Passage Through India – Homeward Bound and Top Ten (Part Three)

Four more to go to complete my Top Ten and I suppose that I really have to include the tiger…

At Ranthambore we had a day of Safari looking for a Bengal Tiger.  After an early start four rather tedious hours in the morning yielded nothing at all except the sort of wildlife that we can see at home in Lincolnshire (except the crocodile of course) so after lunch and the threat of another four hours in the afternoon being bounced about on hard, unyielding wooden seats Kim decided against it and opted instead for a much more comfortable afternoon poolside and a spa treatment.

Out in the jungle another four hours passed and still no big cat except that in the final moments of the jeep trial there was some excitement and there a hundred yards away was a female tiger.  Just sitting there digesting her lunch of raw gazelle and turning her back and ignoring the tourists.

Eight hours of uncomfortable searching and eight minutes of a tiger spotting.  Kim wasn’t too disappointed, I offered to take her to the Doncaster Wildlife Park close to where we live when we got home to see a tiger.  It is only £25 admission (senior rate) and you are guaranteed to see one.  Two months on and she is yet to take me up on this fabulous offer.

Fellow traveller Ruth had this to say.  “I really enjoyed the two safaris.  I think it was the fresh air and bouncing about in the back of the truck with the naughty kids was great fun”.  Naughty kids?  You know who you are.

I have to say that if I hadn’t seen a tiger then the Safari would not have made the top ten at all and would be settled down in the bottom three.  The bottom three up later..

Firmly in the Top ten is the Tour Group, it is important to have a group pf people who get on well together and enhance the experience and we certainly had that.

Fellow traveller Jennifer put it like this…

“I have always wanted to see India…  So we booked… The other passengers on the trip were amazing…. I now call them friends.  Everything was as I imagined but better.  Thank you everyone for giving Ian and I a holiday of a lifetime.”

Tour Manager Rahi said… “We definitely made some friendships along the way which will last a long time.  And we now arrive to the final moments of the journey I would like to let you know that it has been a nice group to work with with loads of laughs and experiences”

Next up and I am going back to day one and a Walking tour of Old Delhi.

Here was the real culture shock that I was expecting.  Poverty and destitution, despair and  malnutrition and deformity are all on public view.  In UK we cross the street to avoid a beggar or complain about street homeless sleeping in shop doorways but here it is all part of street life.

All human existence is on show here, a timeline of evolution and development running through the streets and all in vivid contrast.  Grubby corners, dirty beggars and then vibrant streets and coloured saris.  Different religions, trade and commerce, wealth and poverty, success and failure, suffering, destitution and poverty, improvisation, happiness and joy.  The full spectrum here on open street  display.

What an introduction to India this was, a slap in the face, a punch in the gut, this might have been better at the end rather than the beginning of the experience but never mind, all that was required was to walk into a rainbow or help mix colours on an artists palette.  After one day I was in love with India.

So that leaves just one more spot in my Top Ten and I give this to Tour Manager Rahi.  From the moment we arrived at Delhi International Airport everything was seamlessly organised and brilliantly coordinated.

It seems important to me to have a local tour manager (Rahi lived a long way from Delhi in the city of Udaipur but what is a few hundred miles when we have travelled five thousand) a guide who understands the culture, can tell the history and answer most every question thrown at him.  Calm, collected, patient and seemingly unflappable.  Quite simply the perfect Tour Manager.

And a fabulous sense of humour.  At the end he asked   “I hope you enjoyed my company, my explanations and my commentaries”.  How funny, of course we did, he was the main man in making the holiday a success.

I should also mention here local expert tour guides, Jaswinder Singh in Amritsar and Sanjay Jadhar in Shimla who both provided a wonderful day out.  And also coach driver D,P Sharma and his friendly assistant Chandu.

So, that was my Top Ten highlights of the holiday/tour, not everyone might agree with my selection.

I mentioned a bottom three and these are they – Carpet shopping in Jaipur, the Pakistan border crossing pantomime and the Rose garden with no roses in Chandigarh.

Except for the English Roses of course…

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

Continuing with my Top Ten of India Tour but in no particular order now as I found it rather difficult to rank or separate them.

