India: Part One

India seems like a long time ago. In fact, it was. We left there just after my 34th birthday on 5th July after six weeks in the country. A lot has happened since then; we came home and spent my grandmother's last weeks with her, and flew back out to finish our trip. A lot of feelings and thoughts have been washing through me over that time, and I've felt quite insular in many ways. I've certainly not felt like writing up the travels. But now I want to rejoin the world.

India is a hundred countries. Trying to reduce it to something manageable in a blog post seems faintly ridiculous. But to me, our time there seemed to split quite evenly into two halves. The second half of our time there, in the cool heights of Kashmir, Ladakh and McLeod Ganj ('Little Tibet') felt a world away from the sweltering lowlands of Delhi, Agra and Varanasi.

Varanasi: Heat

The bus journey from Agra to Varanasi is seventeen hours in what they call an 'ordinary bus'. But there's nothing ordinary about this filthy deathtrap. People in the bus station tell us: 'this bus isn't for tourists', but of course we think: 'we can handle it'. And we do, for the first few hours. Before we get uncomfortable sitting in the clothes that have gotten so sweaty because of the close-to-fifty-degree heat. Before the bus gets rammed and someone's ass is in my ear and people are fistfighting over seats. Before we're black with the sooty residue that covers everything. Before we stop for a break in the middle of the night and eat pastries for dinner in a ditch with a pig for company. Before we then (perhaps not surprisingly) start to feel ill.

Eventually we arrive in Varanasi sometime before eight in the morning, to be met by the heat. By nine we've still not found where we're staying, and the heat is unbearable; we are being cooked alive. We eventually rock up and check in, and then spend three or four days straying no further from our bathroom than we absolutely have to. But in Varanasi, the electricity is intermittent, so when the air-con goes off (as it does once for almost the whole day), we're twisting in our sweat again. When we're not too ill or hot to do anything, exploring Varanasi is an experience never to be forgotten. The alleyways that pass for streets twist and wind; you come across cows blocking the way, families bathing half in the street, beggars, stalls... life is lived on the streets here.

And in and on the river. The Ganges is supremely holy to Hindus, and they bathe in it, drink it, wash with it, and are interred in it, either their whole body or their ashes after being cremated on its banks. It's filthy with sewage, never mind what gets in it from all these uses, but those who live here grow up drinking it. And celebrating life along its banks -- dancing, praying, relaxing. Life is lived fairly much in the open here, and everything is close. It's a visceral place. In many ways I wish we'd visited India when it was less hot, but I guess that perhaps Varanasi is most itself when it's sweltering, and when everything is mixed up in sweat and heat haze and mist, almost like life, concentrated and focused so sharply that it's uncomfortable, but at the same time, utterly compelling.

Delhi: Hassle

That heat exhausation come on the back of a weariness of being, and being seen to be, a tourist. A tourist stepping off the plane in Delhi is new meat. I've soon lost count of how many times we're told that the place we're looking for has burned down, or is closed for some made-up religious holiday, or somesuch, and very helpfully advised of an 'alternative' which is 'better' and 'cheaper' (and pays commission to our helpful friend). A four hundred metre walk along the main strip in touristville in Delhi is impossible without being hassled, often quite aggressively, to buy at least eight package tours, twelve taxi rides and an assortment of ticketing, eating, drinking and other such 'opportunities'. On our first day, a taxi ride to a bookshop to get a guidebook turns into a tour of tourist agencies trying to sell us tours, or at a pinch some tatty old guidebooks. 'Delhi doesn't change much in thirteen years', we're told, after pointing out the publication date of one. He might actually have half a point, but we're not buying.

This happens in Agra and Varanasi too, but Delhi seems worst. You can't ask directions without a hand being held out for money, and you can't get around a quarter of an attraction without somebody hard-selling their services as a guide. I know that some of these people are extremely needy, and that in comparison to them I am rich. So as well as feeling hassled I end up feeling guilty for becoming so annoyed by it. After awhile your skin hardens and you begin to ignore people rather than get drawn into conversations which are always, always a prelude to being taken for a ride. But this is a shame as it makes you draw back and makes it hard to embrace what you've come out here to find. It certainly feels a light year away from the open arms of Iran.

Maybe it's our legacy, so maybe we deserve it, but there are also people here hauling themselves up by their bootstraps without ripping people off; it's a shame the trap of fleecing tourists is so tempting that so many others fall into it. Again, the discomfort and hassle rubs shoulders with wonder, and Delhi as a melting pot, as a crazy, fast-paced life-happening-all-around you experience is not one I'd take back for all the hawkers in India. But, given our limited time in India, although we find ourselves being drawn back again and again by Delhi's gravity and transport-hub status, we never stay long; there are places where it is much easier to enjoy India.

Agra: Majesty

After seeing huge Persian blue-tiled mosques in Iran, the red sandstone monoliths which are the forts and mosques left by Akbar the Great in India are a fantastic counterpoint. The city of Fatehpur Sikri is supremely evocative; a massive labyrinth of temples, towers, halls and follies, exquisitely well-preserved. You can imagine Akbar's court marching and fanning and debating and dancing; it seems like only the trees have grown and changed since. Agra Fort, like the Red Fort in Delhi, also stands almost perfectly preserved and evokes a pit of dread t the idea of ever assailing such places.

And then, having heard all the hype, we are up at 4:30 in the morning to beat the crowds in to see the Taj. We pay about five times as much as we've paid for any single visit on our travels. It's worth all of it. There's something about such a huge, beautiful building being built as a mausoleum for one person, that just blows your mind. It's a haunting white reflection of the red architecture of the forts, and I can't do anything except stand and soak it in. It feels supremely peaceful, in the early morning light, sitting at its base, the white towers looming straight up, and the huge dome capping the intricate lattice work of the building. 'Building' actually seems like the wrong word: it seems more like a monument from another world, almost as alien as the black tablet in 2001. We are hours in the immaculate gardens, just spending time in the company of this beautiful mountain of wrought marble. I walk out feeling very much at peace.

The majesty of India is apparent in so many more places than just Agra and the Mughal architecture, though. there is something majestic in the open-air funeral pyres along the banks of the Ganges -- the sheer scale and industry of the operation inspires. Even India's trains and stations, while maybe slightly grubby, are soaring in scale, elements of the landscape, not to be trifled with. The scale of travle around India itself is tremendous. Our seventeen hour bus journey is not even our longest, and we have several train journeys in double figures of hours. And, presiding over it all, the start of the biggest mountains in the world. After the heat and the closeness of the plains, we leave for Kashmir, and thence to Ladakh in the heart of the Indian Himalaya.

Photos of Delhi, Agra & Varanasi