The Jewel in the Crown

Update: 32

There's probably a smart way to travel around the world. I suppose one could start with the difficult countries, have a few beach breaks and then end off somewhere fun and easy. We talked about this and agreed that if we were in Buenos Aires now, we'd probably be quite depressed about returning home. Fortunately for our families, we're in Uttar Pradesh in northern India and the serenity of the London Underground on a Monday morning is quite appealing.

***

We flew from Colombo to Trivandrum near the southernmost tip of India. There are no ferries at the moment for this short hop as the Tamil Tigers are a bit touchy at the moment.  Immigration is fairly consistent with the rest of the planet, but step outside the airport and you enter a whole new world. It's loud, it smells, it's chaotic, men are wearing mundus (sarongs) folded over to look like nappies, the taxis are 1950's style Ambassadors with the gear stick on the side of the steering wheel, the auto-rickshaws (three-wheeler taxis) move in a kind of manic and random frenzy, people start hassling you to stay at their hotel or to visit their cousin's shop or to take their taxi and it doesn't take long to realise that to find respite, you need to stay in your hotel room.

Next morning we were introduced to the other side of India: all those Westerners who are on spiritual pilgrimages and taking themselves way too seriously.

I joined Tam at breakfast who was having a conversation with an American woman (name Tammie-Jean - exactly like that) dressed in a sari and sporting a red dot on her forehead. Tam introduced me and when I dipped my head and smiled (I'm too British already. God. What next? "How do you do?"), she brought her hands together as if in prayer, closed her eyes, smiled and wobbled her head at me.

Then I ordered breakfast. I can't remember what it was, but it was traditional - roti and a dip of sorts, but that's not the point. When I started tearing the roti (a flat bread) with both hands, she went off at me. "Man, you'll like freak these guys out. Like you're not allowed to touch food with your left hand. That's like reserved for like toilet duties?" (Question mark intended.)

I'd be lying if I said I wasn't taken aback, but where words failed me, my sharp, quick-witted, elegant wife pointed out to her as she funnelled rice into her cakehole with her right fingers that "well, I wipe my bum with my right hand".

This was the start of three weeks of glaring inconsistencies.

Tammie-Jean wasn't alone. India is full of Westerners like her: leaving behind potable water; public health services; life expectancies of nigh on eighty years; effective sewage management policies and generally well developed hygiene practises for health advice from people who, on average, will not see their sixty third birthdays; live in towns where cows wander the streets stepping over dead dogs to get to rotting garbage that sits soaking in effluent from the overcrowded housing nearby; think nothing of looking you in the eye as you watch them, trousers around their ankles, squeeze out last night's Paneer Tikka Masala on the bank of a river that, on closer inspection, is strewn with piles of human excrement. Even in the poorest parts of Africa, people use long-drops.

But the main thing is: they eat with their right hands.

This is just the physical healing. For spiritual healing you'll need to find an ashram. I have no doubt that many - if not, most - ashrams (a place where people can go and meditate under the guidance of a sage or guru) are well-meaning and legitimate. It's just that I question the motives of one in our guidebook that suggests achieving enlightenment through intercourse, provides a compulsory HIV test on arrival and charges more for entry than most Indians we met would earn in a month. In case you're not convinced, this particular guru takes credence from having spent some time spreading his seed - I mean word - in Southern California where he built up a fleet of luxury cars. 

Not exactly Gandhi.

I'm still trying to work out who's prostituting themselves here: The girls paying over the odds for some enlightenment or Big Daddy Guruji cashing in while bonking naive college graduates. I'm not knocking him, nice work if you can get it.

***

In all honesty, we rushed through India. It's a massive place and three weeks doesn't do it any justice. We started by bussing from Trivandrum up to Alleppy where we spent a night chugging through the Kerala backwaters on our own houseboat - cook, butler and captain included.

