in one place in it at some time in the future, to get a little deeper under it many layers of skin.

Last days

Well, Jaisalmer was great! It is my favourite place in the entire tour - my favourite that I've seen in India, actually. I loved the walled town with its small windy streets - similar but cooler than the other places I've been to. It also helped that I had an excellent night out there, even if the morning after was a little less than excellent...

I had my palm read at the fort in Jodhpur, but didn't see much else of the place due to said self-imposed Delhi-belly. I am now in Udaipur, which is nice, but nothing amazing really. I would have like to go to Ajmer and Pushkar - apparently they are a lot of people's favourites, but my tour doesn't go there! Ah well, I'll just have to come back in August. If I think I could stomach the heat...

So in a few hours I am catching my final sleeper train back to Delhi, where my tour ends in a couple of days' time. Then I get about a day either side of my flight before I start my Contiki! I knew I was mad...

Backroads of Rajasthan

Okay, so it's been ages since I've had enough time on the internet to do everything I've wanted to, so I'm way behind on keeping everyone up on the tour I'm on. I'll try and get something up to this effect now. Maybe we'll just stick to the highlights though...

On the 10th, the day on which the tour started, I met my room mate for the tour. She's pretty cool, so we went to the red fort in Delhi on their metro, which is always fun because the cleanliness inside dramatically contrasts with the dirt outside. Red fort was cool too, I think, though all of the forts have kindas melded into one now... Soomaanyfooorts... I've still taken pics of them all though :p

Day two we went to Agra and saw the red fort there (most of the forts are red, too!). We also saw the Taj Mahal, which is pretty cool. I have the requisite million photos, which I will make anyone foolish enough to ask sit through ^.^

Day three I saw some birds and stuff, day four we got trapped in our hotel in the middle of nowhere by a protests which got a bit nasty. Turns out Rajasthan (the state we were in) had some really bad, highly unseasonal hail and it wrote off all their crops. Our guide, an Indian from this state called (of all things) Paddy, said that they were demonstrating because they were worried they wouldn't get compensation for their lost earnings and be destitute. The farmers have it pretty bad here.

Anyway, the next day we went to Jaipur, which was the place I was in the next day for my birthday. That was fort number... well, I dunno. Soomaanyfoooorts...

The next day was, of course, Camel Day! It was fun, and much more comfortable than a horse. They have more padding, I think, though I may have got lucky - a number of the other girls say they are missing some skin... ouch! I was just strting to find it really uncomfortable at the end of the five hours. We stopped for lunch under a tree, had vegetarian curries cooked for us and then had a siesta in the sand. It was pretty sweet. We then finished our 5hrs after the nap, and got in to our desert camp - all set up for us, with tents and a table with tablecloth and lamps! - in time for the sunset. It was so cool.

A short 1-hr ride out in the morning ended the camel safari, and we went to transfer to our new hotel. We were all very excited about the prospect of a hot shower and some form of toilet apart from a patch of sand, so you can imagine how excited we were when Paddy (the guide) said we'd been upgraded! We stayed in a Palace! It was so cool - from one type of traditiional Indian life to quite another. It was called the Lallgarh Palace if anyone wants to google it.

Last night we caught an 8 hour bus to Jaisalmer (no toilet stops so no drinking anything that whole day in preparation!) and I am now in an internet cafe in "the golden city" which is a gold-yellow sandstone walled city in which people still live! It is the first inhabited fort we've been to, so it's pretty sweet. It's my favourite place so far.

Well, you are more or less up to date, and I am tired of writing so I'll leave it there. Eight more days until I can eat steak!

Okay, let's try that again...

Man, that was so annoying. I spent like half an hour writing that birthday post, and it didn't go up! It said it had published successfully, too >.< Oh well, I will try to write the abridged version.

It seems I mis-calculated: I wasn't on the camel on my birthday. I was in Jaipur, and that evening was an overnight train to Bikaner where the camels live. It was a good day though, despite the lack of wine etc. I was woken up by txts at 4am, 5am and 6am from dad, Col and Kali respectively (I think that was the order - I was asleep), then a call from dad at 6.30. When I finally got it through my sleeping head that I could probably talk to people despite the cost seeing as it was my birthday, it was great, if a bit tear-inducing.

I then took a couple of my cohorts and went to see the Hawa Mahal ("Palace of the Winds") and the rest of the City Palace, and had some (fairly sloppy) mendhi (henna-hand-decoration-paint-thing) done. It was a cool expreience though.

