Sandstorm In A Teacup

In two weeks, I had supposedly lost 10 kilos, had almost forgotten what it was like to enjoy a nice, quiet pooh, had been chased and almost driven to homicide by auto-rickshaw drivers and ended up with a sore arse thanks to India’s dodgy roads (and drivers). I even ended up looking like this
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Yet when pressed, I still couldn’t say I disliked India.

“Oh go on, you hate it. I can tell.”

But no – seriously – I don’t hate it. I’ll admit that it took me at least a full week to acclimatise, not just to the searing heat but to the noise and the crowds, the flies and the smells, and the sheer madness of it all. In the end, I was growing quite fond of India - something I had not expected after the bellyaches and the headaches of the first week.

And yes, you expect the unexpected. For example, on the first day in Delhi, I noticed two men on a motorbike. Not an unusual occurrence, except that it would usually have been three or four men – but exceptional in that the second man was carrying a huge 6-foot mirror that was wedged in between them. At any moment, he could slip off the motorbike and be sliced in half by the mirror, and it must have taken amazing balance just to stay on. I asked Shanaz if this is the Indian concept of rear-view mirrors, but to her – and everyone else in the car at the time – this was nothing extraordinary.

Women in saris rode side-saddle on the back of motorbikes, demonstrating even more exceptional balance, while men rode bikes with upwards of 5 gas bottles strapped to the sides. Myself, I would have gone careering into a ditch – but over in India, they do this in crowded traffic without so much as a second thought.

On my first day there, I was gleefully pointing out the cows on the street – “hey look, another one!” and “bloody hell, there were three there!” until a week later when the cows started to blend into the general street scene, along with the camels in Rajasthan and the monkeys, who, I was informed, would nick off with my camera. All I wanted from the monkeys was a hot towel, but it seemed they were trained in horrible thievery.

I could never blank out the images of over twenty people sat in tractors – often women - and often people coming back from construction sites. India is building on a huge scale. In the years since Shanaz's family moved into Dwarka, apartment blocks have sprung up like mushrooms. Some of it is very good. Some of it is pretty shoddy, too, with newspaper headlines of buildings collapsing and unscrupulous builders trying to make a quick buck. Sounds very familiar.

I also had problems blanking out the slums. On the train ride back into Delhi, we passed through mile upon mile of slum housing. They even have their own shops built into the slums, and, I am informed, a slum hierarchy, from the poorest to the less poor. Delhi, it seems, is nothing compared to Bombay, where the authorities are destroying slums for railway lines and new builds, but are only making a tiny dent in what is a huge, huge problem.

So what of India’s new-found wealth? After all, we hear of nothing but success stories in the UK - "India is the place to invest in" and "It will be bigger than China soon". As always, the rich are getting richer, and the poor are getting poorer - while some people are unable to eat more than one meal a day due to rising wheat and rice prices, the likes of the omnipresent Bollywood actor Shah Rukh Khan can flaunt their chiselled features all over cities, advertising almost everything that is made in India, and many things that are not. Cricketers are paid millions to go over for a couple of (very hot) months and play in what is essentially a knockabout tournament supported by Bollywood stars.

There is a whole generation of people growing up in "middle class" India with the latest mobile phones, laptops and coffee fixations. And yet the poverty continues – and worsens. It's little wonder that communism clings on in the east of the country.

You can go to India and you can stay in a Taj hotel and only ever see it fleetingly from the tinted windows of your tourist coach. And perhaps, just perhaps, that is the way to do India. Perhaps that is why some people see India as a relaxing place for meditation and yoga?

You can also do it the hard way, as many backpackers do. You can sleep in youth hostels and eat roti and dhal with your hands, and basically muck in. You can ride the rickshaws through oncoming traffic and push your way through the crowds at the bazaars. And once you’re over the shock, that is ultimately more rewarding.

The English visitors who spent the entire day lounging by the pool at the Rajputana Resort in Udaipur could have been lounging around in Spain or Italy, but outside those heavily protected gates was a village literally falling apart. As we walked through it to find a pharmacy, small children were waving at us from the rubble.

And here’s the difference – and maybe one of the main reasons people come back from India waxing lyrical and proclaiming there are “two kinds of people”. Walk through a poor area in England and you will most likely get shot, stabbed, mugged or if you’re lucky, just intimidated. Walk through a poor area in India, and people will wave at you. They’ll even say hello sometimes. At no point during my two and a bit weeks in India did I ever feel threatened or intimidated - not even by the auto-rickshaw drivers, who I could have picked off with my eyes closed, honest. At no point did anyone look even remotely aggressive. No gangs roaming the streets - no gangs of drunken tarts exposing their cellulite - and no fat chavs in pink tracksuits. Sure, I was stared at, but only because I was the slightly strange looking white bloke in a funny hat.

I have only touched the tip of the iceberg as far as India is concerned. Next time, I’ll go to Assam (with the extra-strong malaria pills), and my list of “things to do” is growing by the day. I want to play golf in Leh, where they have the world's highest golf course, 11,000m above sea level (with an oxygen mask, perhaps). I want to brave the crowds at Varanasi and see the ghats. I want to drink coffee in Kerala, go mad in Goa and experience the snarling, posturing and seemingly hilarious ceremony that takes place every day as they close the India / Pakistan border.

So, I may not have come out of India sitting cross-legged on the floor proclaiming that there are two kinds of people before insisting everyone chant “ommmm” before dinner… but I've come through the bellyaches and the headaches thinking that all the hassle of the first week - it was nothing, really - in fact, it was nothing more than a sandstorm in a teacup.

What better way to say goodbye to India than to get the self-inflicted wild shites for a second time? In fact, the first ones had barely gone away, but sitting in Indira Gandhi International Airport, I got the distinct feeling that something was rotten in the state of Denmark.

Luckily, we were heading for Munich, and several films later (including the excellent Juno, I recommend it highly), we were in the cleanest, blandest airport I have ever seen in my life. Now, I’ve heard stories about Zurich being spotless, but Munich must run it a close second. There’s a woman who zooms up and down the airport on a little two-wheel buggy – I guessed that she was there to catch anyone who dropped litter. And run them over. And then clean up the remains. This airport was ultra spotless.