From there, not having learned any lessons, we caught a bus again up to Cochin. Before spending three nights in the deceptively named "Hotel Park Lane" and exploring the attractive (muck aside) architecture of the former colonial fort-town, we (lesson learned) took on the trains and booked our onward ticket. Booking in advance, we'd been warned, is key in India. The British implemented a phenomenal rail network in the late eighteen/early nineteen hundreds and today, as you wander past signs like "Gentleman's Cloakroom" and "Station Master's Mess" you feel that not much has changed. Although the engines are no longer steam powered, I have a sneaking suspicion that they weren't replaced all that recently.

Nonetheless, we approached the ticket counter (which, foolishly, we thought would sell us tickets) and asked about getting to Goa.

"Woah nononono noo" sang a wobbling head from behind the desk. Apparently we needed to go to the ticket issuing office across the parking lot for tricky requests like that. Let me just say that we were trying to get to Goa which is arguably one of India's most visited states and on the same line running through the station we were standing in, just a few hours further north. This was not a request to go to Dhaka via Calcutta.

So we went to the ticket office where I joined a "Q". (I did not see the word "queue" once in India. It was always "Q"). After a decent wait, it was politely pointed out to me that I was in the Ladies "Q". As I couldn't get Tam's attention to swap places with me, I gave up my place and joined the back of the plain "Q" which covers men and possibly butch chicks. I can't say. Nevertheless, when I reached the front of the "Q" I asked about getting to Goa for the second time. With four days warning to book a second class aircon sleeper, we thought we'd be laughing. Not so.

I paid for the sleeper, but was allocated seats in the class below and told to go to the Regional Manager's Office, four buildings to the left where we could submit an application for an emergency upgrade which would almost certainly be honoured as we were tourists which for some unfathomable reason held more weight than old ladies needing to get to hospitals in a hurry.

Armed with our 3rd class tickets, we lugged our full backpacks (remember, we had just got off the bus and had not yet found anywhere to stay) down to the Regional Manager's Office. Here, Tam filled in the application and was informed that we were 17th and 18th on the waiting list. We'd be told if our application had been successful on the day of departure at 4pm. The train left at seven.

Thoroughly beaten by the system, we lugged our possessions back into the parking lot to get an auto-rickshaw to the ferry terminal. We drove out of there two hours later having paid for tickets that might possibly get us to where we wanted to go, but not entirely certain.

Some days are just not your day. We arrived at the ferry terminal (don't think Dover - think hut and sand) and were greeted by two new "Q"s. This time I avoided the ladies'. The "Q" didn't move even though the cashier was at the desk because he only sells tickets when the ferry arrives. So we waited.

And waited.

Finally, we boarded the aging chunk of metal. You know when you watch the news and there's mention of a ferry disaster in some far off place and when you see the visuals the boat is crowded to the extent that it's almost sinking, people are hanging off the sides, old bits of metal stick out unattached to whatever they are meant to be attached to? Yes? We were on that boat.

Our three days in Fort Cochin were fun and, among other things, provided an introduction to "Special Tea". When asking for beer in an unlicensed restaurant, you are not denied it, rather served a cold, golden, hopsy, malty, beverage in a tea pot. When poured into your mug (mine had "Sights of London" and the usual Big Ben, red bus and black cab on it) it give a beautiful white frothy head.

***

Back at the train station three days later, we went to the information counter to see if our application for emergency tourism had been accepted and were told that we were currently 7th and 8th in the list. That was meant to be good news as we were moving up. The thing about India is that with a population of 1.2 billion people, it takes just half of one percent to fancy a Sunday train ride, and you've got six million people vying for a seat.

Fortunately for us, we were given our berth with an hour to spare and soon found ourselves on the overnighter to Gokarna in Karnatarka - just before the state border with Goa.

This was a first for Tam. Paying a visit to the toilet, she walked in (as you do when the door's open) to a man finishing up with his left hand, arse skywards.

***

Not far from Gokarna town, is Om beach which is so named because it looks like the left hand side of the symbol \ with its two bays. It's a spectacular sight, especially from the hills above it, and has been hijacked by hippies who found that the beaches of Goa were to restrictive and uptight for their needs.

