World Wittering

And, yea verily, did the rickshaws pedal us the several hundred yards across the border and, lo, we were in India.

We hopped off rickshaws and down some steps to where an Indian Windsor Davies lookalike was sat beneath the porch of a decrepit building, behind a wobbly old desk, with a large ledger and a couple of rubber stamps. He seemed excited to see us and it was easy to see why, we were the first entry in his ledger for the day.

Formalities completed in record time, even allowing for a brief photo shoot – something prohibited at every other border we’d encountered – we returned to our transportation and pedaled off into the sunset of Raxhaul in search of lodgings.

It soon became clear that Raxhaul was, by some margin, the crappiest town we had yet encountered – the streets ankle deep in mud and the faeces of, not just the expected holy cows, but also pigs and goats. We encountered a level crossing just in time to see the barrier drop and spend 45 minutes waiting while the same train went backwards and forwards before us no less than six times. As we waited, pedestrians, cyclists and motorcyclists ducked under the barrier to head for the other side, leaving anything which couldn’t fit under the four foot high barrier to get more and more hemmed in by the press of the accumulating traffic.

Finally, the barriers lifted and pandemonium ensued, absolute gridlock as the two sides faced off with no space to pass except, somehow, through each other. In this kind of situation a rickshaw was not ideal, especially with the large fuel tanker lorries and buses taking no prisoners. Eventually we we were through and deposited at, what our escorts assured us was, the best hotel in town.

I ran in to investigate and found it just about acceptable, bearing in mind levels of fatigue, bounded back to the rickshaws to collect Lee and our bags and promptly fell into a large open drain up to my calves. Fortunately it was too dark to see quite what I’d landed in and the hotel proprietor didn’t appear to either notice, or mind, as I tramped it through the lobby to our room.

We made a brief sojourn into town to change money, bizarrely seeming to make far more than the official rate rather than being ripped off as normal, and obtain sustenance in the form of a large bag of samosas. Alas, the quest for a nice cold beer was fruitless. We relayed our disappointment to our landlord who promptly dispatched a lackey to the bottle shop. We retired to the room, the beer arrived but cost twice what we’d agreed to, we paid it, opened the bottles and discovered it was some kind of super strength purple tin meth substitute. Time for bed.

As we walked out into the driving drizzle of the morning, we were able to see just how grim Raxhaul was. Emerging from our side street onto the main drag, the first site that greeted us was a dead buffalo. Lying next to it was a huge pool of it’s final act in this world. A large group of Indian men stood around solemnly chin stroking and pondering. Passing a large dumping ground being grazed by huge mohican backed boar, we made our way to the railway tracks and followed them in the direction of the station. Finding only a large shed, we were directed to climb through and along several trains until we reached our destination.

Needless to say, this was massively overcrowded and chaotic, I left Lee with the bags and walked around to the ticket office. When I got there Lee shouted through a window at me that a large African gentleman near the front of the queue would get our tickets for us to save time. I approached said gentleman who smiled quizzically as I told him where we were going and then nodded. I gave Lee the thumbs up and then realised she hadn’t actually agreed this with the man first, still, we seemed to be in business.

The queuing system was not that which had been left by the Raj upon its departure and my new friend had to fight the locals off to make his way to the ticket window where he promptly bought three tickets to Mumbai. Excellent, our destination was Varanasi. I rejoined the back of the queue and managed to exchange the tickets for only a small fee and then reminded Lee of my capability in such matters and the lack of need for her assistance.

It turned out that our helper was a professional footballer, playing midfield general in both an Indian and a Nepali team. He left us almost immediately to try to get an upgrade as we settled onto our hard bench seats for the seven hour journey to Ghorapur, where we were to change.

It was on this train that we came face to face with a number of realities of Indian life. Firstly, the men all appeared to have the maturity of adolescent boys and couldn’t take their eyes of Lee – a western woman – staring intently at her chest for the entire duration of the journey, despite me giving them evils.

We were almost brought to tears as a a boy, no older than six or seven, tried to earn a few meagre rupees crawling through the carriage with a rag, wiping the mud from beneath our feet. Later we caught our first sight of a eunuch as she made the rounds, clapping impatiently in the faces of men, demanding alms and lifting her sari to those unwilling to give, their faces dissolving into masks of horror at the unwanted sight. She clapped at me, I stared into her eyes with my finest stupid gora (foreigner) expression and I was spared their fate.