Not only that, but their toilets were from outer space. You don’t pull the towel from the machine, it senses your presence and rolls it automatically for you. In my given situation, I was rather glad for Munich, but were I not in the middle of a severe bout of the London Blitz, I would have found it an altogether sanitised, rather dull experience. Especially after the chaos of Delhi, where people are everywhere. Here, people were sat in rows, and at right angles. They were all quiet and orderly. Delhi was a little dirty, and a little bit more – well, for want of a better word – “fun”.

Still, we had Heathrow to look forward to, but there was time for one more toilet visit on the flight from Munich. And it was a belter. I don’t know if you’ve ever had loose motions during turbulence, but it’s not something I recommend. Thank God Lufthansa had the good grace to put railings along the side of the toilet, as I could have gone anywhere. Well, OK, I wouldn’t have gone “anywhere”, but it’s nice to have a stationary seat while you’re going through the motions. There is an art to it, and it involves planting your feet against the walls and holding on with both hands.

So there you are, if you’re ever caught on the loo during turbulence, you know what to do.

The Delhi Belly was back with a vengeance, then, and it was entirely my own fault this time. On Saturday night, it felt as if the turbulence had somehow entered my stomach, and gradually throughout the Sunday, I got the Ashoka out of my system for good.

It seems the only hospitality we do in England is preceded by the word “Corporate”. In the privacy of our own homes, we do a little entertaining, but hospitality is far more important in India.

Apparently we do “customer service”, but that seems to be a faded concept these days, with shops employing monosyllabic teens who can’t even pronounce the letter ‘t’ and “customer service centres” that bring up electronic messages asking you to press “1” if you want to kill someone in customer service. Or something like that. We’ve forgotten how to serve customers, we’ve forgotten how to deal with people, and we only offer hospitality to corporate fat cats. And we can’t even pronounce the ‘t’ in courtesy, let alone be courteous.

To be fair, many Indians don’t exactly excel when it comes to courtesy – and I’ve been told that’s quite normal in North India. I wanted to learn the Hindi word for “thank you”, but so few people say it, it was hardly worth bothering. There hardly seems time for “please”, “thank you” and even “goodbye” – a far cry from the often effusive politeness of the French who spend an average of 7 hours per day just offering greetings and wishing each other a nice day. Then again, when everything is flashing by you at 50 miles per hour, and when everyone wants to get where you are - but before you – there’s no time for pleasantries.

So it goes without saying that in a land of extremes, the opposite is also true. Take the Taj Hotel in Jaipur as an example, where servants were literally falling at your knees. Well, almost. Anyway. The Rajasthanis are brilliant at hospitality, and they show it off with their big moustaches and whopping great big turbans. This isn’t just customer service, this is Rajasthani customer service! They’ll plump up your cushion, bring your coffee on a silver platter and look after you as if you were royalty. Unless they’re auto-rickshaw drivers, of course. They are bad, bad people.

From Shanaz’s family, who made sure I was always well fed and looked after, to the driver who wanted to show off the molasses behind the roadside café, you always get the impression that Indian hospitality is natural, and borne of an honest desire to make you feel at home. Just as the French do bread and the Belgians do beer, the Indians do hospitality and put everyone else to shame.

And perhaps that is why so many people come back from India with their heads spinning.

I can handle food, me. Or at least, I had always believed I could. When I was a student, we used to believe in the replenishing values of a week-old chow mein. We believed that yesterday’s onion bhajis were good for your eyesight and that a good curry should last you an entire week. My old housemate Jason used to worship a two-year old piece of cheese. I think. And nothing untoward ever happened to us. You see, old food was good food, and we were built to eat anything and everything.

So it was, with my recovering stomach, that we entered Ashoka, a five-star hotel with a modernist restaurant, on our last night in India. Logic says that you shouldn’t over-eat on the night before you are flying back to the UK, and especially after you have had the Delhi Belly for the last two weeks. But to hell with logic – I like Indian food and I wouldn’t be able to eat “proper” Indian until the next time I land on Indian soil, so it was back to the student days and back to eating whatever was put in front of me.

Equally, it is rude to refuse food, isn’t it? This is something that I had been trying to come to terms with in India – the amount of food on offer is immense. Perhaps the reason English people are so bloody huge is that they never refuse food.

“Cream pie, fat English person?”

“Mmmm, go on then, bring it on”.

“How’s about another with a topping of minced beef?”

“Errr, would be rude to say no!”

In England, we’re tempted into buying food all the time – with fast food outlets on literally every corner literally screaming out at us to eat more chips. Even on TV, Marks & Spencer are trying to convince you to indulge yourself in something that comes with more adjectives than e-numbers: “Lovingly hand-crafted cream pies, filled with delicious, hand-squeezed Cornish dairy cream and topped with luscious, dark, bitter, Italian chocolate.” It’s food porn, it’s in your face, and it’s making Britain fat. Because we can’t refuse food, especially when it comes with adjectives – and compound ones at that.

So here I was in Ashoka with Shanaz’s father and his genial friend who were being the perfect Indian hosts by insisting that I eat, and eat well.

Perhaps one of the things that turns normal people into the kind of people who insist “there are two types of people – those who’ve been to India and those who haven’t” is Indian hospitality (which will be the subject of a later post). If you accept food, then it’s because you’re hungry and the host cannot see you go hungry. So, you will be offered more. And if you’re English, you’ll eat more. It’s a vicious circle, you see.

And the food was very rich – deserving of a five-star hotel, I suppose. I was mopping up the sauce with rotis and naans as if I would never eat Indian food again.

I must have looked like I enjoyed it, as Shanaz’s father’s friend (let’s just call him Uncle for the sake of efficiency) called over the waiter and insisted the chef come out, as we have a “visitor from abroad”.

“No, no, no, it’s fine”, I think I muttered, but Uncle – ever the host – wanted the chef to come out and receive my congratulations. I’ve only once ever congratulated a chef, and that was Marcus Wareing in the privacy of his own kitchen. But never in front of a table and a restaurant full of people present for the Africa-India Forum taking place at the hotel that day. The chef was directed my way, as I was the guest, and the best I could muster was:

“Erm, your food’s very good, thanks.”

Inspirational, I'm sure you'll all agree. Should we comment on the delicate melange of flavours and spices? Should we congratulate the chef on his well-chosen ensemble of masalas? Nope, your food's very good, thanks. Christ, I can be so English sometimes.

An uncomfortable conversation ensued and it turned out that the chef was a Manchester United fan. We agreed to disagree on the football, and he went on his merry way back to the kitchen where he was obviously much more comfortable. I, however, wanted the earth to open up and eat me.