Our friend Klaus - a German who lives in Turkey - has a reputation for finding remote and unspoiled areas and when he suggested we meet here, we made sure not to miss it.

A hut here costs two hundred rupees. That's one hundred rupees each or in easier to relate to US dollars: 4.50.

Not a lot, really. Which explains why the place is packed with Israelis who'd been keeping a low profile on this trip since those 10 cent all you can eat buffets in Bolivia.

As we sat down to enjoy a hard earned breakfast - we'd been on the move for thirty-six hours - I caught sight of the hippies opposite us: dreadlocks, feet on the table, a cloud of purple haze hovering above them maintained by the fattest joint I'd seen in a long time. It didn't take long to realise that rules here were different to the rest of the country. Marijuana was de rigueur and those with the ability to do nothing were seen as having reached the zenith of spiritual enlightenment. To be fair, there were some people there who were attending a yoga course with the best intentions, but the yogi himself floated between sleep, stoned and yoga. I didn't attend one of his classes, but word on the beach was that he advocated a slower more "chilled out" approach to an otherwise calm discipline.   

I'd like to record this conversation: Sitting in the shade of the eating area, a sort of common area surrounded by all our huts, I mentioned to an early-twenties Swede that I can't get used to squat toilets and find the no-toilet-paper-bucket-and-hand-thing a little disconcerting. He, sitting there in the same soiled sarong he'd been wearing since we'd arrived and picking fleas out of his dreadlocks (which, let's face it, are made by clumping and knotting hair together and not being too concerned with washing it) with fingers hosting nails under which were little quarter-moons of grime, replied "Well, I think the West can learn from them. They are much more hygienic."

"They are much more hygienic?!" What the hell? Since when are you, with your perma-filth, eating off crockery that is rinsed in that self-same hygienic squat cubicle, sleeping on stained mattresses (sheets were not provided - we travel with silk sleeping bag liners for moments like this) concerned with hygiene?

This was typical of certain Westerners embracing India: everything is better than the West. I don't mean everyone, many travellers see it for what it is, a giant toilet with some gems hidden away but in this part of southern Goa/northern Karnatarka there is an abundance of people who fly in, sit outside their huts off their heads on cheap narcotics wallowing in their filth that pales in comparison to that surrounding them and passing comments on how the first world can chill-out and learn from places like this. You can see them coming from a mile: they arrive with a guitar in their backpack, a drum strapped to the side, those dreadlocks that haunt me (I know what you're thinking - and no, even if I could I wouldn't!), torn Che Guevara t-shirts, juggling balls, ridiculous hats, flags and stripy, baggy "ethnic" trousers (that I challenge you to actually find an Indian wearing!) and then "Do India". One of them even told Tam that she "doesn't travel properly" and we should spend more time in one place to understand it. This from someone who'd spent a month on a beach speaking Hebrew.

I wish I'd pointed out that it's precisely because of people who didn't sit around doing nothing that we have aeroplanes, iPods (yip! iPods are a necessity when you're getting away from the evils of capitalism) taxis to shuttle you to and from town and digital cameras, but went to bed instead. I needn't have bothered. My enlightened neighbours were catching up on the days news (Floyd made a bowl out of a coconut, Shlomi went into town to buy string, Truman and Skye held a séance on the rocks....) and listening to music that sounded like a didgeridoo accompanying a nutcase singing "wakka wakka jing jing wakka wakka jing jing".

***

We'd been travelling for too long. It took two days in the mayhem that is Jaipur for happy hats to lose their grip and almost slip off. Fortunately we'd found sanctuary in The Pearl Palace from where we could explore and the Cricket World Cup filled the evenings, but the count down to returning home was getting louder.