After that, a lot of us had decided to go to Pizza Hut (!) in town for my birthday. It was so nice to eat western food again, which actually tasted like it does at home! Hehe. While I have enjoyed the Indian food, the novelty was beginning to wear off after eaing it twice a day for so long now.

After lunch we went shopping and I bought some earrings, which are forever to be known as my birthday earrings, according to one of the girls. We then made our way back to the hotel because a palmist was supposed to be there and I thought it sounded like fun. By the time we arrived, however, some people had had theirs done and said he sucked, especially for the price, so we decided against it. I am now on a mission to find a proper Toothless Crone to do it. Hopefully there is one who speaks English...

Thanks for all your comments everyone, it was nice to get birthday wishes from you all. Will try to look in on Santharia soon Art, though I'd like to catch everyone up on the tour so far so I will try to write that first. Internet here is few and far between so I'm trying to use it when I find it. Hope everyone is well and having fun - I am!

My Birthday!

Final Sight Seen

Today is my last day in Kolkata. It's kind of sad, but also quite exciting because that means my tour of Rajasthan starts in a couple of days! I have to check out at midday tomorrow, but my transfer doesn't come until 3.30pm for my train at (theoretically) 4.55pm so I shall be sitting in the garden bar drinking water or tea or Pepsi (they don't seem to have Coke as much in India) for a few hours. It's not really a problem though - that's probably pretty much what I would have been doing anyway!

Today I finished my sighteseeing of West Bengal (the state Kolkata is in, and is the capital of) with a visit to the Raj relic called the Victoria Memorial. It's basically a museum of British rule, although it has a display of modern art on at the moment, and is in a fairly similar style to our museum in the Domain. Perhaps it is not surprising then, given my proprietary-ness of said building, that I have decided that it will do nicely as a bach for me in India. Once I rename it and fix up the plumbing (I had my first experience of Indian-style bathrooms there today, and had to pay a rupee for the dubious pleasure) I think it will do quite nicely.

One day in Kolkata

So yesterday I spent the day on a little tiki-tour of the city: me, a driver, and a tour guide to take me cool places. It was organised by the man who provided my transfers to and from the railway station.

It got off to something of a bumpy start: I had organised it for Friday but when the car turned up, there was no guide! Apparently there was not one available, so I told them where they could put that, and that I'd do the tour on Monday if they could guarantee me a guide. On a side note, it has been quite shocking how badly people have tried to rip me off here. I guess they all think I'm rich or something. I suppose, compared to them, I am.

Anyway, the driver and guide picked me up at 9.30 on Monday. We went first to the Temple of Kali called the Kali Ghat. I saw where they sacrifice the goats every day; apparently they use the flesh to feed the poor which I thought was very nice. I also got a little glimpse 0f the Goddess, but we didn't go in... I'm not really sure why. *Shrug* On the way out we saw what looked like a dead tree, which my guide informed me was actually a cactus, to which people tie little blocks of what look like stone with red thread to wish for a child. As we left, the guide slipped a seemingly random guy some money. When I asked what that was about he said it was to ensure we didn't get hassled! Touristy destinations, eh?

After that we had some of the worst chai I've ever had in a stall outside before he took me to see Nirmal Hriday next door: Mother Theresa's Home for the Destitute and Dying. It was quite embarrassing really; he took me in and kind of left me to have a look around while he went outside to have a smoke. So here I am, all clean and touristy, standing around in a place where people are either very sick or very working. I left pretty quickly.

Next we drove to the flower market, which is apparently a must-see. It stank of crushed rotting greenery, but if I had wanted to buy strings and strings of marigolds or a neat little crown made entirely out of flowers, that would have been the place! It was also very crowded and I think I got "accidentally" brushed up against a number of times. People always seem to complain about this but it didn't really bother me, apart from the principle of the thing. There's nothing I find very shocking about having a hand brush your leg as you walk through a crowded area, but I know that the men were doing it with sleazy intent so I guess I felt like I ought to be at least a little annoyed. I didn't spend much energy on it though.

We then went to see the Old Howrah Bridge, a massive construction of steel cables which spans the huge wide branch of the Ganges which flows through Calcutta (called the Hooghly River when they don't just call it the Ganges) from the city Calcutta to the city/district called Howrah, which incidentally is where you find the station my train departs from and arrives to. There are two bridges across the river, the Old and the New. You can't always see the one from the other because of the atrocious amounts of smog here, but later on we went to see the ghats on the riverside at a point between the two and you could see both from there. The Old bridge is fairly similar to the new bridge except that the Old has lanes where massive streams of people can and do walk across it (and it looked like quite a walk! It's a long way across, perhaps twice or three times the straight length of our Harbour bridge), and the New bridge is formed of symmetrical wires holding it up, whereas the Old one looks very much as if it had been cobbled together.

