What we did on our holidays

Ok…I said I wouldn’t, but it’s too hot outside and its another 3 hours before we have to go out again in search of the tigers…so as Rita sleeps, I write.

I must confess that I managed to be late in picking my wife up at Delhi airport. She cleared immigration super fast, and was standing outside the terminal when Mr Singh, our driver, and I arrived. At least it saved us the parking fee at the airport, and as Rita had called me and knew I was on the way, she didn’t seem too upset that I’d let her down. After an hours kip at my hotel and breakfast, we clambered aboard our super luxury Innova (recommended because it has a double a/c system and I’m very glad we spent the extra money), and trundled down to Jaipur. I say trundled because the state of the art multilane motorway that starts in Delhi lasts about 50km and then becomes your average India highway- two lanes but often one blocked by a parked broken down truck, a car careering up the wrong side of the road towards us, or a cow. Mr. Singh made steady but safe progress.
We stopped at the Neemrana Fort for lunch. This is a “non hotel hotel”, part of a luxury chain that specializes in stupendous restored buildings, and charging for the privilege of visiting. We spent more on lunch than I usually spend on 3 days food in Kolkata, but what the hell, we’re on vacation, and it was a splendid meal.
After this it was still three hours to Jaipur- the travel agents 4 hours is the drivers “5 or more sir.” I was glad to finally reach our hotel, via a short but expensive trip to a jewelers that just happened to be on the way- “only 5 minutes sir”- and clearly Mr Singh has a furtive “arrangement “ with them. (He was at pains to ask us not to mention this the following day as he could get into trouble with his company, who clearly have an “arrangement” with a different jewelers we just happened to pass by. That trip was also a bit hard on the wallet, but what’s a man to do- seeing his wife for the first time in 11 weeks and it being her birthday the next day?).
Jaipur is known as the Pink City- because when Prince Albert visited in 1876, the maharajah ordered the whole place to be painted that color (not Ian Poulter shocking pink, but a subtle orangey pink that blends with the dust very well). When the royal palace façade was repainted in the wrong shade a couple of years ago, everyone got a bit narked, but it still works, Its about 20 minutes from downtown to the Amer fort, which was where the big cheese Ruler lived before he designed his planned city ( think Milton Keynes but 200 years ago- and it does have roundabouts).
We’d booked a guide- partly because everywhere else I’ve been I had been pestered by people trying to be one and having a bona fide Indian with us gave us some peace. He also told us lots of interesting stories, (some of them may even have been true) and some local color on the state of play in the elections. I was a bit disappointed he didn’t know the IPL results though. We have the only two people in India who hate cricket working for us!!!

We were complete tourists….elephant ride…shopping (ouch!)…I almost got heatstroke in the afternoon. I could feel myself getting irritated by our guide insisting on long detailed explanations of how every instrument in the observatory worked- and what exactly is the point of a sundial that is accurate to 20sec anyway?? When we’d established that it was all done so you could work out your horoscope I lost interest. I didn’t know you have a major star sign ( month of birth) AND a minor sign (hour of birth), and as the temperature felt like it was pushing 45C I decided I didn’t care too much for the mumbo jumbo and retired to the cool of the car. We ate at a local “theme park” full of surreal Indian dancers, magicians, pipe smokers and camel rides…It must have felt to Rita, just 36 hours off the plane, as though she’d drunk a bhang lassi (yoghurt drink infused with special ahem..herb) and was hallucinating the whole thing.
Ranthambore was a long 4 hours away and the road was mainly crap, but they have Tigers, and apparently they are so used to being chased by jeeps full of camera clicking tourists, they are ”tame.” This makes it one of the most likely places to see one (unless you are David Attenborough who sees them everywhere). We were glad to arrive but I must confess, the only Tiger I thought we’d see was the picture on one of the lorries we followed for mile after mile.

It has 35 Tigers in its 192 square kilometers (and two have buggered off to the North, and one died last month, and one just had two cubs so is in hiding). Being summer, it was quiet (just as well, I’d hate to be here in season with thousands of jeeps and buses) but ironically, it means the chances of seeing one increase as they have to go to the lakes for their water.
We sat for a long time admiring the peacocks and the spotted dear. It was very quiet and the guide said he could hear warning calls in the distance. (I didn’t want to confess that it was my stomach loudly complaining about lack of breakfast). I’d almost lost hope and was starting to get interested in the partridges shuffling around in the tree when suddenly, the dear all stopped, looked up in one direction and scarpered as Mrs. T strode out of the undergrowth and, ignoring the jeeps that had suddenly appeared from nowhere moseyed down to the lake for a bath. When a baby started screaming in one car she looked as if thinking….mmmmm breakfast…and then sauntered off down the track. We all followed her for about 30 minutes and then she disappeared down a track that only “VIPs” can use. I could cynically say that it was all staged- and after she disappeared, she went to pick up her daily “appearance fee”. However, the guide said he normally sees a tiger about 30% of the time and he was mightily pleased with such an excellent sighting. We were happy at least!!!
The evening safari was less successful. We waited for ages because “the tiger is in the undergrowth over there sir…honest!” Then we went miles, just in case there was one near the water hole. The people in our jeep described themselves as “jonahs” as they’d been to three parks and had yet to sniff a tiger. However, we were told that another group, on another route had seen one, and right at the end, our guys broke all the rules, went on a forbidden path, and we got a glimpse of a tiger sleeping in a stream bed. If I have a criticism it’s that it is all about the bloody tigers, and the guides seem to have little interest in anything else. There are some marvelous birds, and I’m sure lots of other interesting things in Ranthambore, but no-one seems to care about them very much.

