Delhi. Exactly eleven years ago to the day we set off for a three-week trip to India, ‘we’ being Maureen, Paul and myself. The plan was to fly to Delhi, get an internal flight to The Andaman Islands, spend a week lazing in the waters of The Andaman Sea, then fly back to Calcutta and get a train up to Darjeeling, in the foothills of the Himalayas. Simple enough.
A couple of years earlier Paul had been backpacking around Rajasthan, Nepal and the Himalayan foothills for a four month spell with his then girlfriend Jo, returning for a few months to earn a bit more money, then to travel around the south from Goa to Kerala for another four months, so was intending to show us the basics of travelling around India on a shoestring.
With everything prepared we booked our flights for a bargain £400.00 return. We had originally wanted to fly with Lufthansa who were only £50.00 more expensive but they were fully booked, so it was Syrian Airlines or Aeroflot. We chose Syrian. We had our jabs and I stuffed into my backpack a warm woolie and jeans for the mountains and my snorkelling stuff for the islands, plus a brand new copy of Lonely Planet. We were leaving nothing to chance. What could possibly go wrong?
Well the first thing to go wrong was booking with Syrian Airlines. If you ever fancy a moan about Ryanair take a trip with Syrian. After the worst flight I’ve ever experienced in my life in what looked like a very hookey old second hand plane which conked out in Munich (a stop that was unscheduled so we must consider a bit of an emergency), and the only in-flight entertainment was a battered copy of Arabic News in Arabic, and really horrible food (A Hindu family near us were given beef and a vegetarian we met was given a bag of crisps), we landed in Delhi at three o’clock in the morning, almost a day and a half late.
So we fell into a cab and headed into 
town, slaloming at a terrifying speed between mighty lorries with horns blaring along the freeway. We were dropped of at Janpath guest house, just off Connaught Place in the centre of Delhi, a place Paul knew from his previous trips. But a guy at the door told us it was fully booked, so we went with a helpful motor rickshaw driver to look for our second choice. That too was booked, and so too was our third choice, so after driving for what seemed like hours all over Delhi, we eventually allowed ourselves to be taken to a hotel recommended by the driver which cost $100.00 a night. We’d been scammed. How did that work? We didn’t know, but we slept. Next day we booked into Janpath, asking them if they’d been booked up the night before, which, of course, they weren’t.
Next morning we went to the airline office to buy our flights to Port Blair in the Andaman Islands but we found they were fully booked for weeks to come, which called for a hasty change of plan. So we decided on the Rajasthan alternative. A fine decision as it turned out but it still meant lugging my warm clothes and snorkeling stuff across the roasting plains of India.
We had a couple of days to spend in Delhi before we left for Agra, about 150 miles to the south, so we took in a few sights including a rickshaw ride to the magnificent Red Fort in the old city, built in the 17th century by the Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan who also built the Taj Mahal. The fort has largely red sandstone walls but the beautiful pavilions surrounding the large courtyard inside are mostly marble.
Our rickshaw ride through the bustling streets of Old Delhi took us past roadside food stalls serving curries in bowls made of banana leaf, which are then discarded in the road for the cows to eat. So no litter. Brilliant. I think all McDonalds should be made to use these containers and keep a cow outside to clean up.
The train to Agra was due to leave at 6.15 in the morning so we got to New Delhi station in plenty of time, completely unnecessary of course as the train arrived a fairly predictable two hours late but no matter. We breakfasted on
a delicious puri and vegetable curry freshly cooked on the platform, and drank plenty of chai served in plastic cups. A year or two earlier this would have been served in unfired earthenware cups which would be thrown on the floor and reconstituted, but now the dreaded plastic cup is considered cheaper, and are still thrown onto the tracks to create a hideous tide of litter.
Agra. The slow ride down to Agra was delightfully sluggish and relaxing, tipping us out onto the station forecourt to take a motor rickshaw to Tajganj and the Shahjahan Hotel, just a couple of hundred yards from the entrance to the Taj Mahal.
Checking in was tricky. Not because of any language or bureaucratic problems, but because an enormous cow had placed herself across the hotel doorway, and we had to clamber over her to get in.
Once in, the room was much as you might expect for $10.00 a night. Bare electric wires were hanging alarmingly around the walls, and we have slept in fresher beds, but we did have our own bathroom. OK, the bath was black but it was a bath. The room was at the front of the building on the first floor and the large picture window overlooked the bustling street below, and from the rooftop we could see the Taj Mahal.
We had a drink on the roof and then
went straight to the Taj. What an astonishing sight as you walk through the arched gatehouse. I’m sure it is the most beautiful building in the world, built by the Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan in 1653 in memory of his favourite wife Mumtaz, who died during the birth of their fourteenth child. The Taj is built using white marble inlaid with semi precious stones and shines in the sunlight. Thousands of artisans and craftsmen were employed in its construction, and many of their descendants still live and work in Tajgang today.
One morning I got up before dawn to watch the sun rise over the Taj. This is really special. You see all the fabulous colours in the walls and realise that it only appears white in full sunlight.
On a hill a mile upriver is another of Shah Jahan’s red forts. And this one is where he ended his days. His son imprisoned him in a golden palace there overlooking The Taj because he was spending his son’s inheritance with crazy abandon, although today you can barely see The Taj for the dense air pollution. This pollution is extraordinary. It’s in the river, which is dead and stinking, as well as the air, which is choked by exhaust fumes and factory smoke. Early in the morning its hard to breath for the stench of the open sewers running along the roadside. Phew!
