Old Manali

Feeling tired of trudging around the golden triangle through dusty and littered cities, we both felt it was time to head to the mountains and get some fresh air and get in touch with our ‘inner hippie’. My inner hippie is fairly well hidden although I think Laura’s is closer to the surface as within minutes of arriving at this sacred Mecca for dreadlocked, tie dye clad westerners and Israelis who’ve recently finished their national service – Laura was, and I quote ‘feeling blissed out’.

The journey to Manali starts in Delhi where we boarded a tourist bus with luxury air conditioning, and that’s about it. After having splashed out on a private driver for the golden triangle and flying with Emirates, we were not used to slumming it. I was at least hoping for an on board refreshment trolley and hot towels to mop my weary brow. But alas there was not even a toilet. This would have been ok for a short journey around town, but we had just embarked on a 16 hour bus trip and for some it would be the trip from hell.

Laura hopped on board the bus to grab us seats next to each other and I threw our bags in the hold. A small man in the luggage compartment was crawling around on his hands and knees arranging the bags who demanded that I pay him for placing our bags in a heap next to some old cement sacks. I chose to ignore his demands and got on to the bus. The bus pulled away from the station and slowly weaved its way between tuk-tuks and the screeches of car horns.

After about 20 minutes we arrived at one of Delhi’s busiest petrol stations where we stopped for quite some time. India’s reliance on fossil fuels is quite shocking, their government subsidise petrol and the countries thirst for it makes F1 motor racing look like a green hobby. Others on the bus were getting supplies from the forecourt shop so I thought it would be a good time to get some supplies too. Our dinner on the bus consisted of a bottle of Himalayan mineral water and a big bag of Lays ‘American Style’ cream cheese & chive crisps – delicious!

After several more stops to pick up passengers on the way out of Delhi we started to make good progress. Both of us managed to get quite a bit of sleep, but were awoken by terrible sounds of retching from the front of the bus – probably induced by the severe hairpin turns making the bus swerve from side to side like a small boat on a rough sea. As if the road wasn’t bad enough in true Indian style the driver was trying to overtake everything and anything on the road which was barely wide enough for a horse drawn cart.

The stomach strangling noises from the front of the bus didn’t have much chance to fade as the road to Manali is long and cruel, yet I was comforted by the fact that the person being sick was a young Japanese teenager who had been striding around at the various stops like a peacock, wearing just a vest so he could flex his muscles at every opportunity clearly believing his was the quite the man. Now that he had been reduced to a quivering wreck I felt that even in a place so bizarre and upside down as India is something’s are fair in life.

After bidding farewell to our dear fellow passengers at the stop in New Manali we jumped into a tuk-tuk and struggled up the steep hill towards Old Manali where we were informed by our trusty guidebook that there was an idyllic place to stay half way up a narrow dirt track along the river. The tuk-tuk dropped us at the foot of some steep rock steps which we clambered up in flip-flops and then onto the dirt track walking past lizards basking on sun soaked boulders. Walking away from the noises of the road up the bank of the river we eventually came to the Rockway Cottage. The cottage is surrounded by vibrant green trees on the banks of the river and higher up you can see snow capped mountains in every direction. There is a small ski resort nearby so watch this space for some Himalayan shredding.

The Taj Mahal

It’s been a few days since we went actually, but a few moderately interesting things happened there so let’s give it a bit of space all for itself.

We wanted to get to the Taj at Sunrise, but had a bit of confusion because none of us knew precisely when it happens. It’s not a time of day Joe or I are that familiar with. I thought it would probably be around 6, Varen thought getting there for 7.30 would be about right. In the end we set off at half 6, still confused because although the sunrise hadn’t happened it was light outside. Very odd.

The Taj itself sits beside a park, which you have to walk through in order to reach it (automobiles not allowed as part of Agra’s, frankly failing, attempt to curb pollution.) The park was quiet, not very full, with genuine morning people getting on with their routines. Monkeys and stray dogs scampered about, as per the norm , and after about 10 minutes we reached the ticket booth. Tourists pay 750 rupees to see the Taj, of which 500 is a special Agra Development tax. There must be thousands of foreign tourists visiting the site every day , generating an enormous amount of cash for this fund - I would be extremely interested to know where it goes, not to developing Agra from the look of things.

We were also given hospital style shoe protectors, which Joe suggested was a handy way of ensuring the marble floors get a good daily polishing.

The security at the Taj Mahal is easily the most strict we’ve come across, verging on paranoid. It’s run by army personnel, who take the possibility of attack on their beautiful monument very seriously indeed. Luckily there was no contraband on me, the worst my stony faced searcher could find was some rubbish, which she threw on the floor, presumably to stop me littering at some later date. Joe had a more stressful time with a bluff colonel. Having spent 5 minutes talking the man into letting him keep our sun cream, he was sent away to lock up the laptop, which meant a 10 minute walk in the opposite direction. Second time round and another frisk, another bag search. This time our paperback novels were flagged up, waved around and declared criminal. I’m not sure what on earth they thought we planned to do with them, but unluckily I never got the chance to ask as at this point the colonel came back and shushed him through, ignoring the pleas of his book-hating colleague.