After two hours the Shatabdi Express eased into New Delhi station and having just completed our sixth and final ride then I have to include the train journeys.  One of the reasons that I was persuaded to take this trip in the first place was down to the railways and I was not disappointed.

I enjoyed every minute of it, the early morning starts, the breakfast boxes, the station chaos, waiting for the trains to arrive on busy platforms, the anticipation, the thrill of the engine arriving, the never-ending line of passenger carriages squealing to a halt, the rush to get off and the rush to get on, finding our seats and sitting back to enjoy the ride. The contrasting views from slums of Delhi to wide open plains of India.  Long distances so long journeys but entertainment all the way with a procession of busy activity including airline style dining which was surprisingly good.

In-travel vendors pass unsuccessfully several times through the coaches.  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.

Fellow traveller Lesley agreed with me and summed it up like this…

“My highlight was the total train journey experience, the very early starts (not so good), the hustle and bustle of the stations, the hard seats, the interesting food, “toilets”, the other passengers and the camaraderie of the group, the Indian countryside and the anticipation of the next destination”

Whilst enjoying my lamb curry meal on board the Shatabi Express it occurred to me that in my Top Ten that I must include the food and especially of course the Curry.

Before the trip I had been nervous about the food and the fear of Delhi Belly but I needn’t have worried at all.

Quite different to a curry in an Indian restaurant in the UK.  Spicy yes but also surprisingly more mild and gentle than I was expecting.  In the UK some people expect and tackle blazing hot curries that burn  and sear and lack subtlety.  None of that here and I was happy to try anything that was presented and I never once had an upset stomach and none of the precautionary tablets that we had taken with us were required.

My favourite of the fortnight was a Thali Platter in a restaurant in Jaipur, but only just, all of the food was perfect.  Towards the end of the tour I did begin to suffer curry overload and on one occasion skipped the Indian lunch for an Indian ‘Burger King’ but I mildly regret that now.

Fellow traveller Helen remembered a meal on the train from Kalka to Shimla…

“A young woman and her small family who sat opposite us on the train to Shimla.  At lunchtime she got out a newspaper, a red onion, a tomato, a chilli and a small bunch of coriander.  She meticulously cut these vegetables into tiny pieces onto the newspaper.  Then she took half a bag of bombay mix from her bag and mixed the contents into the vegetables.  Clearly this was going to be lunch for her and her husband and small daughter.  She then poured some of this mixture onto a piece of newspaper and offered it to us along with a wooden spoon.  It was a spontaneous and generous offer which we accepted and shared between us (it was also delicious!).  So that was one of my favourite memories of our trip.”

The train arrived at New Delhi station bang on time and we left the carriage and entered once more the world of Indian colour because India is a country where colour is amplified several times over, burning blue, firestorm red, gorgeous green and scalding yellow. everything about India is a shock to the senses, the sounds from gentle music to blazing car horns, the tastes of the wonderful food and the colours, so colours of India goes into my Top Ten.

Maybe fellow traveller Ann had colours in mind when she said  ” … it meant so much to me to have experienced some of what my dad saw eighty years ago.  Roger and I had a brilliant time!”

I have picked out colour but fellow traveller Ruth picked out the music…

“The corridor outside my room connected to the balcony so I could hear the flute…  I thanked them at reception for the music.  They seemed to take it for granted.”

A bit of music at Ranthambore Jungle Villas…

So, now we were back in Delhi at the Hotel Suryaa for the third time; we were almost regulars now.  We felt familiar with the place and walked into the small shopping area nearby (we needed to purchase wine).  Over the two weeks we had accumulated some small denomination notes and a pocket full of coins and we thought that this might be the opportunity to pass them on.

Tourists with money to give away are very welcome and no matter how discreet you think you are in giving it over vigilant eyes are watching out and the careful passing of a note or a coin doesn’t go unnoticed and soon a small crowd of children assembles.  We gave all of our money to a charming group of kids who continued to optimistically hold out for more even as we escaped to the sanctuary of the hotel.

Final four in my Top Ten in my next and concluding post.

Passage through India – Jaipur to Ranthambore

“We owe a lot to the Indians, who taught us how to count, without which no worthwhile scientific discoveries could have been made.” – Albert Einstein.

