It’s been quite a whirlwind the past week and an interesting migration from South East Asia to India. We had about 1.5 days to experience Bangkok before we flew to Delhi which we spent boating from sight to sight. We happened to be in Bangkok on the day of the funeral of the Princess and so thousands of Thai people, dressed in black, were visiting the Royal Palace to pay their respects. As a result the palace was closed to tourists so we went to the Wat with the massive golden reclining Buddha instead- pretty impressive. We headed to Chinatown for our last taste of dim sum before departing that part of the world and experienced the obligatory Kao San Road that night for dinner and drinks.
The next day, we flew to Delhi...what a change! So far India has been challenging but breathtakingly beautiful with scenes and buildings like nothing I could have ever dreamed about; but first came the nightmare of Delhi! We arrived in the Indian capital pretty tired and were driven to our hotel. On the plane I had read our India guidebook and absorbed the lengthy warnings about potential scams pulled in Delhi. The Hindustan Hotel was in a pretty murky backstreet and sure enough when we walked into the hotel we were told that there was no room and we had to move to a sister hotel (scam number 1 in the Lonely Planet!). We insisted we stay there as that’s what we’d booked and the manager came to speak to us after about an hour of waiting. He finally apologised profusely and showed us to our room- after them saying the hotel was too full and under renovation- very strange. Stranger still, the room sported a round bed and multiple mirrors. Who knows what this place had been before but the room was pretty dirty and falling apart. The manager had also, kindly, informed us that the area was dodgy so not to walk around at night! This didn’t fill us with confidence to go out and get some dinner. We went to the first place we could find and got chatting to an English guy who has lived in India for 25 years. A pretty shady character with slight hints at his career in drug trafficking, but he was quite helpful and gave us some good tips. Walking back to the hotel we bumped into a chatty man, obviously trying to sell us something, who asked where we were staying. We told him the Hindustan at which he gasped and asked ‘Have you not heard what happened at that place?’. Worried, we asked and he told us that one week ago they had found a French girl dead in one of the rooms having been murdered. Mildly concerned, we brushed his story off as a potential scam to get us to move to his hotel instead and returned back to our dingy room.
The next day we tried to find a travel agent to hire a car and travel the Golden Triangle. After an hour of being driven around and taken to the places where the driver could get commission and not where we wanted to go, we ended up at somewhere that looked half decent. After much negotiation we booked ourselves a driver for the next three days to take us to Rajasthan and Agra. When paying they asked us where we were staying in Delhi...again the gasp! They told us that in fact the hotel is just a cover for the drug dealing management and that the French girl had been taking drugs in the room with an Indian guy who had then done a runner! Nice. We could not wait to get out of that place! But first, we had the sights of Delhi to see.
The company supplied us with a nice driver who took us to all the sights. We visited the huge and impressive Jama Masjid with a high minaret giving views over sprawling, busy Delhi. We also visited a complex of tombs of previous kings from 16th century and went to the house and garden where Ghandi was assassinated. We capped the day off by going to hear the Qiwallis sing at a Mosque (I am still not sure what the Qiwallis are but I think they are holy men associated with the mosque). Our driver dropped us at the top of a packed, dirt road market. As a blonde, white girl it’s never particularly fun navigating these densely packed streets but we pushed down following the people that kept pointing further and further down the street. We finally hit an undercover warren of market stalls which wound down to a central point where the small mosque sat. Jonny, as a man (and wearing his Muslim head covering) got whisked off to a tomb area where women weren’t allowed. Meanwhile, I sat, receiving some very curious looks from the men and women sat on the rugs, and listened to the singers- their warbling, prayer-like singing created an incredible atmosphere as the sun began to go down on Delhi.
The next day we set off on our driving adventure with our driver, guide, bodyguard and friend for the next three days- Shashi. Our first stop, after around 6 hours of driving, was the Pink City- Jaipur. This ancient city, where all the buildings are a lovely pink colour, is walled with looming gates guarding the entrances to the old centre and teeming with bazaars. We spent the remainder of the first day visiting a garden where a Maharajah had exercised his interest in astronomy and astrology by building huge instruments and then visited the Hawa Mahal palace. The palace is an incredible looking building that keeps going up and up to the top floors where the ladies of the palace, who were not allowed to be seen in public, could sit and watch the goings on through small windows. The next day we took the short drive to the Amber Fort and this was amazing!! From a distance the huge pinky coloured fort looks like it has been carved out of the mountains and is surrounded by large man-made lakes. We climbed up and took the audio tour to explore the Maharajah’s rooms, the beautiful public meeting room and the rooms and gardens for the many wives of the king. It is hard to express in writing the sheer beauty of this place and Jonny and I wondered why this was not included in the wonders of the world to be honest. After descending we took a short stop at the Water Palace, which sits in the middle of a huge lake-only accessible by boat and only to the royal family, and the palace of the existing (if a little less powerful these days) Maharajah.
The next day, we drove to Agra but on the way stopped at the Monkey Temple. Again, this abandoned city and temple complex which sits at the foot of rocky mountains, was pretty breathtaking. We followed the Hindu pilgrims up the many steps to the main temple where we sat and received a blessing from the holy man guarding the statues of the Gods. We were pretty happy that we now had little orange blobs on our heads like many Indian people we saw, even if we didn’t really understand why! On the way back down Jonny fed some nuts he’d bought to some already well fed monkeys and we watched people bathing in the algae covered Ganges water that flowed through the temples before we got back in the car to go to Agra. Before we reached Agra we had another stop in Fatehpur Sikri and visited a huge, beautiful mosque guided by a nice kid who studied at the Madrassa in the mosque.
On our first morning in Agra we got up before the sun to go and see the famous Taj Mahal. At that time there was less than 100 people so it wasn’t crowded. When you enter the gates to this monument you have seen a thousand times in pictures, it is breathtaking in real life. The huge white marble building looks like a cardboard cut out against the sky- it’s hard to take in how big it is. We meandered around the Taj as the sun came up, looking at the light changing on the marble and took the obligatory Lady Diana pictures on the benches. For the rest of the day we dragged our tired asses around the Agra Fort and went to see what’s called the Baby Taj; another, much smaller tomb, which is said to have been the inspiration for the main event. After a great morning we made our way back to Delhi via the birth place of Krishna, a Hindu God, which to be honest went a little over our heads due to the fact we’d been up since 5am but interesting just the same.
A word about Indian roads...I honestly thought I would never experience anything as bad as Ghana roads and traffic but India takes it to another level! Shashi was a very good driver but had to share the road with elephants, camels, goats, motorbikes, cows, dogs, rickshaws, buses, trucks, people driving the wrong way and many mental drivers! A dual carriageway here is turned into a 4 lane racing track as no one respects the lanes and overtakes on the left and right. The crammed buses travel at crazy speeds and Shashi even pulled over to report one bus driver to the police whilst he was driving us back to Delhi. We were pretty happy therefore to arrive in Delhi safely and be getting a flight down to Kerala in the South rather than driving. We are now in beautiful Fort Cochi in some seriously hot weather and eating some gorgeous food. I will update the blog with more details soon.
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