The next two stops were the highlight of the tour. The Kumar Tolly is an area where artisans craft the idols for festivals and, one assumes, temples. They are made of straw tied into the required shape then covered in clay a few times, then painted and decorated. We saw them in all phases of creation and I was very impressed with how a few bits of string and some mud can turn a lump of hay into a goddess!

After this was the stunning Jain temple, a confection of marble and mirrors and mosaics. It's difficult to describe, so you should all go look it up - I think there's only one in Kolkata. I wish I could get some of the photos I've taken up here, but I think that's a bit of an ask for the speeds of the computers here! As we left the guide encouraged me to give a small donation to a priest for a little red-and-yellow wool bracelet. It was for protection, he said, although it was immediately after this that I noticed feeling sick (see previous post) so perhaps it is not so good! I am still wearing it though, just to prove to myself how not-superstitious I am ^.^

They took me back to the hotel for lunch and then at 2 o'clock we headed out again. This time we went to the Old Park Street Cemetery first, which was rather neat. Massive monoliths from the 17- and 1800s, memorialising British men and children from the East India Company are crowded in to a small section of land which is amazingly quiet for this city. The light had a lovely green quality to it from all the ancient towering trees, which was echoed in the green of the moss on the ground, although not on the graves: these were scrupulously maintained.

After seeing the riverside and bridges and a quick stop at a souvenir shop where I bought three postcards and they tried to sell me yet another pashmina (I haven't bought one but it seems to be what all the touts think western women want so I swear if I hear that word again...!) we made our last stop at St Paul's Anglican Cathedral. They had some beautiful stained glass there, and the guide told me (a number of times - perhaps I wasn't suitably impressed) that it was where Princess Diana visited when she came to Calcutta. I was, however, impressed when the guide told me that one of the priests or whatever-you-call-'em said that when he saw me he thought Diana had come back to visit! Hehe, I am easily flattered. Apparently she wore a very similar salwar suit with her dupatta (scarf) over her head the way I was wearing mine, when she visited.

So quite a good little day's outing really, though exhausting. I feel now that I can say I have "done" Kolkata, apart from my one outstanding sight which is the Victoria Memorial. Maybe tomorrow.

Betting: End! No more bets!

I have succumbed! Delhi-belly has finally got me.

I was on a tour of the city (to be described in a later post) during the day, and at about midday I began to get a sore neck. Then I started to cough, then to feel hot, then a little dizzy... I went out for dinner and had a fabulous Chicken Tikka at a place called Jojo's (which is so far not implicated), and when I got back I had to go straight to bed. I woke up a couple of hours later burning up but freezing cold. I managed to get back to sleep for a bit before... well, I shall omit the details but suffice to say I started taking my rehydration salts. They're not too bad actually - Simon says they taste awful but the ones I have just taste like a slightly salty orange cordial, which was a nice change from the straight bottled water I've been drinking almost exclusively (apart from the ever-present tea here) for seven-plus days straight.

I felt much better by the morning, and even managed to get to the market down the road after lunch to pick up the saris I bought a few days earlier. I shan't elaborate on those though; I think my shopping will have to have a post of its own!

The Fairlawn

When I first arrived at the Fairlawn Hotel I was a bit shocked. It looked a lot less cute than on the website, and my room was somewhat nasty - the shower is over the bath, which is on blocks, and there is no shower curtain! The air conditioning duct runs through the bathroom too, which is something of an eyesore. There was no soap provided in the room, no flannels and the paper in the loo (a nasty, public-toilet styled room) is as cheap as it comes. The bedroom itself is a masterpiece of floral history, with matching blue rose-covered beadspread, drawer-covers, and curtains over the entryways to the convenience in lieu of doors. All this, after the rather palatial marble-and-wood surrounds at the Bajaj Indian Homestay in Delhi, seemed simply too crude to bear. I considered asking to be transferred to another room but was quickly dissuaded from that course by a lady who stays there frequently - apparently it is wiser not to do anything to upset the owner, the tempestuous Mrs. Violet Smith.

I've been at the Fairlawn for five or six days now. The floral patterns have grown on me, I'm getting to know the staff, the guests are nice to talk to and the lights outside (which masquerade as tacky plastic fruit hanging from the doorways and eaves by day) look so beautiful at night that I am quite comfortable here now, despite the food, which is *looks around hoping that the redoubtable Mrs. Smith never sees this* lacklustre, to be kind. Although the best parts of the hotel - like the lounge and that fabulous carved bannister - are upstairs (where my room is not - it's off the dining room), that only makes me think "if I come back to Calcutta, I'll have to ask them to book me in to an upstairs room"... Once you have stayed here, I doubt you could really think of staying anywhere else.

