5th-9th Nov 2010
Even as the train rolled in I was certain that I would not like Delhi.
Already having decided that it wasn’t a place to linger long, due to the need to get into the mountains as soon as possible, our stay wasn’t going to be extensive anyway. I should have had more grace perhaps but you never know when you’re going to pop do you?
Perhaps it was connected to the excruciatingly long approach the train from Jodhpur takes to get through all the suburbs, slums and tarpaulin hamlets on the sidings, early in the morning. Through the live ablution shows, the rats and the shit in slow motion.
Having arrived, we got to the station entrance and swam through the taxi touts towards the pre-paid taxi booth. I received a sneer and no change but our vulnerability was now legitimised and the drivers now upped their game in getting us in their particular vehicle.
The rickshaw we were led to already had an incumbent, on his way to the office. All of us and our bags were so tightly packed that when we did the “what’s your good name/how long have you been in India?” routine we did so showing each other the far whites of our eyes, unable to move our heads. A pit-stop for chewing tobacco was made but we were soon outside our hotel, fending off demands for more money over the pre-paid ticket price.
Steered by the Book we headed for the Amax, a little way away from the main backpacking area Paharganj. Our room seemed OK in the state we were in (first time in Sleeper class on the train) so we collapsed. We awoke to mystery wiring (no two switches did the same thing twice) a TV where every channel in English was suspiciously fuzzy but those in Indian languages were sharp and loud, and a shower that exhibited all the symptoms of a prostate problem.
The TV proved not to be an issue as one touch of the wall socket caused it to collapse. We were happy to have it inoperable, perhaps because the first signs of hysteria were setting in but we were eating books anyway.
At least it was quiet. Except for the chipmunks. Each side of the building seemed to have a male critter intent on calling the city its own. Oh yes, and the carrom board factory exactly opposite our room window, planing and banging 14 hours a day.
The pressure was rising. The best thing to do was go into Parharganj, the centre of ‘Backpackistan’, it’ll be lovely there right? I mean it’s geared for people like us isn’t it? These touts the Book warns of really can’t be that bad, can they?
If you like your personal space, if you’re susceptible to any level of flattery whatsoever, if you’re thirsting for a chat with a local, if you’re unable to keep your gaze from passing over any kind of commercially available good you can think of then…this is not the place for you.
At this time, I had never been anywhere that’s so tiring just to stand and exist. Parharganj is a bazaar and hotel packed area of Delhi that has been a stopover for years. The streets (especially the sides) run alive with rats and sputum and excrement and shop rubbish. Its crumbling sides consist of tumble-down buildings which are plaited with hotels, shops, and bars.
Walking down it the relatively few times we did on this visit spawned two games with Lucy and me that have stuck with us right up to now. The first is ‘blank something?’ and is very useful for lightening a situation or expressing venom in a controlled manner.
‘Blank something?’ has its roots in the Indian salesman-on-the-street’s general lack of awareness of sales technique. It starts with “come see my shop”, goes on to “very good price” but very often ends with “buy something” but not without going through a crescendo of pleading which can sometimes verge on aggression.
This patter is completely impervious to polite nos, explanations as to why you don’t want it, how you can’t carry it, how you’ve already got one thank you. But ‘buy something’ is the key, you see.
It can be translated into almost any good or service thus:
- Money: change something?
- Transport: go somewhere?
- Drugs: smoke something?
- Food: eat/drink something?
As you can see, it can encompass almost every backpacker food group or general requirement and requires the bare minimum of English on the part of the tout, which matters not really because if you are fool enough to bite in any way you’ll soon be passed on to a bewildering array of other, perhaps more insistent members of the team while your first friend goes out fishing for more.
It translates to the animal kingdom too, albeit in a have-to-be-there way, as “dog something?” can apply to those street dogs who stop in the middle of their important-seeming missions/activities to look at you with uncannily human intent.
We’ve been asked “go somewhere?” by rickshaw drivers while getting out and paying another rickshaw driver, having arrived where we wanted to go.
The ultimate had to be one chap, whose wares I cannot now remember, going through the whole of the pleading stage as we were walking away but ending with “something…….something?”, to which we had to stop because of the laughter and even he couldn’t keep a straight face.
We’re not fans of the banana pancake end of the backpacker’s menu but you’d think the food was OK, maybe? Yes it is but the service is truly atrocious. By now we’re almost used to eating meals in turn or in parts because that’s when your food comes to you but here is where it started.