But you’d happily endure all of it for a glimpse of the beautiful Taj Mahal at dawn.
Jaipur. We stayed in Agra for three or four days then left to catch the train across the plains to Jaipur, The Pink City. This is a beautiful journey through abundant wheat fields, past villages of houses painted cobalt and pistachio and cow pats drying in the sun to burn as cooking fuel, and the women in their brilliantly coloured saris working in the fields.
Arriving in Jaipur we took a rickshaw to the Hotel Bissau Palace just outside the city walls near the Chandpol gate. OK, I know this sounds really posh and luxurious, and in truth it was pretty nice but at five hundred rupees a night for a room with a marble bed (and if you’re very good you might get a mattress)
this is delightfully cheap. The wonderfully (and naturally) cool rooms here surround beautiful flower gardens rich with what we consider quite rare birds like Kingfishers and Hoopoes, the trees ringing with birdsong and the carefully tended gardens hissing with the very musical sound of sprinklers. And this is what The Lonely Planet describes as middle range.
On the first morning after our arrival we walked into town through the long, arrow straight Chandpol bazaar, past traders selling spices piled high on steel plates and of dazzling colours. Families were selling wonderful aluminium suitcases and trunks, or clothes in rainbow stripes. Our senses were 
bombarded with sound and colour and texture. The beautiful crumbling buildings painted pink one hundred and fifty years ago in honour of The Prince of Wales’s visit seem to represent a testament to the enduring culture of this massive country.
We walked on to the fabulous Pink Palace, Hawa Mahal, and then the observatory, the Jantar Mantar, built by Maharaja Sawai Jai Singh, who also built this fabulous city in 1727. The Maharaja was a lover of all things astronomical and astrological (and mathematical and astrophysical) 
and built the must-see observatory to further his studies. It’s graceful, and sculptural, and brilliant and very beautiful. It is also strangely modern looking. Here you will find a huge sundial, the height of a three storey building and a monumental effort to walk up, which gives the time accurate to the minute. There are mighty astrological structures (pictured right), each one dedicated to a different sign of the Zodiac. The whole place is a sculpture park and outdoor science museum of rare beauty.
In fact, this entire city is relentlessly fascinating. And the food’s good too.
Udaipur. However, on the morning we arrived in Udaipur I was cruelly laid low with an inevitable visitation of the squits, so the overnight train journey was less than wonderful. 
We had not planned where to stay in the city so placed ourselves in the hands of the rickshaw driver who did not disappoint. He took us to Hotel Jagat Niwas in the old town, a seventeenth century haveli or merchant’s house, on the banks of Lake Pichola. We booked a couple of rooms on the cheaper side of the courtyard, but enjoyed views from the terrace across the lake to five palaces and the fabulous sunsets over the water. For $10.00 a night we looked across to the famous five-star Lake Palace Hotel, where for $100.00 a night they could enjoy views of us. The restaurant here served excellent food and in the evenings we’d sit out on the terrace after dinner watching the return leg of the fruit bat migration over the lake. The sky darkened for maybe half an hour as a seemingly endless run of thousands of these creatures flew back to their roosts as the sun began to set over the lake. Quite a sight.
This beautiful ‘City of Lakes’, ‘The Venice of The East’, founded in 1568 by Rana Udai Singh, enjoys more history and more palaces than you can shake a stick at, although for the local population it’s greatest claim to fame is the fact that it was used as the location for a James Bond movie, ‘Octopussy’ I think. It’s everywhere. Posters hang in the shop windows and the movie plays in many of the restaurants and bars. It’s very hard to avoid but we managed.
Our few days in Udaipur were spent lazily wandering the streets, nosing into shops, sitting with a cup of chai haggling comfortably over the price of a piece of silver jewellery or a shirt, or just talking cricket. England were touring at this time and every food stall had a TV or radio transmitting ball by ball commentary.
Goa. Our trip to Goa involved a train journey to Mumbai (or Bombay as everybody who lived there called it) and then, according to the newly printed timetable, a two hour wait for a flight to Dabolim and then a bus to Benaulim.
Well, needless to say there was no connection awaiting us so we had to stay overnight at an expensive hotel in town, and fly in the morning. That’s how it goes.
At Benaulim we checked into Oshin Cottages guest house on the outskirts of town. This place had been recommended by one of the many backpackers we met on our travels, and it suited us fine.
It was a fair walk to the beach and to town but that was OK. We arrived on Easter Monday and most of the beach bars were closed, this being a Catholic state after its Portuguese past. The one place open was Domnik Shack, so that was our choice for the week. Domnik was an excellent host selling good food (tandoori fish) and drink, as well as providing a book exchange. He was also a local activist protesting against the building of hotels in the area. At that time there was only one in the process of construction but Domnik knew that more would follow, which I understand has since been the case.
This became a very lazy week, just shuffling around this tiny place, buying some tourist tat, eating and drinking. Er, that’s it.
We stayed for about a week, then flew back to Delhi to check in for our flights home. That’s when things began to go wrong.
But for now we are consoling ourselves with a week, commencing Friday, in a one-room cottage in Hoff, a tiny hamlet near Appleby-in-Westmorland. Hoff itself stands on the banks of Hoff Beck, and from what I can see on the Ordnance Survey map, consists of a bridge, a telephone box and a pub. Sounds good to me.
Postcards From The Land That Time Forgot 