And so we departed, full of the joys of India hospitality and heavy food. In 9 hours, we would be back on a plane. In 12 hours, I would be back on the loo.

You may remember the driver to and from Jim Corbett and his flashing Indian deities that had so captivated me. Well, my quest to find some flashing Gods had taken me through Khan Market, Dilli Haat and a whole host of tourist shops who didn’t even come close – not even by putting a flashlight on a wooden Ganesha.

“Very good, flashing Ganesha, very nice price.”

Now, a white man hunting for flashing Gods is just about as ridiculous as it sounds, and when – as always in India – people try to help you, you start to feel even more frivolous than before. Tourist shop after tourist shop smiled affably as we tried to explain that I wanted three Indian deities with flashing lights, you know, like the ones that you stick on the dashboard of a car.

So it was that on the Friday afternoon before we were set to leave India, we finally tracked down some flashing Gods – in a car accessory shop. It had been raining (at last) and the potholes had become swimming pools. The rickshaw driver, to his credit, used all his skill to ride straight into them at the same time as avoiding collisions with the oncoming traffic, and waited outside with a bemused smile on his face as the white guy jumped out at every car accessory shop along the way to see if they had flashing Gods. You see, having come this far, I wasn’t prepared to give up.

It had become a slightly embarrassing purchase. Had I become like those people at the start of this blog who fill their houses with Krishnas and Buddhas to match the lampshades? What on earth would people be thinking, selling miniature Gods to someone who just liked the flashing? So I was rather hoping it would be just one, rather discreet, salesperson who would give me the flashing Gods with a knowing nod, and pack me on my way.

Oh no – it would be five, ever so helpful yet ever so confused young men who would get out a whole range of flashing Gods (it never rains Gods but it pours), allowing me to choose. Not only would they bring them out in full view of everyone, but they would connect them up to batteries and show me how they flashed. Brilliant.

So, I am now the proud owner of a flashing set of deities: Saraswati, Hanuman and Shiva – batteries not included.

You can't go to India without going to the Taj Mahal - well, that's what they all say, isn't it? Every tourist has a picture of themselves in front of the Taj, so why shouldn't I? However, experience was beginning to guide me - and any suggestion of doing anything else that day was immediately thrown out of the window. No distractions, no other attractions - just the Taj Mahal and back.

Our driver turned up half an hour late and then promptly ignored our instructions and got stuck in traffic in the centre of Delhi. It was when he finally got out of the traffic that he showed his true colours - weaving in and out of traffic at breakneck speed while I searched frantically for the seatbelt (there wasn't one). We waited for another traffic jam to crack open Shanaz's mother's amazing aloo parathas with pickle - and digested it at some illegal speed on the rather bumpy runway that stretches between Delhi and Agra.

As he screeched into a turn-off for a tea break, we staggered forth from the vehicle and realised we were being sent into yet another commission-trap - this was no ordinary roadside cafe, it was a multiplex gift shop with a cafe attached at the end almost as an afterthought. The prices were approximately ten times the prices you would find anywhere in Delhi - and a coach load of yanks were sat at the back being taken through their itinerary, before being taken through the gift shop for a miniature Taj Mahal priced at £20. Good luck to them, and good luck to their driver, who no doubt pocketed several hundred rupees for his little haul. Ours walked out with a handful and drove on to Agra without the verve and speed that had got us to the gift shop.

Agra is nothing special - in fact, it makes you wonder what Shah Jehan was thinking when he built the Taj Mahal. OK, at the time, Agra was the capital, but it's rather like putting a wonder of the world in Warrington. You wouldn't do it these days. Still, it has a huge, imposing fort which I would normally have liked to go round, but as I said - no distractions. It was straight to the Taj.

Now, the Lonely Planet said that the touts can be a pain at the Taj Mahal and this has to be yet another understatement. The minute the taxi pulled up in the car park, we were surrounded by:

- one rickshaw driver
- one auto-rickshaw driver
- one truck driver
- one camel (for the luxury option)
- two miniature Taj Mahal salesmen

Just getting the car door open was a feat - within a split second of it opening I heard the phrase "very good price" six times, and we immediately chose the rickshaw driver because he at least looked like he needed the money.

I lost count of the number of people who ran alongside the rickshaw asking us if we needed a guide - and as soon as we got off, there were even more of them. How many guides could there be? And what could they tell us that we don't already know? In fact, take the guides away and the crowds would be massively reduced. Perhaps someone should mention this...

So, I paid 750 rupees, Shanaz paid 20, and we proceeded to security. Now security's a good thing. I agree with it because it keeps us secure. Three cheers for security. But as I had "the bag" with me, I was the one pulled over as the security guard poked around it and pulled out a mystery USB cable. "You're not getting in with that", he said and ordered me back out in Hindi. We were sent to a booth where all unsavoury items were kept, and went through security again - but this time Shanaz had "the bag". This time, she was pulled up for - get this - having a copy of The Lancet. Because, of course, The Lancet poses a huge security risk.

Seriously - what was she going to do with it? Unless she has turned into McGyver and can make explosive devices out of glossy paper, I fail to see how a medical journal can bring down the Taj Mahal. Unless, and this is an outside chance, the security team at the Taj are big, big fans of the New England Journal of Medicine and won't allow a rival journal to pass through the gates. That said, they eventually saw the folly of their ways, and we were allowed in.

So, the Taj. And yes, it is every bit as good as people say - photographs don't really do it justice, and it really is amazing that one man almost bankrupted the empire for one building. Those are real gemstones in the marble - and some idiots have even tried to prise them out. We sat and watched as the sun went down, wandered around on the marble floor and generally looked on in awe. As the sun went down, everyone started filtering away from the monument, along through the gardens and out of the gate, away towards the car parks, tourist coaches and miniature Taj salesmen who plague this otherwise beautiful place.

So, only another five hours' drive back and our driver was in no mood for slouching. He actually seemed to have the memory of a goldfish - "excuse me, can you turn the music down?" "sure, no problem"... and within 30 seconds, the volume would suddenly go back up again. "Excuse me, can you slow down a little?" "Of course, sorry." 30 seconds later - va-va-voom, turn on the turbo rockets. Turns out he was a racing driver in his spare time. He even had the cheek to dump us at another commission joint - complete with a separate "driver's room" where they no doubt await their 10% for bringing along some more walking wallets. We sat alone in the restaurant and wondered why the hell it was so empty. One look at the prices explained why. We counted our rupees and got one main course between the two of us.

