Holy Cow! It’s India!
By
Randall D. Ball
Flying Gulf Air from Abu Dhabi to Delhi with a brief stopover in Bahrain, Christine and I arrived in India early in the morning. We had somehow managed to fly first class, an enjoyable experience, but this made the trip home—in coach—quite a bit harder. It’s no fun to re-join the masses once you’ve had a taste of first class.
Upon settling into our hotel at about 8:00 in the morning, we promptly fell asleep for a few hours as the city was just awakening. We slept through the noise of the morning rush hour, though, and by lunchtime we were alert enough to be hungry. Wandering around a shopping center across the street from our hotel, we settled on Wimpy’s, a fast-food burger joint without a hamburger. There is no beef in India. There are plenty of cows, meandering the streets, walking along the train tracks by the railway station, loitering in people’s yards, but these sacred animals are allowed to live without fear of becoming dinner.
After a lunch of overcooked chicken nuggets for Christine and an admittedly-tasty lamb burger for me, we wandered through the shops, browsing at a bookshop and a textile store, and then ventured to a historical monument nearby. The ruins of two buildings, ancient tombs, stood on a little hill in a small green park amid the residential district. Little chipmunks scurried across the lawn and climbed the walls of the ruins. Green parrots, beautiful birds which we would see constantly for two weeks, perched at the top of the buildings. The site was wonderful: uncrowded, relaxing, and a bit mysterious. We checked out a sign to find out more about these structures, but the only information the sign contained was a warning about vandalizing the “historically-significant ruins.” We would become accustomed to seeing this sign; never mind what the significance of the ruins is, just don’t harm them.
After our first day in India, a pretty quiet but satisfying one, we were ready to explore more of the capital city. We had a driver and a guide, who took us on a tour of New and Old Delhi. We saw the President’s House, Red Fort, the Grand Mosque, Birla Temple (a colorful, relatively quiet Hindu refuge), Mahatma Gandhi’s resting place (he was cremated after his assassination), and India Gate (a tall arch in memory of soldiers who died during the first world war). We also enjoyed a cycle rickshaw ride through the crowded, narrow streets of Chandni Chowk in Old Delhi. On the drive back to our hotel, our guide pointed out a Sikh temple.
“How do you know that’s a Sikh temple?” asked Christine, hoping for an explanation of the differences between various temples in India.
“Because I live here, that’s why,” he responded.
The next day, we headed to Sariska, an isolated village and home of an infamous tiger reserve. We saw barking deer (yes, they bark), jackals, warthogs, crocodiles, storks, antelope, monkeys, peacocks, a jungle cat, and one beautiful kingfisher—but no tigers. In fact, there have been no tigers at the sanctuary for years. They’ve all been poached, making the Sariska Tiger Reserve a tragically ironic place. We stayed at the Hotel Sariska Palace, which was a hunting resort for the Maharaja of Alwar in the 1800’s. It is a grand palace out in the middle of nowhere.
We then made our way to Jaipur, one third of northern India’s Golden Triangle tourist circuit, which is formed by Jaipur, Agra (home of the Taj Mahal), and Delhi. Christine and I spent the afternoon shopping in Jaipur, bargaining for shirts, shawls, wall hangings, gifts for family members, and so forth. Then, growing tired of traditional Indian food, we tried the Mexican restaurant in our hotel. What can I say? It was a lapse in judgment.
Christine and I spent Christmas Day in and around Jaipur. Our guide for the day was the most talkative man I have ever met. He had gigabytes of information, but after a while, you can’t help but tune him out. He took us to the old city, often referred to as the Pink City because of its color, although pollution has made it more of a beige color. The most famous landmark here is the Hawa Mahal, a beige—I mean, pink— palace with elaborate carvings decorating the outer walls. After pausing to take a photograph of the ubiquitous snake charmer playing with his cobras, we visited Amber Fort outside of town, where we rode an elephant up a hillside to the top. Our garrulous tour guide also took us to the astrological center, home of the world’s largest sun dial, and the city palace, where we saw a black midget Santa Claus. That was probably the highlight of our day, but we were too embarrassed for the man to take his photograph. It is our main regret about our trip to India.
At one point when I was actually listening to our guide, he motioned lazily toward a bustling marketplace and informed us, “People everywhere, they are existing within their life.” It was the Deep Thought of the Day.
Our guide also took us on a trip to a jewelry shop, a bookstore, a craft store, and a textile store. His mission, apparently, was to take us to every shop in town until we agreed to buy something. We gave in, bought an umbrella, and our guide took us back to the hotel.
The next day, we headed for Agra, with a brief side trip to Fatehpur Sikri, a well-fortified ghost town constructed of marvelous red sandstone. We had a different guide for this quick trip, and his specialty wasn’t talking. It was walking. He moved quickly through the sights of the fort, palace, and mosque. Our marathon complete, we said goodbye to the guide and soon afterward, we were in Agra.
The following morning, we visited the Taj Mahal. We entered the complex through one of the gates. There were separate entrances for males and females as you pass through security. Christine went through security and reported being felt up by her guard (a female). My guard gave me a quick glance, peered into my camera bag, and the only problem he found was some gum.
“No gums,” he told me.
I was set to throw it away, but he stopped me.
“You promise not to chew gums inside?”
“Yes,” I replied. “I promise.”
“You promise?” he repeated. I wondered if we would have to pinkie swear.
“I promise.”
“Okay. No chew gums inside,” he reminded me.
“No chew gums inside,” I nodded in agreement.
We were in.