Just as the benches were becoming unbearable, we arrived and were soon in a similar carriage on the Varanasi train. After about half an hour, irritated by now at the endless staring, I uttered a sharp hello to the young man sitting next to me who had been reading my book over my shoulder since we’d pulled out of the station. He needed little encouragement to introduce himself. And then proceeded to introduce a further thirty assorted young men, all of whom were from his village and had been attending an IT seminar in Ghorapur. By now, I expect you’ve spoken to at least some of them, manning perhaps the Railway Enquiries or Dell Technical Assistance call centres. We explained patiently and repeatedly why we couldn’t come and stay in their village, Lee signed autographs (I kid you not) and we counted the hours until we reached their stop and they all got off.

Eventually, at 11.30pm, we pulled into Varanasi station in the midst of yet another violent electrical storm, piled into an auto rickshaw and careered through flooded streets as sparks flew from exploding telegraph poles. As midnight approached, we pulled up outside the Hotel Ganges View and Lee went in to check it out. As we waited, the driver engaged me in idle conversation. We had learned on the train that it was just easier to tell everyone that we were married and on a one year honeymoon. This prompted the question “So you are f***ing every night?”

As I struggled to find an adequate response, Lee returned with some porters and we made a dash for the hotel. We enjoyed a hot shower, toasted cheese sandwich and the luxury of a comfortable bed, alas, beer was not available.

After a mild lie in, we launched ourselves into the chaos of the Varanasi streets, quickly booking our onward train tickets with an Indian Borat lookalike and then heading for an ATM. We were soon latched onto by a pair of street kid hustlers with an endless patter of how they could arrange anything we needed. We managed to fob them off having agreed only to a sunrise boat ride along the ghats for the following morning.

Then we strolled the length of the ghats, watching in amazement as thousands of people bathed themselves and did their laundry in the foul polluted waters of the Ganges. Reaching the burning ghat, a man took exception to our presence and started shouting that we should “Go home!”, delicious irony, I thought.

We took shelter at a German bakery run by a Hindu dwarf and then headed back to the sanctuary of the room for a snooze, before heading out in the evening with our two young guides to some sort of religious ceremony on the Ganges. Joining the throng on Agasi Ghat, we watched a holy man waving flaming torches about and chanting for a while as a circle of acolytes banged drums and gongs discordantly. Then we all stood at the waters edge and released flower petals into the acrid river, careful not to get any of it on us. The boys took their leave until morning, pointing us in the direction of a “top local restaurant” where we had a very lacklustre meal and were still denied beer.

We rose at 5.00am to find, disappointingly, that the sun was already up. We took to our boat and were rowed the length of the ghats and back with a running commentary from our young guide. It was an amazing colourful site, watching thousands of people go about their morning ablutions, from tiny children and fully clothed old ladies to young men desperate to impress a passing female with a theatrical dive in nothing more than a black lycra posing pouch.

We spent the rest of the day strolling further, watching games of cricket on the ghats and wandering tiny maze-like streets, dodging sacred cows and mopeds and ending up in a rooftop bar as the sun set. Then we took the most manic auto rickshaw ride yet in a turbo-charged beast with a full on sound system that would put many a Nova-chav to shame, blasting Indian pop music at deafening levels as we raced through the narrow streets, swerving through oncoming traffic at suicidal speed.

We were dropped at the Taj Ganges hotel, another, very posh, Lonely Planet recommendation which failed to live up to its billing, being deserted, entirely lacking in atmosphere and charging more for a mojito than we were paying for our hotel room. We abandoned it after one drink and made for another restaurant tip where, once again, we were the only punters in. However, the food was delicious and we were finally able to get our hands on ice cold, smooth and delicious beer.

Our final day in Varanasi was spent with more general wandering, Lee took in the Golden Temple, and taking things generally easy. The temperatures were in the low 40’s centigrade with 86% humidity and it was hard to leave the air conditioned sanctuary of the internet cafe.

Soon it was time to head for the station and board the overnight train to Agra, where this time we had soft sleeper berths, befriended an English couple, Nick and Sally, who had some good book swaps, and hit the sack.

Alas, an hour or so into the journey, the spare berths in our section were occupied, one by a large Indian man who proceeded to snore at ear splitting volume without respite until we pulled into Agra station at 10.30 the next morning.

Deprived of sleep, we grabbed an auto rickshaw and found a nice little hotel with views of the Taj Mahal from the bedroom window. We grabbed some brunch before heading out, taking in the Baby Taj before heading on for the real thing. The smaller version was a beautiful and impressive inlaid marble structure, but paled into insignificance compared with the real thing.

As we fought our way through the crowds in the intense heat, Lee went into full David Bailey mode and I became entranced by the architectural icon. Like standing in front of the Mona Lisa at the Louvre, the image was so familiar it was difficult to understand that this really was, perhaps, the most beautiful building in the world before me. Unlike the Da Vinci however, it totally lived up to its hype and we spent hours walking around and inside of it in awe before returning to our hotel roof terrace where Lee was able to continue photographing as the sun went down and I tucked into some cold beer in front of BBC World.

