Namaste!

Typed from Rishikesh, in the Uttarkhand province, where the hills rise up suddenly from the flat plains of northern india to form the start of the Himalayas. This is the village which George Harrison brought the other Beatles to in order to open their minds (and write the White Album!), though they eventually lost their faith in the spirituality of the place when faced with escalating money demands of their yogi. So it goes. As you can see from the hotel balcony - the environment is reason enough to come here, even if you feel your mind is open enough not to need the zillions of yoga classes on offer here. Rather go rafting, personally.

- the view from the balcony today - in stark contrast to our previous residences:

- our Delhi hostel - TV, shower and sofa + coffee table! luxury. Except when the electricity cuts out in the middle of the night and you wake up with rivulets of sweat pouring down your every nook & cranny. Fenton has once again left a mystery stain on the bedsheets. Must be a common feature to all his travels.

- the sleeper train. Not so bad, actually. Might smother my couchette with vicks vaporub next time though - tad smelly sometimes.

We arrived here having taken a sleeper train from Delhi Wednesday night after a crazy dash through the crumbling, traffic-gorged streets of old Delhi in two autorickshaws, getting on the train 5 minutes after it was due to leave (thank goodness the trains, like us, run on Delhi time, a local unoffical +20min timezone!) Not much sleep to be had on the sleeper, despite decent comfort and nice temperatures. I put it down to the constantly changing (interesting) scenery along the trip, the driver’s addiction to sounding the foghorn (like all drivers in India, for that matter - it gets used more frequently than both the indicator and the gearshift), and the men walking down the train every 20 minutes shouting ‘Tea! Coffee! Chai!’

Delhi is an interesting city, where India’s upwardly mobile youth - skinny jeans, bling, slick hair, westernised (but distinctly Hindi) music - come shoulder to shoulder with abject poverty. It’ll be interesting to see what happens should this dichotomy accentuate - which it seems likely to do, given the huge problem the government faces brining so many millions out of poverty whilst attempting to nurture growth of the other classes. As argued by Prospect several months ago, vast swathes of the Indian middle class seemingly lacks the will to contribute to a social program aimed at helping India’s poorest. The use of technology is fascinating, too - the ‘mobile phones’ you see in use of the street tend to be rows of satellite phones fixed to bike carts, like a mobile phonebox! No iPhones visible, despite its supposed availability in India.

The new Metro system is largely overlooked by the Lonely Planet guidebooks we’ve been using - we discovered it almost by chance, after an unsuccessful con was tried on us (and again the next day, by the same guy! what cheek!!) - it’s modern, built for capacity, much, much cleaner and more efficient than the London Underground; and it’s extremely cheap. Here’s a photo putting Delhi’s traffic problems in context - one can only hope uptake of tube services will grow exponentially. Indian traffic is MENTAL.

Delhi is also home to a seriously new-age temple of the Ba’hai faith (which Daz subscribes to). Set in the middle of huge, green grounds (in Delhi!), the moment of Zen walking around and sitting inside the huge hall was refreshing after a blackout night in the madhouse - though the smelly banter with an american Bah’ai convert in the Information Centre was not.

Also zen: the Red Fort, one of India’s most famous monuments

For an up to date gallery of the photos I’ve been taking on this trip, view the whole thing here:
http://picasaweb.google.com/philbradley/India#

As always, email us with your news - it’s good to know what’s going on back home, plus we may soon find we need other talking points than Katie’s voracious appetite for pizza.

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India - a summary

Time spent in India: 31 days Summary itinerary: Delhi - Rishikesh - Missourri - Agra (Taj Mahal) - Jaipur - Pushkar - Udaipur - Goa (Palolem Beach) - Hampi - Goa - Mumbai (Bombay) Delhi: we stayed in the crawling, winding, buzzing streets of central Delhi. Came to grips with the more extreme aspects of India straight off the bat - the poverty, the scams, the constant attention, haggling, transport (transport was a drag until we discovered the excellent new Metro system), the noise, the traffic. Highlights included the Bahai Lotus Temple and the Red Fort Rishikesh: (one of) the spiritual hubs of yoga (a little cheesy at times). Beautiful Ganges valley through pre-Himalayan mountains. Beatles’ ashram, great bakpacker crowd, dominantly Israeli Missouri - only briefly visited at nightfall. Tibetan-cultured Indian family holiday destination - happy, lurid and prosperous with too little conservation of the hill station / Tibetan element Agra - home to one of the Wonders of The World, therefore given to high prices, not so much by the man on the street (off-season) but by the government - a whopping 750 rupees to get up close to the Taj, and 250 to get into the nearby fort...

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This entry was posted on Thursday, September 4th, 2008 at 3:11 pm and is filed under Culture bucket, Lifestream. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.