So, the Taj - was it worth 10 hours in a car and all the touts (and I include the taxi driver in that definition)? Yes, it was. In fact, it would be worth spending a night there, waking up for dawn and seeing the Taj Mahal in the morning. It would be worth going to Fatehpur Sikri and also seeing the Agra fort, but all that will have to wait.

I always wanted to walk into Dixon’s and ask a sales clerk “How much for the i-Pod?”

“£175, sir”

“I’ll give you £50”

I can just imagine the reaction as spotty Kevin tries to worm his way out of the situation. After all, why bother training your sales clerks in haggling when the English so meekly accept prices as they are? In fact, we’re terrible when it comes to prices, and as a result we get ripped off left, right and centre.

For example, LegoLand has re-opened near Windsor, and they’re charging £34 entrance. That’s thirty-four English pounds, folks – and they’re not even bloody EuroDisney. Take your family there and the day will end up costing you over £100. It would be easier to spend £20 on some lego, throw it around your living room and pretend you’re in LegoLand. It may even be more fun. But that’s rip-off Britain, and as usual, we do nothing about it. Even worse, the nonces who run Glastonbury have decided to charge people £150 to camp in a muddy field and listen to some rap “artist” that is apparently only audible to teenagers. I’d offer £20 and still expect them to give me change.

So here I was at Dilli Haat, a pleasant enclave housing regional crafts from all round India, from the traditional miniature paintings of Rajasthan to Ladakh rugs and Hyderabad pearls. It costs 15 rupees to get in, so you don’t get pestered by beggars and touts, although you do have to know how to haggle.

Shanaz’s sister Farah is the Queen of Negotiation. I bow down to her superior bartering skills, and I like to think that by the second time I visited Dilli Haat (with a wodge of rupees for present-buying), I had picked up a thing or two. Here’s a “best-practise” guide to getting what you think is the real price in India.

1. Casually browse through what is on offer, but with a look on your face that says “tch, I’ve seen this rubbish before”
2. See something you want and toss it aside as if it is covered in pooh, and ask for the price of something else.
3. Pretend that the quoted price has offended you greatly and return to what you want.
4. “What about this?” – and be ready with your sums here… Offer at most HALF of what you are quoted.
5. Remember that your price is probably closer to the real price than the one you were quoted – and if the seller refuses to budge, walk away. More often than not, he’ll shout back after you with your price.
6. If you’re feeling particularly mean, agree on a price, wait for the seller to bag it up, and then drop your price. You may be chased away with a broomstick, and you won’t feel good about it, but it’s worth a try.

I was feeling particularly well-disposed to the people at Dilli Haat, mostly because I wasn’t being followed around by people offering me a “very nice price”, and I ended up making good friends with some people from Udaipur, including one young artist from whom I bought three paintings. He and his friends appeared surprised that someone had bothered to visit their town, and even more surprised that I knew a little about the paintings, so I was quoted a price way below what I was prepared to offer.

The guy who sold me the traditional Rajasthani puppet was also from Udaipur, and I got him down from 800 rupees to 500 – and almost made him cry. Or at least, it appeared he was going to cry, but maybe that was just one of his cunning tactics to get another 50 rupees out of me. Still, after sealing the deal, he treated me to his photo album, full of shots of him breathing fire and dancing. At the same time. Very impressive.

However, one man who wasn’t going to make any money out of me was behind the sweets stall. Shanaz’s 8-year-old cousin Raina and I must have tasted everything he had, including one sweet that tasted vaguely of salted beef. I had the good manners not to spit it out, but the bad manners to scream “oh my God what have I ever done to you?” at the guy who then quoted me 300 rupees for one bag of mango sweets. Not a chance, mate.

Edward James “Jim” Corbett was something of a big cheese in British India. He is still revered as one of the greatest hunters of all time, and his long fight to establish a tiger reserve in Uttaranchal, about 600km to the north-east of Delhi, finally paid off with the creation of the Jim Corbett National Park. And that’s where we were heading.

Not that any journey in India can be so simple. A journey that should supposedly have taken five hours got off to a bad start when the driver started heading in a completely different direction. We only woke up to it a few hours afterwards, leaving our poor driver (who had driven to Agra and back the previous night) somewhat angry. I genuinely felt sorry for the guy, especially after he had stopped off at a roadside café and brought back something sugary for us all to try. To be honest, I hadn’t a clue what it was, but given the number of flies present at its creation, I wasn’t allowed to taste it. The driver then took us around the back of the café to show us how it was made – and there was a whole workshop full of people melting molasses and making these sweets. So for once, I could say nothing bad about the driver.

The diversion took us through some of the poorer areas of Uttar Pradesh and Uttaranchal states – places where people heat their houses by burning cow pooh. In fact, they have huge stacks of cow pooh “cakes” that will keep them going for at least 6 months. It’s also an area full of mango and sugar cane growers – and the transport of choice is neither the cow nor the camel, it’s the humble buffalo:

It took us 11 hours to reach Jim Corbett, and given the state of the roads, it gave us sore arses too. No degree of suspension can save you from potholes the size of France. Thankfully, the Solluna Resort, which is about 30km away from any other resort or hotel complex, is an amazing place. They have managed to create a resort from natural resources – stone, bamboo, and whatever else they could find in the valley of the Kanda mountain range. Being so remote and so hard to access, I imagine the only other way to get resources in would have been to fly them in over the Himalayas. Not likely.

So, being a little late, we had missed out on the Safari and the only option available to us was a river crossing. Now, if this sounds like a bum deal, wait until you see the river. It’s hardly monsoon season, so an organised river crossing is something of a cop-out. I could have crossed the river in my loafers, the water level was so low. Still, the chance to stay at the resort was worthy of the 11-hour journey, and it was thoroughly enjoyable, despite the hordes of pubescent schoolchildren discoing into the night.

Apparently there were crocodiles nearby, but I didn’t see any. I didn’t see any tigers, either. But don’t let that take anything away from the resort, or the National Reserve itself, it’s a great place to get away from the chaos of India, and leads me to suspect that there is absolutely no middle ground in India – either you have the maddening chaos of, say, Jaipur or Delhi – or you have the yogaesque tranquillity of this reserve. Perhaps this will explain other extremities in India – from the cricket team which veers from bloody awful to world-beaters in the blink of an eye, to the weather, which apparently went from freezing cold before we arrived to 35 degrees Celcius after we arrived.