I have commented on Agra before and a repeat visit enabled me to appreciate bits of Agra Fort I’d missed the first time. We also did the full “tourist rip off guide experience in Fattepur Sikri which was great fun. We were told all sorts of lies about the bazaar, the mosque, and blew money each making a wish in aid of erm “muslim charity”
It’s supposed to be a very secret wish- not even to be shared between husband and wife- although why wanting Chelsea to actually win something soon should be a secret I don’t know…so maybe I wished for something else hehe
We saw the birthplace of Krishna at Mathura on the way back up to Delhi- and I nearly burned my bare feet trying to get up the steps to the temple. Krishna temples are very like theme parks and whilst photos are not allowed, spending money on idols, tapes of weird music and all sorts of foods clearly is a requirement- so not very different to Disneyland.
The Rajdhani express ( first class) from Delhi to Kolkata completed my full house of Indian train experiences- at least the ones I want to have- I’ll let the poor students try out the non a/c unreserved stuff- been there, done that in Europe and have no plans to try it again. Actually, the food was indifferent, and the bed no more comfortable than in second class, but the private carriage and service were splendid. I could get used to first class. Back “home” the sultry humidity of Kolkata was a bit of a shock to Rita’s system. I’m used to sweating profusely and lightened my luggage by disposing of a load of T-shirts that smell bad having worn them for too long in this environment. We rose at 5am to be first out on the golf course, to find two fourballs in front of us- but at least they let us play through. Rita can now boast that she too has birdied holes in the Sub continent, although she seemed more keen on sleeping the rest of the day as it was so warm.

Sikkim and Darjeeling
The journey from Bagdograh to Gangtok was a delight. It takes 4 hours up a long windy road tracking a river. For me, seeing hills and verdant vegetation in a car that did not require a/c was a refreshing change. I also love traveling into mountains, and each ridge we crested revealed a new one much higher up. It goes on and on until the top of the world, as these are the foothills of the Himalayas. The sun shone, although the clouds moving in suggested that it might be short lived. Sure enough, we woke the next day to dense mist, which rapidly became rain. We hung around for ages for our passes to chongo lake, and then I lasted less than an hour on the narrow potted and rock strewn road before I concluded that 4 hours suffering on my bony backside to arrive at a 1km lake that we wouldn’t be able to see- so poor was the visibility- wasn’t worth the effort. Unfortunately, I made my final “grumpy tourist decision” just as we hit a long queue due to a recent rock slide which had clearly blocked the road, and reduced it to single file- which both upward and downward traffic seemed determined to ignore. That was another 45 minutes of my life wasted until we could turn round and head back down. My parents never saw a mountain, and I suspected that with cyclone Aalia having just hit Kolkata, (we got out just in time), and a huge swathe of cloud on the BBC world weather map from Hong Kong to Delhi, we would suffer the same.

Sure enough we slept through and woke to torrential rain the next day. There was zero point in visiting the viewpoints. I’m sure Kanchenjoonga (ok- a little artistic licence with the spelling, but the Indians all do the same) is up there, but ill just have to believe in the photos as we didn’t see it. We made our way back down the river valley and could see exactly why the forest is so green- its all that moisture! The river however had been transformed from a brook, gently burbling over the rocks into a brown torrent that swept everything with it. The rain lashed down, roads all over the region were closed and by the time we tried going up there, the roads to Darjeeling were the same. We passed numerous fallen trees, some cleared out of the road, one fortuitously had come down next to a petrol station and so everyone used the forecourt as the new road. I decided that risking hours in a mountain traffic jam to maybe reach Darjeeling, and sit in a hotel room worrying about whether we’d get out again was not worth the effort. (there would have been no way we could have seen anything had we arrived). With our sodden tails between our legs we retired to Siliguri and paid some stupid amount of money for a room in advance of the crowds who I’m sure followed us when they discovered they couldn’t get up that night.
So, we didn’t see a mountain, or much in the way of red pandas or tea plantations, but it was an adventure doing rallycross with our driver. I get the feeling India is done with me and is gently telling me that its time to come home….maybe Ill listen and make a run for it.
We had one final day in Delhi, with a car and driver I wasn’t aware Id booked taking us to see everything……and there is a lot to see in Delhi.
Postscript…..Darjeeling was still cut off two days later- so had we actually got there, we would not have escaped in time to come home.