Indian Rail, first class style.

Well, I have a bit of time to write up something now. I'm in the internet cafe across from my hotel and it's 15 minutes until lunch is served. I seem to have been given all-inclusive accommodation, so I am eating all the meals they try to feed me at the moment.

So, the rail journey. I boarded at Delhi two and a half hours late, because the train before mine was running late. The guy who was doing the transfer from my hotel helped me board, which was brilliant because otherwise I would never have found my berth! Apparently you have to find your name on a board of passenger lists to find out which seat you are in, rather than having it printed on your ticket. Hurdle number two (after the train being delayed 2 1/2 hours) was that we couldn't find my name on the lists! I managed to remain pretty calm about the whole thing - I guess I was so far out of my depth I just couldn't stir myself to worry about anything! When the train finally pulled in we had to run to the front to find the right conductor (one for each carriage) to tell me where my seat was. As I sat down in my carriage I looked out the window and saw a board which said something like "upper class passenger lists". I figure that was why we didn't find my mane on the board we'd been looking at - because I was in first class (I'd decided to pay more and keep my luggage :p )!

So I got all settled in. The compartment had a long bench-type seat on either side, the back part of which folded down to convert into a bed. As I waited, a man came in and sat down. He was obviously very important because he read about three newspapers in the time I was in there, and kept taking cellphone calls during which he had to shout down the phone in Hindi to be heard, repeating what he said at increased volume each time. It was really quite comical and I had a very hard time not cracking up into fits of hysterics! Poor man, just trying to make a phone call and some stupid foreigner finds you funny!

Anyway, the ticket inspector came in after about an hour and offered me to move to the next door compartment which was a single room. I was relieved because, as funny as I found him, I
didn't fancy sleeping in the same room as the man. So I moved, and they brought me dinner: a cheese sandwich, what I thought was a sausage roll nut was actually some herby curry paste stuff wrapped in pastry; a really nice strawberry drink, some sweets and some cashew nuts. Oh, and the ever-present tea.

A little while later they came in and asked me what I wanted for dinner. "Wait, what? What was that I just ate then?"
"That was snacks, madam."
Snacks! Perhaps unsurprisingly I wasn't hungry at that time, so I said I didn't want anything and asked for the bedding they supply, and went to sleep after being sternly admonished by the guy who brought the bedding to lock the door. I got up at 11pm to do what needed to be done (they have western-style loos in 1st class, thankfully), and they offered me dinner again. Never being one to turn down a free meal, I got roast chicken with veges, potato wedges and some of these excellent fish cutlets which were dome in a spicy shell. I hope they have those again when I go back to Delhi in a few days.

After that I slept quite well, to be woken at about 6am by the sunlight through my curtains. I tried to sleep longer but I had to give up at 7am when the Hindi music they were playing when I got on the train started up again. Not long after there was an announcement that the train was now 5hrs late, sorry for any inconvenience! Still, I was in no real hurry. Breakfast came (with as many different courses and as much food as dinner), followed by lunch. Soon after that we stopped at a station where some little beggar kids came up to the window and begged for food. I don't know how they thought I was going to give it to then - my window had no opening as the carriage was air-conditioned! I locked my door in case they came inside, which turned out to be fortunate. As we pulled out of the station I heard this thump, thump noise from my door. I pulled the curtain back and saw this guy I'd never seen before trying to wrench the door off its hinges! I was a bit freaked out, and although, I reasoned, he might just have got the wrong compartment number, I kept my door locked the rest of the way there just in case.

I arrived without any further excitement at the Fairlawn and have, more or less, been there ever since. I shall update further later but for now I am late for lunch, which is not really done, so I shall have to run. Hope everyone is well; as always do let me know, by email or by commenting below.

Kolkata and Indian Rail

Just a quick one today guys; I'm not sure if I will have time to post tomorrow so I thought I'd whip up something now.

I have arrived in Kolkata (aka Calcutta) in a safe, if not timely manner. My train was five hours late! Kolkata is - at first glance, anyway - different from Delhi in that it has fewer people, marginally less pollution, more nuns and is rather a lot hotter!

Actually, my discourse on the rail system may have to wait: I think I'm due back at the hotel for dinner. Hope everyone is well; leave me comments, or email me! Will post more later...