The Finale (India, Part 2)

After the cow stampedes and skull popping of Varanasi, we got an overnight train at one of the busiest train stations I’ve ever seen and travelled overnight to the town of Orcha. The trains in India range from being pretty hard-core to reasonably comfortable, and this was one of the latter.

Orcha itself is an interesting place because it used to be the centre of a kingdom and has all the relics, temples and palaces to prove as much, but now exists only as a small village. I liked it here because there were cool things to see and explore, and yet there was still a local culture because the place hasn’t become a tourist attraction yet. One night here we even went into the Hindu temple and watched the proceedings inside. Of all the religions, Hinduism might not be the one you can take the most serious, what with the elephant nosed and monkey faced gods and all, but at least it’s not as dull and dreary as others, and they are even tying in evolution into the whole reincarnation thing which is double plus good in my books.

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.

Next was Agra, which is maybe the biggest tourist town in India, although most people only spend a few hours here. And why do people from all over the world flock to Agra? The answer is the Taj Mahal, one of the most recognisable and unique buildings in the world. It’s certainly up there on the scale of famous things I’ve seen, right next to Eiffel Tower, Leaning Tower, Great Wall, etc. The building itself is impressive, and it sits up on the high bank of a river, which is cool. The outer surface was a hell of a lot more detailed than I had expected, with versus from the Koran printed all over it.

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.

Also in Agra is the impressive Red Fort, also part of the Mughal heritage. This fort has ramparts to defend from invaders and a pretty epic palace inside. The defences included a crocodile filled moat, then a layer around the perimeter filled with hungry tigers, then the entry ramp which was trapped with enormous rolling boulders.

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?’

Of course, I love India, it’s been a favourite for me, and I know that they are indeed on their way to becoming the next economic superpower, but Jesus Christ, trying to get around the streets when your hot and bothered and not feeling well is just a nightmare.

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.

In Delhi I saw lots of people (22 million people in this one city), lots of rubbish, some nice areas, and a lot more rundown looking ones. I saw some Muslim, Sikh and Hindu temples - all three of these religious constantly clashing in India. In fact, Bangladesh and Pakistan used to be part of India but bailed out to make their own ‘Islamic States’, free from idol worshippers and infidels. Me and my friends had to put on head covers to visit a Sikh temple, my first, where we saw the industrial kitchens where they serve people food – cooking masala tea and curries in big cauldrons, stirring them with big paddles.

Delhi is the political capital of India, not the economic capital, which is Mumbai. Here I’ll mention that India has the world’s biggest democracy and unbelievably it largely corruption free. After seeing so much corruption around the world it’s good to see a country with so many people and so much potential doing things by the book. India has at least got that part right, and that part counts for a lot (otherwise Russia’s GDP and life expectancy wouldn’t be going backwards).

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.

Safe to say that on this trip I’ve been the hottest I’ve ever been and the coldest I’ve ever been (...the hungriest…the fullest…most exhausted…most excited…most lonely…most welcomed…most disgusted…most impressed…)

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.

Jaipur also has one of the most famous cinemas in the country, and its where a lot of Bollywood films come to Premiere. One night I went to see one such film at this place. The film was called Bobby Jasoos, and was entirely in Hindi, but I could follow well enough and found the dance pieces that suddenly became part of the movie quite humorous. The cinematography and production was as good as anything in Hollywood, and the crowd got way more into it than they ever would back home. It was an interesting insight into the Bollywood culture.

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.

These desert cities were really interesting to see, another one of the many flavours of India. But did I enjoy myself? No way. In fact, a combination of wanting to get away from the desert heat and to be on my way home had me counting down the days there.

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. 

With only a day remaining I did a tour of the slums in the north part of the city. These are the biggest slums in asia, and as we wandered around what shocked me most was how small an area whole families have to live. More so than the filth, more so than the narrow streets and tunnels that you’d easily get lost in, more so than the ad hock industries of plastic recycling and pottery, the actual space for big families to live – about the size of Jakes room – is what most affected me.

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…

On my final after noon as a free world traveller I walked along Marine Avenue, along the waterfront. There were lots of people out, some asking for photos with me, others just staring, others seeing me as a walking dollar sign and coming up to try and sell me stuff. Walking along I noticed how filthy the sea water was; maybe the most polluted water I’ve ever seen. It was disgusting, and it was giving the city cleaners the hard task of cleaning up all the rubbish that the waves were pushing up over the insufficient break wall, making what could be the nicest road of town look like a dump.

Around the bend further, floating in all this crap, was a woman who had just drowned. There was a crowd looking at her naked and fat body as it floated around in the choppy water. That image, the indignity of fresh corpse in a pile of floating rubbish while a bunch of people looked on or took photos, was somewhat symbolic of India. And as I said in my last post, where else in the world would you see such a sight?

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.