But the attitudes of eaterie staff stank to high heaven too. We’re nice polite English types who probably say thank you far too often and believe queues exist outside of British airspace, not the demanding sour-mushed types of all nationalities who seem to get what they want, when they want it. We use smiles and everything…
Which brings me to the second game, which isn’t so much a game as an extension of the rant I had after Hampi & Goa against the attitudes of some travellers to Indians. Aside from the middle-aged crowd, we have now coined the definition of a whole swathe of fellow travellers and I’d like you all to use it from now on. The APC, or Aladdin Pant Crew, are marching on down the trail blazed by their grandparents, funded by their parents, and are conspicuous by their choice of trouser. Much more on this as time goes on. For now, all you dear APC please take note – the only Indians not laughing their arses off at your leg attire are the ones who sold them to you. I’ve seen them.
One day we decide to go to the large commercial centre of Connaught Place in order to soak up a bit of Indian good news and cleanse out the anxiety.
Connaught Place is a huge circular complex of parks and shops and had a lot of Commonwealth Games money spent on its renovation. Immediately we could see why the games were nearly late, were dogged by difficulties and why there are a slew of arrests and lawsuits now flying about.
Piles of sand, stolen marble slabs, plants already dead, useful shops replaced by parking lots, Reebok allowed to have 3 shops in half a mile – it stinks of corruption.
By this time we really had had enough and camped ourselves up in our hotel with our books until it was time to leave Delhi for a couple of days in Agra.
Agra, the home of a World Wonder, the Taj Mahal, and one of the greatest love stories the world has ever known…that should be good…
In true Delhi style it didn’t start well. Having got to the train station, I experienced my first taste of the Indian ‘queue’. Leaving (not arriving, mind you) one has to go through a security check before getting to the platforms. The first stage is putting your baggage through an x-ray machine which is half-watched by security types spitting paan all over the shop and not doing much else.
While your bag gets irradiated you then have to get yourself through a metal detector which I’ll put money on not having worked for months. This happens all over the world without incident but at this Delhi train station it was shown to me that the sides of any queue here are porous, just waiting for the latest to arrive to nip in and take their rightful place. Also that the sharpness of the female Indian elbow is in direct proportion to her age.
By the time I got through, one of our bags had fallen off the conveyor and was underneath with all the paan and dust and crap. Down there I was shown no mercy and was soundly trampled into the floor.
In a confusion of rage and fear we boarded the train before it had been cleaned and were shooed off unceremoniously by the staff. I have no shame in letting you know I cried and shook on the platform, much to the distress of Lucy and my observing fellow passengers. If only they had been able to hear my murderous thoughts.
Our Indian honeymoon period felt well and truly over as we pulled away and I tried to pull myself together.
We survived Mumbai.
As I expected, it’s hard to sum up the largest city I’ve ever visited. We stayed in Andheri, a large slum in the north that is currently experiencing incredible change. But that’s India all over by what I can see, read and what the few people we’ve had chance to speak to so far tell me.
The problem for us was that the area is far away from the main tourist traps and when I say far, I mean it. Fortunately, we only had three nights (two of those taken up by adjusting body clocks and getting rid of what felt like nitro-narcosis from the flight) and so didn’t feel we missed out on much because we simply didn’t have the time.
We were picked up at the airport and seamlessly taxied out to our hostel through traffic that has its own rules. If you don’t let go and abandon yourself to it immediately you’re just going to up end up as a scarf, wrapped around your driver’s head and screaming, which will get you killed. They know what they’re doing.
There is no right of way, lights mean nothing unless there’s a traffic cop and even that’s optional because they very often turn up on each other’s patches and start competing for domination, negating any directing effect either might have had.
The smell was the first thing that struck me (after the heat of course, which was fierce at 34C) – I thought it was dusty, smoggy and initially lemony but the citrus undertone was one end of a spectrum, the other being unadulterated sewerage.
We stayed about 2 kilometres from the airport, at a tiny hostel called the Anjali Inn, nestled down a side street between a wire extrusion shop and a grill bar. This was typical of the way space is used across much of the city; little units recycling bearings or cardboards right next to showrooms packed with HD 3D LCD TVs. If the means are available to them, Indians love their technology.
Our room was clean, if a little rickety, and we had satellite TV and intermittent, but fast, wireless net access. I was very glad to discover that the Radio 4 portion of the BBC iplayer was accessible and duly caught up on the latest episode of The Unbelievable Truth.
Our hosts were friendly, helpful and full of advice on what to do and at the cheapest prices.
The cost of most things we bought was comparable to the UK, except street stall food such as chai (sweet, milky and spicy tea that alleviated both of our raging caffeine-withdrawal headaches) and dosas (nommy little pancakes packed with things like cheese and veg, served on a steel tray with three types of sauces). We held out on diving into such stuff until we found a stall that was surrounded by Indians; heed this advice.
We ventured out on two major reccies. The first was on our first night to find a hotel for a beer. This was a major culture shock. Within 2 minutes we were picking our way down a major avenue through piles of rubbish, open sewers, prostrate dogs, browsing goats and subsiding pavements. A gent walked past us and shouted over the endless car horns – “welcome to India!” – and laughed his arse off.