We were sad to be leaving Jaipur, it had been a good two days but there was a new adventure ahead – a tiger safari in the Ranthambore National Park.

To get there involved another train journey and we arrived at the station in good time but the platform information board kept knocking back the arrival/departure time in regular ten minute intervals.

This wasn’t such an inconvenience and it gave fellow passengers plenty of opportunity to have their picture taken with Kim.  All rather curious and we put it down to the white hair.  Tour guide Rahi told us that although India resents the period of British rule that they have no animosity towards English people and that was everywhere in evidence here on the railway platform as we waited for the train to arrive from Jodphur.

A different train this one, not an express but an overnight sleeper train with the sleeper carriages converted to daytime travel, only a two and a half hour journey this time so no on board catering included but vendors passed through regularly offering “English Snickers, English Snickers“.  I rather like Snickers but I still insist on calling them Marathon.

All Aboard…

As the train left Jaipur and made soporific progress through the suburbs we were in familiar surroundings, shanty towns, open landfill sites, poverty, destitution and begging but never it seemed despair and always a smile.  People waved as the train passed by as they most likely do to all trains that pass by and we waved  back.

In a response to a previous post my blogging pal Jude raised the issue of Indian state expenditure on space exploration when there is so much poverty.  I have heard this raised before.  As it happened, some time later I asked Rahi this very same question and he told me that India plans to be a world superpower and when the economy has grown then that will lead to social reforms.  He was certain that space exploration helps in this ambition.

“How do you eat an elephant?  –  Answer – “One bite at a time”

We should not forget that the modern state of India is less than eighty years old.

It was a good observation and a relevant question to ask and I thought long and hard about it and I came to this conclusion.  Putting things into perspective the UK Tory government of the last fifteen years has wasted billions of pounds on a vanity project railway line that goes nowhere, no one needs, no one wants and then stand by while privatised water companies (thanks Margaret Thatcher) gleefully pump raw sewage into our rivers and seas whilst paying millions of pounds to  shareholders and executive bonuses.  The River Ganges is the most polluted river in the World but in the UK Thames Water has plans to quickly catch up.

We have limited social housing (thanks Margaret Thatcher).  The privatised railways are completely hopeless (thanks Margaret Thatcher).  The  beloved National Health Service slowly collapses into a pit of  creeping privatisation (thanks Margaret Thatcher)  and it abjectly fails to tackle poverty and destitution in our own country.

And it has a space exploration programme.

India has successfully sent a mission two hundred and forty thousand miles to the moon, the UK high speed train project can’t even get one hundred miles from London to Birmingham.

We are the country with the social and economic problems that will inevitably lead to collapse.  At least the Indian government appear to have a plan.  They are going through a political, social, economic and technological revolution.  I don’t think that we are in any position to judge others.

A nice ride, a gentle ride, a very sociable ride where we got to know better those that we hadn’t really  got to know properly previously and before we knew it we were in Ranthambore, a railway station dedicated to the legend of the tigers.

Spot the odd one out…

The train arrived just after midday, a small station in comparison to Delhi and Jaipur and there to meet us was our ever reliable driver D P Sharma and his cheerful helper Chandu who as ever dispensed hand cleanser with a permanent smile and gave a helping hand up the steps.

D P was an excellent driver who drove the vehicle through the chaotic streets with the precision of a Harley Street surgeon performing open heart surgery.  As though it was a Rolex watch.  He knew every fraction of an inch of his coach and could guide it through impossibly small gaps but when it became extraordinarily tight or especially difficult it was Chandu’s job to give him assistance.  I would not have wanted that responsibility I can tell you.

Lunch was served at Jungle Villas and then there was a welcome afternoon of leisure at the hotel swimming pool which was very much appreciated.  The sun was shining, the water was cool but not desperately cold and most of us took a refreshing dip.  Roger did a thousand lengths.

And in the evening there was jolly entertainment in the garden, a travelling band of local musicians who entertained while tea and tasty samosas were served.  When they had finished they moved on to the hotel next door, it was close by  and we could hear them all over again.

It had been a very good day.

Later it rained quite hard and we became concerned about the next day when we were joining a jungle safari in search of tigers and it was going to be another early start.