Anyway, the drive back was relatively uneventful but for one discovery that would send me on a personal crusade for the remaining seven days in India: our driver’s flashing Gods. If something flashes – particularly if it flashes different colours, then I want it. I’m something of a magpie, I suppose – so when the sun went down, the driver flicked an on-switch on his dashboard and his three Gods (Vishnu, Krishna and Ganesha) came to life in an array of lights. Brilliant!

Ask anyone, I don’t lose my cool easily. However, when it comes to auto-rickshaw drivers, I’m prepared to lose my rag every time. In fact, I don’t just lose my rag, I hide it on purpose. You see, I don’t like being followed – in fact, who does? Having been stalked by one of the little shits for most of the afternoon, I was not well-disposed to rickshaw drivers anyway.

So, when exiting Delhi railway station, we were surrounded by at least 5 auto-rickshaw drivers who had clearly viewed a “white-man-fleecing-opportunity”. Shanaz’s advice had been to ignore them and look elsewhere, which is easy when you only have one – but five of them?

Thoughts began running through my head – this could be an opportunity to show off the ninja skills that I had subconsciously acquired by watching Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (OK, I only watched about 15 minutes, but it’s enough isn’t it?). I could take one out with a swift judo chop and then drop kick another, landing behind the third and bringing him down face-first to the ground. Of course, they would then approach me one after the other (never all at the same time), and I would dismiss them with casual ease before taking on the big cheese – the king of auto-rickshaw drivers. Everyone else would form a circle as we did battle, and of course, I would win and take flight as he lay there bleeding from the horrible wounds I inflicted upon him.

Actually, I just wanted to murder them as quickly as possible. I screamed at them to “f--- off and f--- off now” and have to thank Shanaz for dragging me out of there before the entire auto-rickshaw drivers’ union decided to club together and bash the whiter than white whitey. We got an over-priced taxi back to Dwarka and slept until midday.

The worst thing about having Delhi Belly is that you have to restrict the foods you eat. So imagine my displeasure when taking the Shataabdi Express back to Delhi from Jaipur, and being given platter after platter of samosas, dhals, rotis, and other assorted foods that may or may not have been manna from the Gods, but certainly smelled like it.

I took one bite of the samosa before Shanaz reminded me that it would cause me a world of pain. Although I was reminded of the Delhi road sign that proclaimed “Today’s pain is tomorrow’s gain”, I chose not to mention it, and put the samosa down and spat out what I had taken. It was the best samosa in the world. Ever. Fact. It was probably made by the Hindu God of Samosas and rolled together on the thigh of Cameron Diaz. This samosa was delivered on a silver platter by the Hindu God of Tasty Food (to whom the Hindu God of Samosas reports, incidentally) and sprinkled with edible gold dust. I will never have a better, more beckoning samosa, but I could not touch it, as it would enter my stomach and be hastily shown the exit door:

“Hi, welcome to the stomach processing department. I’m afraid we’re closed today.”

“But I’ve been rolled on the thigh of Cameron Diaz and delivered on a silver platter by the Hindu God of Tasty Food himself!”

“Well that’s all well and good, Mr Samosa, but you can’t come in.”

“Dang. I’m really tasty, as well. Can I not just sit in the waiting room?”

“Nup, it’s also closed. The way out is over there. But you can leave your comments in the guest book if you like.”

“I can’t write. I’m a samosa.”

The dhal positively glistened with spicy tastiness, while the paneer in spicy sauce looked like little chunks of heaven. None of it, though, for my own consumption. I just stuck to munching on the roti and some plain rice, muttering to myself that India could be just so damned unfair sometimes.

Toilet no. 95 (I missed a few): The Shataabdi Express

It is here that I must issue my sincerest apologies to the Indian Railways authority. I am the one who did so much damage to your western-style toilet on the way back to Delhi, although I must admit that the chain was going to break at some point anyway. So, I’m sorry. I’d apologise to the other passengers, too, but they didn’t seem to notice.

There’s nothing quite as valuable as experience, is there? We got off the train in Jaipur early morning, knowing that we would have to spend the best part of the day there before our train back to Delhi at 5pm. This required some serious planning, so we aimed for the town centre and had breakfast at a two-star hotel on the MI road. It was mostly unedifying stuff, but it was somewhere to sit before heading into the town centre for a look around the famed bazaars to buy gifts for everyone back home.

The walk into the town centre seems to last forever, and it mostly covered in pooh and flies. At that time of the morning, most of it is closed, and as the heat started to rise, we took a rickshaw to the City Palace and wasted another hour at the café which came recommended by the Lonely Planet (but not by me).

However, if I am to pick out one particular lowlight of Jaipur that day, it would have to be the auto-rickshaw drivers. Whereas in Udaipur they were generally pleasant people, the auto-rickshaw drivers of Jaipur are bad, bad people. Let’s start with the first annoying little shit who thought he knew better than us.

We wanted to go to an arts and crafts emporium that we had passed on the MI road coming into the city, but noticed quickly that he was going away from the MI road. Shanaz asked him what the heckfire he thought he was doing, and he dropped us off at a completely different emporium, claiming that this one “is better”. Well, thanks smart-arse, but if I buy a ticket to Birmingham, would the guy behind the counter say “actually, here’s a ticket to Edinburgh, it’s much better.”

Anyway, being the meek, unassuming tourists that we are, we had a look around. Now, I’m not much of a shopper, and generally in the UK, if a sales assistant starts following me around, I tend to leave. This policy just wouldn’t work in India, as everywhere you go, a sales assistant WILL follow you, and offer you a “very good price” on everything. It’s a matter of opinion as to who views the price as “very good”, though. We looked around quickly, exited, and found our rickshaw driver sitting outside having a cup of tea with the owner of the shop. How disappointing – he wouldn’t get his 10% as his ‘walking wallets’ didn’t make any purchases.

So, this time we insisted – take us to the one on the MI Road. “I’ll take you to this very good shop – very good prices – very good shop.”

“No, seriously, take us where we want to go – after all, that is your purpose, as a rickshaw driver, isn’t it?”