After 10 minutes I had seen more rats than in my entire life, including stomping hard right on top of one by accident. By its yelp, I thought I’d broken its back but it kept on trucking.
We ate at one hotel restaurant, vegetable kebabs. Tasty as but the lesson was, the blander the veg the more fiery the spice. Approach cauliflower with asbestos gloves and silvered welding mask.
Later, we went on to another hotel that had a bar the like of which I wouldn’t get into if I were delivering napkins to it back in Blighty. Watched India woop up Australia in the first cricket test and chatted to some import/export guys who explained about the massive investment currently going on in Mumbai. The road we had just picked our way down is overshadowed by a vaulted superhighway being built along its middle. This is happening in a lot of places and I worry about the life down at ground level when these are finished. It’s bloody tough now for working classes/castes but when the money is flowing seamlessly 50 feet above them, what then? In 5 years, they said, it will be a different city. Of that there’s no doubt.
Our second sojourn was into the main city the next day. We took a terrifying taxi ride from Andheri to the Hanging Gardens, some 30 clicks away. I’m sure our driver Dinesh did it just for larks but I shall now never forget his traffic jam aversion skills. This amiable nutter saw a blockage, stopped and reversed the wrong way down a 3 lane dual carriageway. Soon after he nipped over the central reservation and drove 200m the wrong way down the other side, into traffic going at least 40mph. I was very glad then that no right of way exists.
The Hanging Gardens sit on a rock above the city, just up from Chowpatty beach. They’re pretty basic, plant-wise, but have shade and crows and dragonflies by the truckload. I do wonder about British dragonflies, which seem to keel over at the slightest environmental touch. The double-hard Mumbai versions thrive on the air which by now was strafing my throat and making my teeth taste funny. Couples (chaperoned and not) mingle here with bunches of students and families, lazing around and chatting in the shade. A tout came up to us and tried to ply postcards, which as soon as he found out we were British quickly turned into abridged versions of the Kama Sutra. Go here to escape the madness for sure.
We then ambled, via a nosh stall, through a park for kids on the other side of the road and down the hill to Chowpatty beach for sunset. This was good, seeing Mumbai families relaxed and eating sweetcorn, paddling in the sea (do not do this, we’re told – very toxic with city run-off) and harassing French travellers to speak to their kids in their native tongue.
From there we went down Marine Drive and witnessed a change. Elsewhere the people have the minimum of body fat but here it was mostly middle class and mostly portly people exercising with pedigree dogs, which as far as we could tell involves donning trainers and walking slightly faster than the average.
I saw a sleepy-looking street dog and set myself up for a point of view camera shot as he slumbered between his outstretched front paws. This enraged the beast and he chased me with the loudest, most primal sounds I’d ever heard a dog make, much to everyone’s amusement.
Marine Drive is long and well-lit along the sea front and leads into a massive commercial area with skyscrapers and the promise of a future India. We treated ourselves to pizza at a place recommended by Lonely Planet and decided, stupidly, to take a walk. This is where it got a bit scary. We got totally lost within 5 minutes.
It got hotter by the step and darker by the turn. In the end we were starting to panic, realising how far we were from home. Flagging down taxi drivers firstly resulted in vile looks and refusal or demands of 1000 rupees (c.£14) to take us back. Not much you might think, but seeing as we got there for 450 Rs, it was taking the piss. In the end we got a driver to agree to take us to the airport for 450 then got a motorised tuktuk from there back to the hostel for 30 Rs. We got back a bit shaken but we’d won and quite cheaply.
The next night we were gladly off, our friend Ed’s advice not to stay in Mumbai ringing in our ears because we were tired, hot and soaked with sweat. The smell of the Mumbai slums sticks to you too.
Our mate Dinesh picked us up at 3:30am the next morning to get the reserved express train to Anjuna in Goa, our next stop and from where I gladly write to you now. Driving through Mumbai in the dead of night was an experience – the place does kind of sleep between 1am and 4am, with only massive trucks dropping off industrial quantities of marigolds and coriander as the main activity.
We had an air-conditioned carriage that bore our names (and everyone else’s) on a piece of paper on its side. The chai and tomato soup flowed all day, with breakfast and lunch too. Spoilt children fought over their parent’s laptops and we devoured books, slept and got annoyed, in the end, by all of this and the 2 hour delay.
We’re now in an edgy paradise, staying in a friendly Goan family’s complex of guesthouses with AC, good wifi and a more nature than you can chuck citronella at. I’ve spotted 3 types of ant and spider so far with butterflies as big as your hand, as standard.
Life, so far, is good.