The next day’s trip was to the  mughal fort where we spent the afternoon wandering around the huge red sandstone and marble hallways and dodging endless “guides” and people selling “Soooveneeeers, novelteeeeees”. The sky began to fill with alarming black clouds and the visibility came down to almost zero as strong winds whipped the dust up into the air. We made for a waiting rickshaw and were once again racing through the streets as a deluge fell from above. As we neared our hotel, we stopped to watch children dancing in knee high puddles, ecstatic at the first rains of the monsoon season.

After the rain had abated, we found a lovely restaurant for dinner with a superb rooftop view of the Taj once again and just sat staring as the sun slowly set on it for, perhaps, the one hundred and thirty thousandth time.

Our final day in Agra saw us journey to Fatehpur Sikri, a sixteenth century mughal city some 25km out of town, where once again we could wander aimlessly through amazingly well preserved remains of what must have been an astounding collection of marble and sandstone palaces and mosques. And once again we were followed remorselessly by hawkers and beggars, which almost, but not quite, spoiled the whole experience.

On our way back to town we indulged ourselves in the surreality of a takeaway McDonalds and got ready for another overnight train. As evening fell, we made our way to the station to kill time before our train at the station food court, once again glowingly reviewed in Lonely Planet. Yet again we were left cursing and fighting the temptation to burn the book in protest. Instead, we boarded the train for Mumbai and bedded down, this time mercifully free of titanic snoring, the only incident of note being when Lee awoke to find a small girl standing over her staring freakishly.

Arriving at a station terminus some way from the heart of Mumbai at 11.30pm, we were immediately ripped off by a taxi driver and deposited at a hotel in the Colaba area of town.

In the morning, we spent some time exploring the immediate surroundings, which were somewhat familiar from a book we’d both read during the trip. We had lunch at Leopold’s, immortalised in the book and, hence, now with a large section devoted to selling merchandise off the back of it. We took in the Gateway to India and then made for a cinema to watch a Bollywood movie which, somewhat disappointingly, was set in London.

The following day we were completely lacking in energy and took refuge back in the air-conditioned sanctuary of the cinema, watching, the average, Pirates of The Caribean, awful, Fantastic Four and, absolutely outstanding Bollywood extravaganza, Sivaji – an epic tale of romance, action, comedy and huge song and dance numbers featuring a fat moustachioed hero with bouffant hair and a mini-me sidekick – seek it out now, you will not regret it.

For our penultimate day, we decided to soak up a little culture, at last, and spent a few hours in the Museum of Modern Art and Prince of Wales Museum, a wonderful Indo-Gothic edifice housing an exotic collection of ancient relics, antiquities and objets d’art. Next  we took a cab to Chowpatty beach for a stroll along the sand, then turned inland to wander aimlessly through the bustle of the crowded city streets.

The heat and humidity once again took its toll and we sought refuge once again in the coolness of the cinema and the style over substane mediocrity of Ocean’s 13. We then treated ourselves to a final slap up meal at the, up-market, Indigo restaurant, once again on the rooftop terrace as the monsoon deluge poured down above us.

Our final day in Mumbai, India, Asia was a whistlestop tour of some final sights, up Marine Drive to the posh part of town to find the Capriani mansion block where Lee’s grandparents, mother and uncle lived in the 60’s. Next we strolled the Hanging Gardens and on past the Farsi Tower of Silence, where sky burials are performed and vultures dispose of the bodies laid to rest there. We took a look at the Hadji Ali mosque, picturesque at the end of its causeway in the Arabian Sea, and, finally, the washing dobis, where five thousand men pound the city’s dirty laundry clean in row upon row of stone troughs under the relentless sun. The taxi dropped us off at the iconic Taj Palace hotel, overlooking the Gateway to India, for a final mojito, then it was back to the hotel to pack and off to the airport.

Needless to say, Asia had one final set of idiosyncracies for us to endure. Obviously looking shady, I was forced to empty my pack for airport security who mistook the X-Ray of its metal frame for some kind of sinister weaponry. Then we sat in the air-side bar, drinking ludicrously priced beer and waiting anxiously as the display stubbornly refused to announce our plane as ready for boarding. Ten minutes before the scheduled departure the signal appeared and we made for the gate, only to hear our names being paged over the PA, and were then admonished by an overzealous official for our supposed tardiness. I curtly informed the gentleman of our justification and, slightly irritated by these last minute hurdles, we took our seats on the plane looking forward to African delights.

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