Passage through India – Homeward Bound and Top Ten Highlights (Part One)

So, a second enjoyable evening and an excellent meal in Shimla and then a drive back to Chandigarh for a final train journey back to Delhi.  It was going to be a full day of travel so I thought that I would put it to good use and make an assessment of the tour and come up with a top ten.  I took out my notebook and pen.

This proved to be very optimistic because it soon became clear that it was completely and absolutely impossible to write anything down due to the topography, a slalom like decent down the mountain and the driving.  A fifty mile journey by road but only twenty miles as the crow flies. The mini-bus rolled from side to side, swaying and lurching and avoiding obstacles  as it negotiated hairpin bends, rock slides, pot holes, road works and impatient drivers sometimes prepared to take really reckless risks in order to shave a second or two off their journey time.

It was all rather entertaining and there were some fabulous views on the way down, in fact in some respects it was better than the train journey from Kalka to Shimla as we passed through a succession of vibrant and chaotic towns and villages and the views were not obscured by track side vegetation.

I couldn’t use the notebook but I didn’t really need it because in my head I made my first three top ten selections and they weren’t going to change.

No difficulty coming up with Number One –  The Taj Mahal…

Poet Rabindranath Tagore described the Taj Mahal as ‘a teardrop on the cheek of eternity’, Rudyard Kipling as ‘the embodiment of all things pure’ while its creator, Emperor Shah Jahan, said it made ‘the sun and the moon shed tears from their eyes’.

Every visitor wants a first important picture…

I imagine everyone knows the Taj Mahal, it is most likely the most famous building in the World (along with the Leaning Tower of Pisa perhaps or the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona) but to be there and see it is really something special. It is huge, much bigger than I imagined that it would be and the dome is magnificent.  It is ephemeral, it seems to float as it merges seamlessly into the sky.  I was disappointed that the sky was overcast and obscure but in retrospect that seemed to add to the experience as it melted and  dissolved seamlessly into the clouds.

To be fair the Number Two in my selection almost squeaked into first place but eventually Taj Mahal just edged it out – The Golden Temple at Amritsar

If almost everyone is aware of the Taj Mahal then it is almost certain that they will know about the Golden Temple as well.

Not as grand, not as architecturally stunning but almost equally important.  I liked it immediately and there was a difference; Taj Mahal is a tourist attraction, Golden Temple is a religious site and it was possible to connect with that immediately.  To absorb it, to feel it, another impact site but for a different reason.

I enjoyed this day above all others.  Nothing eclipses the Talj Mahal of course but  the Golden Temple was something special, mystical, spiritual, emotional and whilst the Taj Mahal remains in the memory the Golden Temple remains in the soul.  I will never forget it.

Number Three for in my list is the Amber Fort close to Jaipur…

Stepping through the gates of the Amber Fort was truly memorable, the marble stone shimmered and dazzled in the sunlight.  Apparently it was once even more beautiful, once adorned with art and precious stones but another Mughal Prince even more important than the owner of this place was rather concerned that it was even more splendid than his own Palace so ordered that the decoration be painted over and so it became Amber.

Most of us would happily have stayed longer at the Amber Fort but after an hour or so the visit was over, we were through the exit, pestered again by persistent vendors who rather good-naturedly take rejection without offence and back to the jeeps.   We were going shopping at a carpet warehouse.

Back to the journey….

… After two hours or so we left the frantic helter-skelter and crawled through the final few miles of traffic through Chandigrah to the railway station where we left the two buses and waited for station porters to pick up our luggage in the car park amidst madness, chaos, revving, shouting, snarling and bad manners.

Once on the train, the Delhi Shatabi Express there was a two hour ride to New Delhi and this time on a straight and direct line between the two cities and I was able to get my notebook out and consider my remaining Top Ten selections.

What will they be?

Passage through India – Delhi to Amritsar

 

“India was the motherland of our race, and Sanskrit the mother of Europe’s languages: she was the mother of our philosophy; mother, through the Arabs, of much of our mathematics; mother, through the Buddha, of the ideals embodied in Christianity; mother, through the village community, of self-government and democracy. Mother India is in many ways the mother of us all.”  American historian Will Durant

In a hectic first week we had travelled south and west of Delhi and enjoyed the Golden Triangle through Jaipur and Agra and now for week two we were heading north towards the Himalayas.

This inevitably meant another early pre-dawn start, we were catching the express train to Amritsar, a scheduled seven hour journey.

We were booked and ticketed on the Shatabdi Express, excellent fast air-conditioned daytime trains running at up to ninety miles an hour for some parts of the journey.  Shatabdi is Hindi for century as the first of these trains  were introduced in 1988 to mark the centenary of Jawaharlal Nehru’s birth.  The first Prime Minister of independent, post colonial  India.

We were moving two hundred and eighty miles north on a train of twenty passenger coaches.  The longest train in India is twenty-two coaches and requires a platform length of a third of a mile.  A little bit of trivia for you now – the only platform in the UK that can accommodate a twenty-two coach train without it hanging over both ends is in the city of Gloucester.  

As it happens, in a list of longest railway station platforms in the World, India has nine out of the top ten, the longest is Hubali Junction Railway Station in Kamataka in Southern India which is close on to a mile long.

Standard UK trains are a maximum of twelve coaches.  The longest passenger train ever was ‘The Ghan’ in Australia, which ran from Adelaide to Darwin and had had forty-four coaches.  If you are in the wrong place when that beast pulls in to the station then you are going to need running shoes, that platform would also need to be almost a mile long!

The Shatabdi Express includes food and drink and there is a regular supply of water, tea and biscuits and airline style food.  A lot of people turned down the food, wary of dreaded Delhi Belly but I tucked in and enjoyed it, especially the lamb curry and had no bother at all.  It was a great deal better than Virgin Airlines on board catering I can tell you.  India Railways move seventy million passengers a day and Virgin airlines only twelve thousand so you would think that they could do better.

The railway directly employs 1.2 million people but I suspect that it supports a much larger employment economy than that.  Station porters compete for business. Platform vendors and countless others making a living off the railway even those who pick through track-side litter.

In  travel vendors pass unsuccessfully several times through the coaches, I doubt that they are directly employed, my guess is that they are licenced operators who have paid for the privilege of a concession.  They return every few minutes in the hope that someone has turned down the meal and will have a Snickers Bar instead or maybe hoping that they have just changed their mind and turn a no thank you into a yes please.

It is billed as an express train but the average speed across the journey is only forty miles an hour, it stops six times and speed in and out of cities and towns is soporific. It took even longer today as it was delayed by a farmers protest blocking the line ahead.  Indian farmers demand higher prices for their products and less environmental demands.  They have copied French farmer tactics to make their point.

Kim used the time to make a new friend…

So, we arrived in Amritsar a few minutes late, gave our uneaten breakfast boxes away to the sleeping beggars, met the coach driver and his assistant and drove to the hotel.  A nice hotel Kim reminds me but I remember little about it, I was ready for a Kingfisher beer so I obtained directions to a nearby liquor store and made the appropriate purchases.

Another good day.  I had enjoyed it.  We had enjoyed it.  More curry for dinner.

Thursday Doors – Old Delhi, India

“Delhi is not just a city, it’s an emotion.” – Khushwant Singh. Indian poet and author

I imagined that India and places like Old Delhi would be an excellent location to indulge my love of old doors.  To be honest I was a little disappointed, not as many as I was expecting but here is a small selection…

I am certain that I could have found more in the back streets and alleyways but Old Delhi was like medieval maze and if I had wandered off I would surely have got lost.  It was a much better idea to stay with the guide and the group and avoid the need for a search party.