Over The Counter Culture

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 – but worthwhile, but hard to justify at those prices. I stayed out of the Taj whilst Katie, Daz and Tom stumped up.

Jaipur – voted our worst stop yet (paradoxically, we spent quite some time there). Not the market shopping paradise it’s claimed. Local population is hard, rude, greedy and the streets are filthy. Not a happy place. Home to a really impressive fortress some 30k out of town. Loved the hotel we stayed in, the Pearl Palace, a large place with a really friendly and personal owner who rides a beautiful Royal Enfield.

Pushkar – another spiritual Indian place, where Gandhi’s ashes were scattered. Great backpacker chillout where every restaurant offers ‘special’ menu items (beer or ‘bhang’ – hashish – flavoured items).

Udaipur – stumbled quite fortunately on a great hotel (Minerva). Where Tom and Daz did their tailoring.  Two palace hotels on the lake, hard to get into not because of the watery location, but because of the cost!

Palolem (Goa) – the right balance of bar-buildup and unspoiled beach. Local fishermen an interesting sight, and easy bike rental (2 quid a day) makes it a good departure point for untouched beaches nearby or ito neighbouring Karnataka

Hampi – a real oddity. Piles of boulders seemingly fallen from the sky, covered in sprawling temple/palace complexes and interstitial banana fields and rice paddies as far as the eye can see. Town protected from expansion is small and very friendly, the backpacker it attracts are peculiar, fascinating and very open, and there are some FANTASTIC small hotels, notably the Garden Paradise

Mumbai – suprised us in its westernised civility, buildings, layout, old (Raj era) municipal buildings. Money talks and drugs are offered on many a street corner. Home to the Gaylords restaurant!

Before we left, despite common warnings of dodgy road behaviour I still wouldn’t have expected that three weeks into our trip Indian driving would still shock, amaze, irritate and draw expletives from us – that it still does so ought to impress on you just how shite, mad and totally idiotic it really gets.

It would be harsh to criticise road surface quality in a country as large, poor and cattle-infested as India, especially when as a group we’ve not always been on the major touristic circuits. And yet, after two days riding on Indian roads, it shocks me that nobody is doing anything about loose gravel left lying around on sharp corners after roadworks. I managed to spin out and deck my pissy little scooter (escaping with barely a scratch, thankfully) going out wide on a blind right-hander for precisely that reason.

Why take it wide? will ask road veterans. You idiot, if you’d taken a ‘racing line’ you’d have been fine! they might protest. Why not keep your speed down? all very valid objections in a country where the Highway Code isn’t rarer in bookstores than tourist-aimed copies of the Kama Sutra. But in India, corners are viewed the same way Lewis Hamilton views corners at Brands Hatch – the perfect overtaking opportunity, especially if you’re not keeping up ‘the pace’.

The same is true of junctions – even if he wants to take the next left, the average Indian driver will still pass whoever is in front of him. This completed, he will proceed to slam on the brakes (causing all traffic behind him to slow to his selected turning-off speed, piling up), honk and veer left. The honk *is* the indicator.

Having not actually gained any time with the overtake (and slowed everyone in the process), you might think this demonstrates totally careless, thoughtless driving. Not so. Indian driving is, I believe, very thought-intensive. It is a an exercise in anticipation, in second guessing, and in deciphering the meaning of the universal, ceaseless and much adored horn honk. Do not forget that road names and directions are so rarely indicated there, that the average Indian driver is necessarily distracted from his driving by having to navigate using sextants and the North Star.

But it’s largely hypocritical of me to chide the Indians on their driving when twice now we’ve rented bikes (150 rupees/day, roughly 1 quid 50 – half the price of a standard UK pint of lager) and thrashed the hell out of them on- and off-road before slinking back to the owner having given them a spitshine, rinsed off the sand, dirt and animal fecal matter, and bent back the metal rollbars, praying for it to bear them on their investigative test ride without the treacherous engine splutter that would betray six hours of mechanical abuse.

That said, nothing beats the feel of water planing off the soles of your feet as you bomb down a remote Goa beach, racing a retreating wave wearing nothing but boardshorts, your still-wet hair adding its drips to the spray kicking up off your overpowered scooter’s puny wheels. Not something I would ever do to any machine I owned, of course – the dune ride down to the beach alone was a punishing, abrasive affair, but let us not even consider what the saltwater-wet sand combo will do to the poor motor!

+ Special props to Katie, who got over her pre-ride anxiety to ride like Rossi and land later in the pub the most vocal of all of us in her requests for a repeat experience!

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.

Some stats: 4 friends. 7 visas to be obtained. 2 weeks to go before departure. 7 months abroad!

6 visits to the India visa centre. 3 visits to the chinese centre. 1 lost receipt – crucial. 1 lost passport photo – crucial. £350.

Some observations:

- both China and India now outsource their visa applications and collections to a private company. Yes, the irony of India outsourcing something – to the UK! – is staggering (even more so when the Indian IT system crashes). Yes, this just adds an extra layer of crap to deal with, and delays on your application. You submit at the centre, they take their cut (check these: China imposes a £30 visa fee, the contractor then charges a £30 service fee on top of that!), they send it to the embassy, they receive it from the embassy, they give you the visa. Is that service really necessary? should it cost as much as the Visa itself? It’s small comfort that my government charges foreigners even more for their visas!

- the Indian visa centre smells of fart and is terribly overcrowded. Fill in your forms and pay online, from the comfort of your own home, and book an appointment. Then photoshop the appointment letter to show whatever date and time suits *you* – wave it in the bouncer’s face when you get there and he’ll print you off a good number. The baaaad numbers put you in the ‘no appointment’ queue – and instead of waiting 30 minutes, you’ll be kept waiting up to 2 hours. So avoid it – Photoshop!

- if you’re like me – submitting Visa applications on behalf of friends from around the country, and like me, you happen to lose their passport photo with no way of getting another in time – fake it. This wasn’t a great job (those watermarks are there for a reason!), but printed out on printer paper, it convinced the Communist Government of China. Before and after:

- processing times are usually 3 days. Avoid the Chinese express services if you can, they’re bloody expensive! Note, the Indian visa service doesn’t offer an express service. Plan ahead!

- extra tips: if you have a non-UK passport, the Indians need to see a proof of UK residence from over 12 months ago. The Chinese don’t, but for UK citizens and aliens alike, they need to see flight bookings to China and hotel bookings for your first few nights in China. I had to edit the email sent by the hotel to add my name and a co-traveller’s, before printing it out and submitting. The Chinese visa centre has 2 computers with free Internet access and free colour printing – invaluable!

- scan everything. I cannot stress how important a tip this is. Scan all the receipts you get for passports, scan the passports, the visas, everything. I lost the receipt for my passport and that of a friend – the Chinese would absolutely not have bent the rules and given his passport back to me without him being there in person, without a great deal of charm and printouts of his and my passport scans.