One more tourist shop, which we gave a cursory glance at and left, frustrated at this idiot of a rickshaw driver, and told him to take us back to the station as we’d had enough. The cheeky little bugger was now asking for 100 rupees just to take us back to the station (about 5 times the going rate), so we gave up on him and found another guy who was willing to take just a little over the going rate.

Back at the station, we found out we couldn’t take an earlier train, so the only thing to do was to find a “Café Coffee Day” (the Indian version of Costa) and sit in there for at least four hours. Now, meet auto (p)rickshaw driver number two – “yes, I’ll take you there, good price, only 20 rupees”. However, auto-prickshaw driver believed that he had a pair of walking wallets for the entire day (going rate is usually about 300 rupees), and insisted that he would wait for us outside.

“No, really, you don’t have to.”

“Yes, yes, I’ll give you good rate.”

“Please, just go away, leave us alone and never ever come back. Got that?”

“………………… I’ll just wait here then, shall I?”

One hour, two coffees and a sandwich later, auto-prickshaw driver was still outside, looking round every five minutes at his walking (well, sitting) wallets, while everyone inside was seemingly amused that we kept getting up every half an hour to go to the toilet (and we gave the game away by carrying loo roll with us each time).

Two hours later, and auto-prickshaw was still outside, pacing up and down, but had still not given up – in fact, he was probably thinking that his all-day payment was looking assured. “Don’t look at him”, insisted Shanaz, but I was beginning to feel I should go outside and commit homicide.

Four hours later, he was still there – he had survived two dust-storms - in fact, you can even see the little git in this particular storm (he's the one who pops out of the auto-rickshaw towards the end:

He had probably lost out on four hours’ honest work fleecing tourists from the train station. We sneaked out the back and found another rickshaw driver who could take us back to the station, and a way out of the filthy, rotten tourist-trap that is Jaipur.

… and a partridge in a pear tree. Perhaps if the Indians were to ever re-write the 12 days of Christmas, they would include the 31 men a-poohing. But that would make it a very long Christmas, and a very long song, as presumably they would have to include 30 men a-peein’, 29 women a-sitting in a tractor, 28 auto-rickshaw drivers a-following you, and so on...

As I woke up on the overnight Udaipur-Jaipur train, I opened the curtains thinking “hey, it would be great to have a look at the countryside” to find we had slowed down smack bang in front of a man squatting in a field having his morning shit.

“Fantastic”, I thought. And no doubt, so did he. I mean, he must have woken up that morning and called out “Darling, it’s a lovely day outside – I’m going for a shit in the field! Hopefully the Udaipur-Jaipur train will go by at the same time!”

“Great idea, sweetheart. Have a good one – oh, and don’t wave at them like you did last time, will you?”

Maybe it was such a great day for having a pooh in the field that all of his friends decided to join him. Dotted around the fields were five men, all having their morning pooh. As the train moved along at an excruciatingly slow pace, I started counting them. A total of 31 men along one small stretch of track were having a pooh – and they were ALL facing the train. Is this some form of Indian trainspotting? “I know, I need a pooh and I haven’t seen a VX357 wide-gauge diesel train for months – coming to the field?”

“Great!”

To be fair, there probably aren’t any toilets within a fifty-mile radius – a pretty difficult situation for a Hindu whose religion places such importance on expelling unwanted substances from the body. Ever noticed the number of times Indians clear their nose or hock and spit on the road? Ever noticed the men peeing against the “do not urinate” signs in India? (OK, you might not have – but I did). It is far more important to keep the body clean and pure than it is to keep the environment clean, which partly explains why there is so much pooh around in certain parts of India.

So why doesn’t the state do something about it? It’s not as if the state is entirely impoverished – and it’s not as if there aren’t examples of something being done about it. In the city of Surat in Gujarat, urgent action actually had to be taken after a plague in 1994. Yes, a plague in our times. After heavy rains and flooding blocking the drains, the city was overrun with rubbish, excreta and dead animal carcases, bringing in the rats and water-borne diseases that killed thousands.

So – they cleaned up. Surat is now one of the cleanest cities in India – if not the cleanest, and stands as an example to the rest of the country. People only pooh outside because there’s nowhere else to go!

An afternoon in Udaipur is probably not enough to take everything in, especially if you want to visit the Lake Palace, also known as Octopussy’s lair. It’s something of a fairytale place, with a City Palace that towers over everything else – and is still home to the current Maharaja who seems to own just about everything including the Lake Palace, which is now a hotel. And a very expensive one at that.

Later on in the afternoon, we watched this fella with his sarengey, an instrument so foreign to me that I can only explain it through the miracle of video:

If you ever find him, and you like his music, he has a CD. And he’s very keen for someone to buy it. Anyway, with that music in the background, we sat down on the ghats (the steps leading down to the lake) and looked the other way as the woman you see in the top video stripped off and washed herself and her clothes in the water. By now I was getting used to the fact that wherever you go in India, you will find the unexpected. Even where you’re expecting it. Anyway, it was otherwise a lovely experience, and a great place to get away from the crowds.

We ended the day at a rooftop café called “Namesteh” – which claimed to be French, but made no attempt whatsoever to be Gallic, other than having a squat toilet which I chose not to use. Luckily, they had a sit-down loo hidden away in the corner, which brought a smile of relief to my face. And this was the view:

It was a shame to leave the Rajputana Resort, but we only had another 9 hours in Udaipur, and we hadn’t even seen the city centre yet. We contacted the rickshaw driver from the previous day and he sent us a taxi, replete with driver, for a full-day tour of the city and surrounding region.

He took us to a few out of the way places, including a stripped-bare building with some shoddy neon lighting and cracked walls, housing a few very, very old artefacts. Thought number 1: very interesting, but is it really a tourist attraction? Thought number 2: is he making commission on this? Thought number 3: if they’re only charging 10 rupees entrance fee (about 15p), how are they ever going to make any money to maintain the place?

He then took us to a very elaborate garden with some pretty fountains – and again, if they’re only charging a few rupees to let people in, how on earth are they able to maintain it? I would have been willing to pay much more.

We were then taken to a neighbouring art school, which also doubled up as the home for two brothers who taught people how to make traditional miniature paintings. Now, I’m no art critic – in fact, I’m something of a heathen when it comes to “Art”. I went to the Tate Modern and spent most of the afternoon either guffawing at the audacity of the so-called “artists” or shaking my head in dismay. In fact, I went round the Hermitage in Saint Petersburg and walked for what seemed like miles murmuring “Madonna and Child, Madonna and Child, Madonna and Child” without hardly even so much as a glance at the paintings themselves. Well, you can only see so many.