It was worth all the fuss - the Taj Mahal is just about perfect. I loved it. Inside we took a peek at the tomb itself, but we spent most of our time outside, drinking in every detail picked out in sparkling marble. Afterwards we walked slowly back through the gardens, past the elegant waterways and back into chaotic, noisy Agra to drink some beer and eat toast and honey for breakfast.

Driving Tales

The drive from Jaipur to Rithampur was a pleasant journey compared to the trip from Delhi to Jaipur when we were surrounded by smog, traffic, vomit etc. We rolled through small villages with barely any cars, mostly camels and buffalo for pulling the famers goods around (Laura would also like to mention the cute wild pigs with cool hair do’s). After about 40km the tarmac road ended and we continued the journey over a rough dust and rock track for quite a distance. This part of the road was a long way off being finished and it was clear to see why. There was a sever lack of heavy machinery that you would usually expect to see in a place where a road was being built. We past just one digger on the entire stretch of rough track driven by a young boy and his friend clearly enjoying their big toy. The main work force on the road was a group of women dressed in saris and armed with large hammers and pick axes. The women were on their hands and knees breaking the large rocks into gravel to help smooth the road out. There was a young looking boy wearing a red shirt watching over the ladies who I assume was in charge. The sight could have been out of a movie where criminals are given the punishment of hard labour for their crimes.

After we passed the women at work, I asked Warren to pull over so I could use the gents. I hastily stomped out of the car over the dust and rocks into a ditch that I thought was suitable for my purposes. I didn’t look where I was going and stepped on a bunch of dried up twigs all of which happened to be mostly thorns the size of knitting needles. The pain was bad but I needed to go so I carried on. Once I was all done I tried walking back to the car but realised that a number of the thorns had gone straight through my right flip-flop and into my foot. Whilst hopping on my left foot I began pulling the thorns out of my right flip-flop as Laura and Warren looked on amused.

Another driving story I’m afraid, but it is just so drastically different here I feel it needs explaining. In Ruthampur we took an afternoon safari through a forest that was straight out of the carton Jungle Book. We were told there was a 99% chance that we would see a tiger but Sher khan was nowhere to be seen. Lots of monkeys, peacocks and deer which didn’t seem to mind the enormous 20 seater off road truck we were bouncing up and down in. At the end it was quite a sight watching other tourists getting off the truck looking seasick and covered in dust.

Tiger: 1 Joe & Laura: 0

After a relaxing night’s sleep in the leafy jungle hotel we hopped back in the car with Warren and headed off towards Agra in the hope of catching the sun setting over the Taj Mahal. It was a long drive interrupted by many stops to fix the cars dodgy electrics, but the views were full of colours and wildlife. Once the car was back up and running we began hurtling down the main road at about 90kmph. A lady in a pink sari started to cross the road in front of us without look for oncoming traffic only meters in front of our car. Warren slammed on the breaks and we skidded to a halt just missing the lady. After we had recovered from the shock of nearly hitting a pedestrian at great speed Warren, completely unperturbed by the incident told us that if he had hit the woman he would have kept on driving until he got to a police station as if he stopped the local villagers would have killed him and torched the car. Laura asked what the villagers would have done to us – ‘the innocent tourists’ he replied “kill you too”.

Laura & Joe on a big elephant!

Always go out with a bang (Or a splat)

Night before departure – Neither of us can get to sleep. Both feel quite bloated so try to lie on our backs.

Laura pop’s to the loo to find she needs to be sick. This happens about 15 times all through the night coupled with bouts of the runs so there is little sleep to be had. The force of Laura’s wretches propelled diarrhoea from the other end leaving Laura empty and seriously dehydrated. Doctor Joe thought it would be a good moment for Laura to neck a glass of rehydration salts, but the favour was returned with rapid regurgitation.

I lay in bed feeling sorry for Laura but also glad that at least one of us would be healthy for the trip ahead. How wrong I was.

At 6.45am we received our wake-up call. The pre sickness plan was to go down and have breakfast, but instead we hobbled downstairs to meet our driver for the next 6 days – Warren. I was feeling much less grotty after the evening’s fun and games but Joe was clearly entering a dark place ‘Please drive slowly’ he said in a small voice. Delhi in early morning is very smoggy and the drive out was slow and smelt bad. The further we went the worse Joe felt, but it wasn’t until we were on the inside lane of the motorway that Joe decided to ask Warren to pull over so he could be sick. There was a lot of traffic, and many lanes to cross so Joe was obliged to be a bit sick in his hands. He then blithely opened the car door and began to vomit in earnest, smacking the car door onto the vehicle next to us and breaking of its indicator. The driver of this van seemed a bit cross, but Warren was very matter of fact about the whole thing and we all drove on with no hard feelings.

