Here I watched some kids play cricket in the final light of
the late afternoon; dust yard as the pitch, bricks as the wickets, a lumpy
ball, and a real cricket bat.
In the middle of the big building lie two tombs. One for the
former King of the Great Mughal (Muslim) civilisation that used to rule here
(that faded out after the British started to run things), and the other tomb is
that of his lover who he had the building built for. It all sounds pretty
romantic. Too bad the guy had a harem of 400 other chicks ready for him
whenever he wanted. Otherwise, makes a nice story.
There are thousands of tourists here, and lots of Indians,
all who are in their best clothes and brightest sarees to come and see their
national treasure. People watching is part of it.
Next was the capital, Delhi, and it’s here that I started to
lose it a bit with India. A combination of food poisoning, a cold out of
nowhere, the crazy heat, and the intense chaos of the city had me resenting
India and all its inhabitants. It’s the only time I’ve ever got really sick of
a place and its people, and I found myself saying to people ‘How on earth can
this fucked up place thinks it’s going to be the next world superpower?’
The traffic is the worst I’ve seen in the world. One day I
got a rickshaw from one side of town to the other and our vehicle hit 3 other
vehicles along the way, and at one point our driver put his hand outside the
vehicle to push a pedestrian out of the way so he could fit through a narrow
gap.
F
rom the capital I travelled to the towns of Jaipur and Jodhpur in the desert state of Rajasthan. Why I chose to come to the desert at the height of summer is beyond me but in both these places the temperature reached 40+ every day. It was uncomfortable, to say the least, especially in the shithole rooms I was staying in. Those ceiling fans just didn’t cut the mustard, and it remained so hot that it basically put me out of action between the hours of 11am and 6pm. In Jodhpur it was 43 at 8 at night, not dropping below low thirties overnight.
Jaipur is known as the pink city because all the buildings
have a pink colour, though it’s actually much more like orange. Here, when I
wasn’t sweating, vomiting, or having ‘an upset stomach’, I was tramping around
town trying to take as much of it as despite my discomfort.
It was in this cinema that a lot of people came up and asked
for a photo of me (I would stand there awkwardly with my popcorn and a thumbs
up) or with them (they would drape my arm around their shoulders). This sort of
thing had been happening all over India, especially at sights where Indian
tourists from far off towns were visiting. Every day a stranger would take a
photo of me, some trying to be subtle without me noticing, others asking in
broken English, others just walking up and clicking in my face. Having white
skin and long blondish hair gave me something of a celeb status. There were
lots of stares, lots of photos, and some even came up to have a brief
conversation.
At a train station on my way to Jodhpur some guy shook my
hand and held it so he could get out his phone and take a photo of my face and
a photo of our two hands shaking. Within a few minutes another man came up with
his young son and asked me to shake his sons hand. Its possible they hadn’t
seen a westerner before.
In Jodhpur I climbed up to and explored the enormous fort
that sits overlooking the town. Up there I wandered through rooms of the old
palace, posed for a couple of photos and took in the view of the surrounding
desert region. Down in the town itself I wandered around the markets and bought
some spices.
A final night train and I arrived in Mumbai. Overnight I
went from the desert to the tropics and life was bearable once more.
Mumbai was kind of a contrast to the other places in India
that I had seen. This is the economical capital of India, and from its bustling
people to its high rise buildings, it certainly looks that way. It’s also where
the Bollywood Industry is based, in the same was Hollywood is based in LA. And
after seeing all the Mughal heritage, it was cool to get down to Mumbai and see
the British colonial heritage, which all started when the British East India
trading company came and set rule to large areas of India (At first this wasn’t
the British government, and the local people were paying a private company tax
in a governmental setting).
Here I saw the Gateway to India, a big archway surrounded by
tourists, which was built for a visit by King George, and whereby the last
British troops to leave India in ’48 left through. Across the road is the world
famous Taj Mahal hotel, made famous by the terrorist in 2008 when 170 people
were killed. In fact, Mumbai has a bad history with terrorism – in the two
thousands alone there were several attacks that clocked up death tolls in their
hundreds each time.
Meanwhile, in my tiny hotel room I didn’t feel much better
about my situation. The room was one of the worst I have stayed in; crumbling
paint and stained walls, I was the only white person in the whole building; I
had to walk down a dark corridor to use a filthy squat toilet, and had a tap
and a bucket to wash with. Oh, and there were those dam mice. I have come to
terms with cockroaches, but not mice. I had reached the bottom, for sure.
But things could always be worse…
The thing about India is it’s a world in its own. Its food,
its cinema, its religions, its music, its history – these many aspects of its
culture are distinct and so unique that coming to India is like going into a
whole other universe.
India shocked me more than anywhere else I’ve been, and it pissed
me off more than anywhere. It was the perfect place to end my travels. It
played the part well as the grand finale to my trip, and also made me as
excited as ever to finally get home.
And with that, the last few days of my time in India drew to
a close. The end of India, and the end of my whole trip was upon me.
It was time to go home.