So it’s something of an event when I actually appreciate a work of art. Or even a form of art. Miniature paintings are traditional to Jaipur, but Udaipur has its own school and churns out replica paintings on a near-industrial scale. We were taken through the stages required for making these paintings – and every single component is natural. The yellows in the paintings are actually made from camel’s piss, so Mum, when you get your painting – don’t lick it. Not that you would. And the gold is, in fact, real gold.

As we supped on the complimentary tea and looked at painting after painting, the brothers decided to start mentioning prices. Admittedly, their paintings were of a very high quality but I wasn’t prepared to hand over 10,000 rupees on a whim. The taxi driver, who was obviously praying to the Hindu God of Tourist-related Commission, took us away from the suburbs, and back into the centre of the city.

A few years ago, I visited Chinon for the first time. My old French professor was an ardent fan of the place – his lectures on Rabelais would start at 2 on a Friday afternoon, and by 2:05, he would have veered away from the literature and towards Rabelais’ birthplace, Chinon – and more specifically, the wine that is made there. In fact, he had usually partaken in a couple of bottles of the stuff over lunchtime, which made his lectures all that bit more merry and haphazard.

Chinon itself was a lovely little place, all town squares and leafy avenues – but it was Rabelais City more than anything. Street names, statues, shops, cafes, restaurants, even babies for all I knew – everything was named after Rabelais or his books. The residents of Chinon lead the way in “milking it”, and I was expecting something similar in Udaipur.

Udaipur really could make better use of the fact that it was used for the filming of that 1980s Bond classic, Octopussy. OK, so a few cafes screen Octopussy daily, and there’s an Octopussy shop hidden away down an alleyway, but the town might benefit from its regular screening on ITV every bank holiday and plug the connection a little more.

In fact, if it weren’t for the Octopussy connection, I may never have said “Hey, we HAVE to go to Udaipur. Udaipur, Udaipur, Udaipur. Got the message yet? I want to go there. Udaipur. Remember the name. We’re going there. U-dai-pur. What? James Bond? Noooo, I didn’t know that. Really? Wow. I’m flabbergasted. So let’s go there. Udaipur, Udaipur, Udaipur.”

Or something like that. Apparently I insisted. So here we were in the Venice of the East, and it was a huge sea change from Jaipur. Basically, Udaipur is in a valley in the Arawali mountains. The landscape around the city is pretty much desert and rock, and the city is known as one of the last bastions of rebellion. In fact, it was one of the few parts of modern-day Rajasthan never to fall to the Mughals and its independence means it has the highest gun salute in the state.

We arrived early morning, and took an auto rickshaw to our hotel which was about 2km away from the centre of town. When you have the “Rajasthani runs” and you need to kip for a few hours, the Rajputana Resort is brilliant. In fact, I’m sure it’s brilliant even when there’s absolutely nothing wrong in the state of Denmark.


Built along the lines of another of those Maharaja palaces, the resort has swiss chalets (tents) on the lawns for up-market, adventurous visitors, and spacious rooms available for about £25 a night, which in Indian terms is fairly expensive. We spent the day snoozing, wandering around the lawns, visiting the facilities (ahem), and snoozing again. At one point, we wandered into the neighbourhood and received bemused looks from the locals. In fact, they were looking more at Shanaz than myself – another hint towards the conservatism of the country we were in. Yes, she’s with a whiter than white whitey, and yes, he does look as if he needs the loo.

Dancing at the Rajputana Resort in Udaipur
Uploaded by scarfiegjc

The sun had gone down, and Jaipur by night – especially outside the pink part of the city – is a hectic, hair-raising experience. Rickshaw driver after auto rickshaw driver had upped their prices (white man’s tax), including one cheeky sod who asked for five times the going rate just to take us to the station. We chose McDonalds as the best way to sit out the three remaining hours, but I was starting to need:

Toilet no. 5: McDonalds

Ahhhh, trusty old McDonalds. You can pop in for a McShit almost anywhere in the world and be guaranteed a clean loo – because no matter where you are, it’s clean. The employees spend 90% of their time cleaning, don’t you know. It's essential to the McDonalds brand, don't you know. Yes, we're clean people the world over, so please - have a McShit on us.

Well someone tell Head Office that the Jaipur branch have been sleeping! I was beginning to feel distinctly rotten, and almost any toilet would do. But not this one. It was literally swimming in filth and detritus – and a staff member had just exited with a mop and bucket, which had given me some hope. I almost vomited, and we had to leave. Rakshet, who was turning out to be something of a deity in my eyes, recommended the Maurya Sheriton Hotel which was conveniently close to the station – from which our night train to Udaipur would depart at 9pm. So this takes us to…

Toilet no.6: The Maurya Sheriton

Now the heatstroke and the runs were getting serious. This place was pure luxury, and the toilet looked great – they even had the trained attendant on hand with hot towels, but he would have to wait. 30 minutes, a prayer to the Hindu God of Toilets and three flushes later, I staggered out of the loo feeling distinctly dizzy and starry-eyed. The same attendant who opened the door for me handed me a hot towel – as if nothing had happened – and I rushed back into the loo for one final push.

One more hot towel, and I felt compelled to give him 10 rupees for his trouble. After all, it was a nice, warm towel.

All of this had left Shanaz in a bit of a spin, and we wound up 30 minutes later in one of the “Resting Rooms” at the train station – a little over-priced for what looks little better than a hospital room for the criminally insane, but at least it was somewhere to park ourselves. As soon as the train pulled into the station, we piled on and waited for the train to move so that I could visit…

Toilet no.7: The Jaipur-Udaipur Express

I was becoming quite proficient at folding up toilet paper so that it would cover the entire toilet seat. It’s quite an art, and I will be holding classes and demonstrations around the country over the summer. Basically, it involves two folds, but I can’t give any more trade secrets away right now.

This art was particularly handy in the “western-style” toilet on the Jaipur to Udaipur night train. As I sat down, I noticed a particularly cooling effect on my rear end. On closer inspection, this toilet was not, in fact, connected to any pipes or complicated “waste release” system. You just, erm, do your business onto the tracks. As the train is moving. But let’s be honest, this was not the time for minor quibbles such as “my bum’s cold”. My stomach was doing somersaults and it had to be sorted.

