Completing the Golden Triangle

Elephant Mother, Amber
Originally uploaded by rtw2007.

After visiting the Taj Mahal in Agra, we headed towards Rajasthan and the “Pink City” of Jaipur. The highlight for us all was the City Palace, which has marble elephants to greet you at the entrance; guards strikingly dressed in a uniform of white jackets and bright red turbans; intricate doorways carved beautifully with peacocks; and a civilised café where enjoyed coffee and cake. Apparently the whole place is owned by the local Maharaja, who is one of Prince Charles’ polo chums, so it is not all that surprising that it is one of the best kept and best presented places we have been so far in India. In contrast, some of the other buildings in the city are really run down: they clearly could be fantastic if they were restored or even just better looked after, but there seems to be little or no prospect of that.

We spent an evening at a Rajasthani complex outside the city – set up to replicate a “traditional” village for Indian and foreign tourists, but with the addition of a mini-fairground and maze as well as elephant and camel rides (we even persuaded my mum to take a short ride on a brightly painted elephant). There was a restaurant on the site which provided a traditional Rajasthani dinner. This involved sitting on the floor, wearing a turban and eating a variety of different curries from dishes made of pressed banana leaves.

The following day we took a trip out to Amber, a few kilometres north of Jaipur, to see the fort, the lake palace and one of the dullest visitor attractions we have been to yet: a large cannon which would be the biggest in the world if only Russia didn’t have a bigger one. Thankfully, the Amber Fort was more impressive. We approached via our second elephant ride in two days, though mum still looked a little unconvinced about whether that is her preferred mode of transport. Michael had become a little elephant obsessed and our guide obligingly took us to go and visit the local baby elephant. I’m not sure what the animal welfare activists would have to say about it all, but there is no denying that being carried by a brightly painted elephant up to a sandstone fort perched on a hilltop in Rajasthan feels like a quintessential Indian experience.

We completed the well trodden tourist route of the Golden Triangle (Delhi – Agra – Jaipur) by heading into Delhi city centre. Having experienced the ring road on our way to Agra, which had been pretty miserable with horrendous traffic and far too many people, we weren’t quite sure what to expect. However, the city centre has some beautiful sights, including Rajghat, a serene memorial located on the site of Mahatma Gandhi’s cremation, which is a little oasis among the smog and car horns. In old Delhi we visited Jama Masjid, a large sandstone mosque which closely resembles the Badshahi Mosque in Lahore, but being in India rather than in Pakistan it has its fair share of women and far more white tourists than you would find in Lahore. Heading south we then arrived in New Delhi, where the long colonial Mall leads from the India Gate (a large war memorial similar to L’Arc de Triomphe in Paris) for a couple of kilometres up to the impressive Presidential Palace complex, with well kept gardens and more ornate sandstone buildings. The continuing theme from Lahore to Delhi seems to be that the buildings built either by the Mughals or the British are by far the most impressive.

There are some very large modern shopping malls being built on the outskirts of Delhi, in amongst all the poverty. There is such a contrast between the beggars on the street on the one hand, and the air-conditioned centres full of high-end clothes shops and well heeled locals on the other. It is all quite difficult to deal with, really. We have been approached by huge numbers of people asking for money, food or drink. They inevitably see white people as cash-cows and it is difficult to know what to do for the best. One filthy, raggedly dressed little girl followed us several times to our van and in the end we gave her some chocolate cookies. She looked ridiculously overexcited and ran after us so that she could carry on waving and beaming at us ages after we had started to drive away. The trouble is that then the next day she was back, with lots of her friends in tow, all wanting more cookies. We have regularly ended up walking along with children clinging onto our legs or people constantly prodding us, and the van windows are smeared in endless greasy handprints where people repeatedly bang on the windows at traffic lights.

On Sunday we sadly waved goodbye to my mum (rather prematurely as we weren’t even allowed to accompany her into Delhi airport – the security is very strict, right down to a sniper perched on sand bags outside the front door). It now feels pretty empty in the van as we had got used to having an extra passenger over the past few weeks – although Michael is relieved that we can start listening to the Foo Fighters again instead of Frank Sinatra and Norah Jones on repeat play. Along with my mum, we have also waved goodbye to our more luxurious lifestyle of hotels and coffee shops. We are now fully submerged back into the camper van lifestyle, parking in car parks and garage forecourts when needs be. Oh, the glamour.

Having deposited mum at the airport, we took the van in for a service at the VW garage in Delhi (the first one we have seen for a very long time). We were a little nervous about how good it would be, but we needn’t have worried. Kashyap Enterprises is a proper VW outfit which sells vehicles at an enormous mark-up to Indian pop stars, diplomats and the like (European vehicles are apparently the thing to have out here, at least if you are rich and famous such you can afford the incredible 120% import tax). We arrived to find that we had fallen on our feet: Karsten and Ronny had just been sent out on secondment from Germany and were in their element when they found out that we had driven all the way from Britain. The usual Volkswagen efficiency kicked in and before we knew it we had been given drinks, a place to stay in the van overnight, a lift into town, and a full service without any problems at all. In Europe this might not seem surprising, but out here it seems incredible and we couldn’t believe our luck. They also insisted on taking our photo so that they can run a piece about us in the local paper!

From there we drove through Uttar Pradesh, which is the most heavily populated state in India, with 170 million people - more than the whole of Pakistan (which felt pretty overpopulated to us in places). The problems of severe overpopulation are evident everywhere, with serious poverty in many places. The road-side slums here make even the houses around Delhi look positively luxurious. Here the shacks sit atop huge refuse landfills and are made up of little more than a few sticks with bits of rubbish balanced on top as shelter against the sun and the rain. I’m not sure that we will ever get used to that side of India. Nor am I sure that we will ever get used to the standards of driving, but that rant is for another time….

We are now in Varanasi, a city on the banks of the Ganges where Hindu pilgrims go to bathe in the holy waters. The river bank is a surprisingly serene place to spend some time. People go to the Ghats to bathe; do their laundry; pray; give offerings of food, flowers and candles into the river; or meditate. Given that they do all those things in the same water as the large numbers of oxen use to drink and wash, the Ganges is filthy, so we opted out of joining the locals for a swim. That Ghats are a really colourful place, full of women bathing in vivid saris; holy men with orange robes and painted faces; and garlands or dishes or brightly coloured flowers. Last night we watched sunset and fireworks at the river (there is a large Muslim community here and yesterday was the end of Ramadan, so they have fireworks to mark Eid). Today we took a boat ride along the river at sunrise, when most of the activity takes place at the river. It is a very lively and interesting scene, with lots going on at every turn. We also saw where the Hindus cremate their dead at the special “burning Ghats”, before throwing the ashes into the river. Apparently, pregnant women, children and holy men are exempt, so their bodies are thrown into the river with rocks tied to them so that they sink. There are tales of bodies failing to sink and instead being spotted floating on the water by passing boats, but thankfully we managed to avoid the sight of a floating dead body before breakfast!