Indian summer

Dearest followers! Let me begin by offering my (our) sincerest apologies. It has been brought to my attention, that which we knew already really - that we have been neglecting you! Oh laziest of beach-bum travellers we have become. While we have been basking under a hot sun, moving from one beach-side paradise to another, taking in the best, the worst and everything else in between of the incredible sub-continent, you have been suffering; plunged deep into a north European winter, bereft of knowledge of the whereabouts or activities of your two favourite backpackers and the ray of sunshine their updates bring into your lives. Why, I cannot really say. I (we) can only apologise again and endeavour to do better. Here’s a little something to plug the gap...

We have been in India for almost one-and-a-half months now, in fact as I write this we are on our way out. We arrived in Delhi on December 2 and quickly learnt a valuable lesson – never agree to anything on an empty stomach especially when you are tired or jet lagged; and with that under our belts we set off on a whistle-stop, 10-day, 4-city, 1 national park, private-driver tour of Rajasthan. Our driver ‘Lucky’ (depending on your point of view) skilfully (but, we realised, quite slowly ‘to get the mileage’) negotiated man, motor and beast, ferrying us from site to site ¬¬(even letting me drive) around the kingdom of the Maharajas. Of the cities we visited Udaipur was probably the nicest, the town dominated by an artificial lake created at the whim of one of the previous rulers. The lake and island palaces (the setting for the James Bond film Octopussy) provide magnificent rooftop-restaurant views and a serene, romantic escape from the intense sensory assault that is characteristic of northern India. Rajasthan is, as billed, a vibrant and colourful place; women wear reds, oranges, greens of the brightest hue, the trucks on the road could be entered into the Notting Hill carnival, and entire cities are painted blue or pink. Equally intense is the olfactory assault that one is continually subjected to: open sewers, rivers of animal shit, people defecating in the narrow lanes, throwing their waste in the street, left for the cows, buffalo and goats to feed on; not to mention the abject poverty in which people live. Contrast this with the majesty of the Taj Mahal (even on a hefty gin hangover, not as early as you intended, and full of people) and you wonder what how all this can co-exist.

Saying goodbye to Lucky in Agra we took our first overnight train journey (first class) to the holy city of Varanasi, where we had our first anti-India attack. Staying in the oldest part of perhaps the oldest city in the world, we started to wonder what we were doing there, unable to get the stench of human and animal effluent out of our nostrils or move freely in the already very narrow medieval lanes and alleys for cows and buffalo. Looking for relief, we took a rowing boat at dawn out on the Ganga, one of the best ways to witness the morning bathing and swimming activities of the locals, which left us feeling a bit voyeuristic as we butted in on peoples’ bath time. What left a greater impression on us though was finding the blue, bloated corpse of a new-born child floating in the river. While we witnessed and undoubtedly breathed in the ashes of countless cremations taking place riverside, complete with stray arms/legs sticking out of the funeral pyres, without too much thought, seeing a child’s body abandoned to the water like that put us in contemplative moods. We cured ourselves by finding new digs further removed from the action, found refuge among the Buddhists in Sarnath and eventually moved on to Kolkata.

Ironically, the city that spawned the famous ‘black hole’ provided a refreshing change of scene. A modern commercial centre where you can get hold of ok European-style coffee, we enjoyed hanging out in the large British designed parks around the Victoria monument, had a laugh at the almost incomprehensible show at the planetarium (do the Indians have different constellations, or did they just make them up?) and went to watch Avatar at the local multiplex. You can take the boy out of the city...

Next we hopped down to Chennai and spent a couple of days at Mamalapuram (I claim artistic licence over spelling). Chennai doesn’t have much to offer and actually neither does Mamalapuram, apart from the fact that you are at the beach and not in Chennai – but we had finally made it to the beach! We paddled in the strong currents of the Indian ocean and strolled fairly deserted Indian-clean beaches, hoping that the turtles washed up on the beaches would not be the only ones we saw. But all this proved merely the poor hors d’oeuvre to a spectacular main course, making us wonder why we didn’t just go straight there in the first place.

On xmas eve, after an arduous journey involving a bus, a tuk-tuk (finally losing my rag at the driver who ripped us off – never trust a stationary rickshaw driver) a plane, a boat and a taxi, we finally arrived at the place that made everything seem alright – the Andaman Islands. I am actually a bit loathed to spill the beans about this place. I want to say it is a shit-ridden filth hole, full of low-life scummers, bad food, an island set adrift on a toxic sea. But it is not. It is perhaps the most perfect holiday destination I can imagine: crystal clear waters of blue and green shades lap deserted, pristine, wild beaches of fine white sand. The food is great, the people are honest, the police ineffective, and you get to ride around on mopeds drunk. The snorkelling is so good you do not really need to go diving; we saw umpteen different types of fish and even turtles swimming among the kaleidoscopic coral. Other than that, there is very little to do than string up a hammock and listen to the sound of the waves lapping the shore as you nod slowly off to sleep.... New Year’s Eve came round and we managed to purloin some very cheap whiskey, despite it being the official holiday for the only legal booze shop on Havelock Island. We spent the night cruising the strip for parties and saw in 2010 on the beach (where else?).

Very reluctantly we left the Andaman Islands. Flights were pre-booked and had to be met, but we were gutted when we realised that we would have to spend a night on the main Andaman island, Port Blair, in order to catch our flight back to the mainland. While nothing like mainland India, it was still a harsh reality check to step out of the airport to traffic and horns and normal life. We skipped through Chennai (making another visit to the cinema this time to see a crap American film made far more interesting by the reactions of the Indian audience – complete with booing the bad guy, cheering the best lines and laughing at jokes that weren’t) and caught the train for Bangalore. This time we fully discovered the delights of Indian train food – relatively high quality and dirt cheap, so i filled my boots for about 5 hours. Bangalore was just another quick stop as we waited for an overnight train to the small northern Karnataka ‘city’ of Hublis. It has to be said that this train journey was the worst ever, such that I was almost motivated to write about it, but got overtaken by events...