Cricket is serious on the Sub-continent and thanks to it I did not have to explain (as I did in Latin America) why I have white skin but come from Africa. I did, however, have to have the same conversation about Jonty Rhodes and Jacques Kallis everyday. No problem, really, as I was happy to but I'm glad we left when we did; civil war was on the cards when India played (or didn't!) themselves out of the tournament. You'd have thought Armageddon had arrived. All TV programmes appeared to have been cancelled so that various authorities could discuss the tragedy and possible rectifications to the team, management and structure of control.... Police were deployed to the players' homes where their families were living in fear under the threat of death and effigies of Dravid and Tendulkar were burnt in streets all around the country. I didn't have the courage to point out that it's only a game.

***

The Taj Mahal was described by the poet Rabindranath Tagore as "a tear drop on the face of time". It is incredible and for us the most stunning architecture/buildings/ruins we saw on this trip. More beautiful than Machu Picchu and Angkor Wat.

What Tagore doesn't comment on is Agra, the town surrounding the Taj. Egg on the face of time? The World Heritage sites of Fatehpur Sikri and the Taj Mahal are an hour or so apart and have in common that they are surrounded by the most dire of settlements. We both found it hard to reconcile that the Taj is probably India's biggest tourist attraction and yet apparently zero effort has gone into making the town inviting. 

In line with standard practice, on arrival at the bus station in Agra, we were hounded to make use of an auto-rickshaw. The first price being 80 rupees which was meant for naive tourists, not two as tight as us, so we had it dropped to fifty which was still too much. Eventually we agreed on forty. When it came to paying outside our hotel, the driver pointed out that it was forty each. A heated debate ensued and only when I asked the driver why he was trying to rob me, did he back off. That's something I'd recommend to anyone travelling in Asia. The concept of "face" and saving it is so important here that exposing someone publicly is a highly effective way of protecting yourself.

***

Some observations on Indian English. We speak the same language but, occasionally I was amused (or confused!) by language like this...

• Lakh: One hundred thousand. Written 1,00,000.
• Crore: One hundred lakh. Written 1,00,00,000.

If you're used to seeing one hundred thousand as 100,000 and ten million as 10,000,000 you can imagine how confusing prices seem. Newspaper articles referring to the salaries of Bollywood stars mean nothing until you have this explained. "Rajeev was paid 2 crore for...."

• The definite article is hardly used:
  • You can find this in airport.
  • Taxi is outside hotel
• This coupled with the word "same" makes for great sentences like
  • You need to complete arrival form now, but you can wait for airport where you can do same.
  • My brother works in shop, my sister is at home and my auntie does same.

  Things get confusing when all of them are used in the same sentence: "I went to Delhi where I drank lakh feni and my cousin-brother did same" translates into "I went to Delhi where I drank a hundred thousand cashew liquor drinks and someone who I like and may be related to but is not my brother did too."

Another sentence I found in the Sunday paper that was not different grammatically from British English but a world away in subtle political-correctness was about Elton John and went something like this:

"Singer Elton John has called for condemnation of violent attacks on homosexuals." Fair enough, but it went on to say (and this is the part I liked) "John, a gay himself..." He likes boys, he doesn't have leprosy. 

Finally, at Delhi airport, I saw this gem above one of the two shops in duty free:

LOWEST PRICES* in region

*Conditions apply and only at Delhi Airport

Basically that means: Lowest prices in the airport if you exclude the shop next door and even then, there is a chance it might be more than you expect because conditions apply.

To be fair, though, I have seen that kind of thing in Britain.

***

They say you either love India or hate it. I disagree. I'm indifferent. It has some fascinating sights, many people are so genuinely kind and friendly, often the food is delicious and there is a very strong sense of adventure in being there. The metaphor that it is like an assault on one's senses is so true, but that assault is not always in the good sense. It is difficult to find respite from the heartbreaking poverty, the noise and, in Rajasthan, the hassling of touts.  Would we go back? I could, in time - a long time - and with a budget that allows more luxury. Tam? I'm not so sure she ever wants to hear about India again.

We're in South Africa now for a month's holiday to recover from a year's holiday. And it's good to be back!