Shanaz had procured a variety of drugs and liquids from the stalls along the platform, and things were getting gradually better. In fact, despite the shaking of the train, I was able to drop off and wake up just before arriving in a place one hundred times better than Jaipur – Udaipur, the “Venice of the East”.

Toilet no.3: Jaipur itself

To be honest, I was expecting better. As part of the “golden triangle” that includes Delhi and Agra, Jaipur is one of the major tourist destinations, and according to that bible of utter pap, The Lonely Planet, it “tickles travellers pink”. It also makes them see red.

Jaipur, you see, was painted pink by the Maharaja in 1897 when he welcomed the Prince of Wales, later to become King Edward VII. Pink, you see, is the colour of hospitality, and it seems that most of the city has not received a lick of paint since. The city palace looks superb, and is an oasis of peace in the overcrowded mess of a city that is Jaipur. We spent an hour or so walking around the palace and its many courtyards, and what surprised us most was how every angle had been constructed for a specific view. Some time, long ago, these people were not just architects, they were very, very clever ones.

Next to that is a collection of rather large sundials and astronomical devices (see below), testament to the region’s long-forgotten heritage of geometry and other such things ending in –y. We wandered around, beaten down by the heat and somewhat confused as we were refusing to pay for a guide.

Toilet no.4: Niro’s

Nothing to do with Robert de, but an amiable enough restaurant on the MI road in Jaipur, and they had a rather pleasant toilet (relatively speaking).

On, then, to Jaigarh fort, and it was getting late in the afternoon. The driver took us out of the town and up the hill, winding around and around, honking constantly to warn oncoming drivers that they have to look in front of them every now and again. When we reached the top, a gigantic fort awaited us, and our City Palace tickets would grant us free entrance.

Or rather, they would grant me free entrance, but not Shanaz. She argued for a while, but chivalry, it appears, is a dead concept these days, and only I could enter. Oh, and the taxi driver was allowed to come in, too. He didn’t even have a City Palace ticket, but he’s a bloke and that'll get you anywhere in India, so poor Shanaz had to sit in the taxi and snooze for a while, as I was marched through the fort at record speed by a taxi driver obviously looking forward to the end of the day.

The reason for coming was the self-proclaimed ‘largest cannon in the world’. And I must admit, it was pretty massive as far as cannons go. Either Jai Singh was compensating for something, or he was waiting for the BFG to come and eat him.

The fort is maintained by the Air Force, and an English-speaking guide, obviously impressed by the panama hat, insisted that he tell me all about it.

This cannon was only ever fired once – as a test by Jai Singh, the founder of Jaipur, in 1720. It fired one cannonball over 30km, and the noise was so loud that the walls of houses split in two, pregnant women lost their children, people were deafened, and one cannonball was reported missing. It was what in modern parlance we would call a “massive PR disaster”. I must have shown a little too much interest, as my guide was now delving even further into his bottomless pit of facts and figures, telling me the exact percentage of each metal that went into making the cannon and then, as he moved from the cannon to the fort itself, the exact amount of water each container could hold – and there were over 20 containers. By the time he had completed listing the exact length of every staircase in the fort, our taxi driver had made sufficient indications that the sun had gone down, perhaps forever, for the guide to acknowledge that maybe, just maybe, he had gone into enough detail for one day.

Who knows, perhaps I was his only tour of the day.

The morning you’re about to set off on a four-day journey into the Rajasthan desert is not a great time to get the Delhi Belly. However, the tickets had been bought, and we were heading to Delhi station to catch the early morning Shataaabdi Express to Jaipur.

Now, I like train stations. I list Milan Central, Paddington and Antwerp among my favourites (get me!) and Delhi station comes, erm, nowhere near that list. There’s a certain romance to a train station – or at least there ought to be. You tend to imagine it filled with steam as the engines pull out, with people waving handkerchieves at loved ones, running alongside the train. Or something like that. Delhi station at 6am was hardly a romantic setting.

The rats, however, love it. To be fair, it was much cleaner than I had expected, and the Shataabdi Express that would take us from Delhi to Jaipur in just over 3 hours puts much of the British rail network to shame.

The reservation system may appear archaic, with lists being pinned to a notice board before departure, but it works. And this seems to go for much of India. While Britain’s attempts to modernise have resulted in complete and utter failure, India has barely even bothered. As a result, the trains run (almost) on time and the Delhi-Jaipur train is actually quite pleasant to travel on. For a start, you get food – and lots of it. And newspapers. And tea. And more tea. And a free water bottle.

Toilet no. 1: A Jaipur Shopping Mall

It was about ten in the morning when we arrived in Jaipur and the mercury was rising by the second. Shanaz called a friend of her sister who lived in Jaipur, who I at first assumed to be called Ratshit. I didn’t want to say anything. I think his name was Rakshet, and he was an overwhelmingly nice bloke – and a huge help, as he provided us with a taxi driver for the day.

Our first request was to find a “clean” toilet, as I was about to keel over from the heat and the need to, erm, “go”. We were taken to a Café that didn’t actually have a toilet, but pointed us in the direction of the shopping centre, and off I went. Now, for our American readers who flinch at the mere mention of a lavatory, I do apologise. This is going to be rather graphic, so perhaps you can copy it all into Word and do a Find/Replace on toilet (change to washroom), pooh (change to doody or something), and any other offensive terms. Sorry.

Toilet number 1 came without toilet paper, although thankfully it wasn’t a squatting toilet. However, the floor was covered in water and other substances, and I did come prepared. Still, it wouldn’t do, and I was dreaming of gold-plated toilets with trained monkeys handing you a hot towel when you’re done. Maybe with a plasma screen showing Everton’s greatest victories in the toilet itself. Glorious.

Toilet no.2: The Taj Hotel, Jaipur

God Bless Our Driver. He found a former Maharaja Palace that was converted into a five-star hotel, replete with courtyards, fountains, manicured gardens, and the best toilet I have seen in many, many years. Marble walls, gold finishings, and a trained servant to hand me a hot towel when I was finished – I could have stayed for hours. We even stayed for drinks, relaxing in wicker chairs in front of the gardens, protected from the blazing sun. It was the best toilet, the best coffee, and the best service ever. It almost made me think that Jaipur was really rather good.