The drive to Jaipur took nearly 6 hours. On the whole we didn’t do too badly, a couple of sick stops only and we used these breaks to sit down and get to know Warren a bit better. He’s a great guide, very knowledgeable and happy to let us sleep groggily or chat about things. He pitied our patheticness and put on a Hindi CD he thought would help, quite spiritual in vibe, with vocals from Sting. On the road the landscape opened up and at times could have been the English countryside, much greener and lusher than anything we’ve seen so far (but with monkeys and camels prancing about instead of sheep or squirrels.

As we approached Jaipur Warren pointed out fort after fort. Turns out that each Maharaja that came along didn’t fancy the idea of moving into the previous one’s palace so built his own. The decendents of the last one still live in one of them. Although we arrived at 1ish the possibility of sightseeing was too revolting to contemplate, so we went straight to the hotel to get some sleep. We’re staying in a heritage hotel, which I guess would be the equivalent of staying in a National Trust cottage/home. We didn’t get to our room as swiftly as we would have liked. Our host, Baba Haveli, was keen to make speech after speech detailing how honoured he was to have us, how we were his children - and his statements continued to get more and more ornate until finally he led us into a room and said that words alone were insufficient for him express his gratitude and happiness so he gave us each a gnarled garland of flowers and a warm bottle of water. Finally he showed us our room and we were urged to admire every single feature and decoration, including a risqué wall painting of a young girl washing herself.

Today we are thoroughly tired of being white. It is very nice that so many people want to chat and be friendly, but the experience can also be startling and irritating for the humble tourist who is used to complete London-esque anonymity.

We had 2 tasks for today.

1. Buy a train ticket to Agra
2. Visit the Red Fort.

There were originally more items on the itinerary but unfortunately we got up very late so had to shave a few bits off. We intended to visit the Lodi Gardens for sunrise, but found that the 6am wake up call was a bit too antisocial and slept in until 2pm.

Here’s a round up on how we got on with today’s tasks:
1. Fail
2. Fail

And an explanation:
1. The train station was an extremely bewildering place, which we were not really equal to. We wandered up and down for about 10 minutes trying to put off well-intentioned (and not very well-intentioned) helpers. We then decided to have a bash at entering the station itself. Another fail. After a while someone who quite clearly didn’t work for the station packed us off to a fake tourist office where we were nearly persuaded to buy a fake trip to Sringar. Luckily we didn’t go for this, as the only comment the guidebook makes about Sringar is that the UK Government recommends against non-essential travel there (something about the occasionally violent bother going on in Kashmir). This episode taught us that I am a foolish, trusting sort of person, whereas Joe is much more suspicious: an important character trait for a visitor to Delhi. Anyway, We left the fake tourist office and found a real Tourist Information centre which was much more helpful and more importantly gave us tea and biscuits.

2. We basically didn’t get round to it. All the business concerned with point 1 took up quite a lot of time.

We did get to Lodi Gardens in the end – arrived in time for sunset, and it was totally worth it. Pictures to follow.

Arrival in New Delhi

Our flight stopped off in Dubai, which from the evening sky looks like the Las Vegas of the middle east. From the air the coast line looks like a Christmas tree on steroids – so many lights.. I suppose it is a demonstration of their wealth and abundance of fossil fuels.

First day in Delhi. We arrived early on Tuesday morning to the joys of the baggage carousel. It appears that most people flying into New Delhi airport have replaced their ‘check-in’ luggage for flat screen televisions. By the time Laura’s and my bags had arrived for collection (Over 1 an hour after we landed) we had seen over 25 plasma screens picked off the conveyor belt.

By the time we got in bed it was 5.30am. The little sign with ‘Weitz’ on was nowhere to be seen so we had to get a taxi. It was an interesting drive, and was different to getting a cab in London in several key ways:

• Lanes are a formality only
• Wing mirrors and indicators are extra weight, and unnecessary. A loud horn is much more useful, especially when overtaking.
• Dogs chase the vehicle and bark ferociously
• You are sometimes obliged to navigate around fires in the street
• Cows
• Only the driver needs a seatbelt
• At several points the driver may park up and wander off to ask people for directions.

Our room is quiet and comfortable and we slept until 4pm.
After a slow start we entered the local market surrounding our hotel which Laura described as being much like Ridley Rd Market in Dalston but a bit more Indian. The locals all seem very friendly and seem to think that we are Hollywood movie stars. I might start telling people that I am Jason Bourne (Laura is still deciding between Meg Ryan & Melanie Griffiths – in the film Working Girl) we will report back on how that goes later in the week)