The Taj Mahal is an amazing, truly beautiful, and incredibly symmetrical structure. Other sights in Agra pale in comparison. Some cities are made more spectacular because of one particular building, but in Agra the effect is the opposite. Agra is congested, dirty, unappealing, and full of touts trying to sell you cheap souvenirs, cheap tours, cheap hotel rooms, whatever. It is aggravating, and it is tiring after a while. Nevertheless, it’s worth the hassle and headache of Agra to see the Taj Mahal.
That night on television, we saw that former Pakistani leader Benizar Bhutto was assassinated. There were riots and fires reported throughout her country. As its next-door neighbor, India was on high alert.
India Railways is the second-largest employer in the world. 1,600,000 employees work for the corporation, serving in some capacity to assist 16,000,000 passengers every day in India. (Supposedly, the Chinese Army is the largest employer in the world; I wonder where the United States government falls in the list?). With so many employees, you’d think there would be someone besides the freelancing shoe-shine guy to tell you from which platform your train was leaving. On a cold Friday morning shortly after Christmas, Christine and I were heading south to Gwalior, home of a wonderful, very large fort and temple complex. When our train pulled into the station at Gwalior, I grabbed our bag and headed for the door. By the time I bumped, jostled, and crashed my way through what felt like all sixteen-million passengers to the door, the train started moving again, so I did the natural thing: I jumped off the moving train onto the station platform itself, wrenching my back in the process. The train must have been moving faster than I thought, but my leap brought surprise and amusement to the faces of some of the locals. An elderly woman handed me a pen that had fallen from my bag during the heroic jump. Then the train stopped again, and Christine casually stepped off.
I brushed off the dirt from my pants and the embarrassment from my face, and we set off to explore Gwalior. The fortress, situated like most on a hilltop overlooking the city, is different in color and design. It’s decorated in blue trim, and it does not have the red tint of other forts in northern India. Also, it has yellow ducks painted across the side. This was not graffiti added years later; this was part of the original design, and it is most unusual, whimsical even. After all, it is a fort.
Inside the fort and the coinciding palace, Christine and I saw various rooms of interest: both a public and a private room for an audience with the maharaja, the maharaja’s wives’ sleeping quarters (eight of his nine wives lived inside the palace; the ninth, from a lower caste, was a marriage of love rather than politics, and she was relegated to her own home in the valley below), and a separate room for sex when the maharaja wanted to be intimate with one of his spouses. We also saw some newer additions to the decor, such as one darkened room that was full of bats, probably a few hundred of them. We could hear their high-pitched noises before we even saw them, and I could smell them as I approached the doorway and peered in. The bats were impressive. Another smell, a little sweeter than that of bat guano, was the smell of hashish. We also smelled marijuana at our hotel in Agra—in the dining room. No wonder the wait staff were so friendly and so happy.
Afterwards, we rode the train back to Delhi, arriving late, tired and confused, not the ideal time for the onslaught of rickshaw drivers assaulting us with offers to drive us to the airport, a hotel, another train station, wherever. The ride to our hotel was cold, the open-air rickshaw sputtering toward our hotel in the smoke-filled, polluted, cold air of Delhi.
The next day, after a full week of Indian food and forgetting the earlier attempt at Mexican food, we wanted a change. That change came in the form of a chicken burger at our hotel restaurant in Delhi; it was an all-c burger: chicken (ground), cheese, cabbage, cucumber, and cherries. Yes, cherries. The bread was stuffed with cherries. The burger wasn’t bad, either. Then again, we were hungry.
Our next stop was the national zoo, where we were just as much of an attraction as the animals were. Locals stared at us and asked us to pose with them for photographs. Aside from the two roving westerners, other exhibits at the zoo included numerous deer in several locations throughout the park, Himalayan black bears (“Baloo,” the little children kept saying in Hindi; for this English teacher, it made me think of Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book—just without Mowgli), a wonderful Great Indian hornbill, colorful pheasants unlike any I’ve ever seen, and of course the usual menagerie of mammals, reptiles, and avians. It was a good zoo, offering another quiet respite from the traffic, but we were fortunate to arrive early. A little after noon, the crowds started pouring in. Half of Delhi appeared to be queued up to purchase tickets. Maybe they heard about the special, one-day only Westerners exhibit.
From the zoo, we took another tuk-tuk (auto rickshaw) to Humayun’s Tomb, a huge complex and another place to escape Delhi—when the zoo becomes too crowded, for example. Built by a Mughal emperor three-hundred years ago, the tomb is surrounded by some nice gardens, an ideal place to sit and read or people watch. The afternoon light, right before dusk, created the perfect atmosphere for the reddish sandstone buildings at the complex.
The following day, using a combination of tuk-tuks, a city bus, and a cycle rickshaw, we traveled just south of Delhi to Qutb Minar, a victory tower celebrating Islam after the defeat of the Hindus in Delhi eight-hundred years ago. Qutb Minar, like Humayun’s Tomb, is surrounded by lawns and parks—and yet another mosque. The mosque here, Quwwat-ul-Islam Masjid (the Might of Islam Mosque), while much smaller than the Grand Mosque in Old Delhi, is the first one built in India. Qutb Minar also is home to a two-thousand-year-old iron pillar (from a Vishnu temple) that surprisingly has never rusted. Local legend states that if you back up against the iron pillar and wrap your arms around it, any wish you make will be granted. Somebody must have wished for a fence to surround the pillar—because now that’s what is protecting it from any future wishers.
On our last full day in India, Christine and I paid a visit to the National Museum. We saw the usual sculptures, coins, pottery, and textiles—plus some very impressive, colorful miniature paintings on display. The museum also has a good and noticeably inexpensive gift shop. The museum was a good way to end our trip to northern India; it gave us a chance to reflect on what we had seen and gain a bit more information in the process. With such an expansive history, varied geography, and eclectic cultures, religions, and backgrounds, India feels like more than a single country. There was so much yet to see, including an international museum of toilets. Next time…
