Last summer, the four of us embarked on a trip to bright,
colourful, intoxicating India. For anyone who has not yet been, this country is
captivating in that it conquers every sense. The tastes and smells are rich and
undeniably potent. The feel of the heat on your skin is staggering. The sights
are moving and unforgettable and the sounds are, well, constant.
On our first night in Delhi, I had the pleasure of sharing
my, um, very reasonably priced bedroom-type space with a thousand mosquitos and
the delightful Kaitlyn. At first, I was being difficult. I refused to have the
ceiling fan on because it was dangling by a thread and I did not want
decapitation to be the death of me. Please note that it was early July and 40° C+ outside in a city so populated that there are twelve Delhiites per square meter. Several hours before, our emotional mothers had hugged us (squeezed the
breath out of us) whilst choking back the tears at Heathrow, stuffing miniature
electric fans into each of our rucksacks just in case. Due to my stubborn refusal to turn on the ceiling fan, Kaitlyn drained the
batteries of both of our mini fans within ten hours of being in India’s
capital, insisting on sleeping with them practically glued to her perspiring
forehead.
The following morning, feeling surprisingly spritely, we
managed to hire a driver for the remaining three weeks of our trip. His name is Aineul, a gentle, timid man with very limited yet endearing English and no
idea what was coming to him. We, (Kaitlyn, Lizzie, Mairead and I) piled into
the back of his car and began our adventure. Mairead was particularly keen to
be in an enclosed area as she was terrified that somebody would cut off her
astonishingly long and silky hair and sell it at the market for a million
rupees. I sat in the front, and was therefore referred to from that point on as
“Ellie boss”. The front of Aineul’s car was spacious, I recall smugly, and
embellished with religious décor including a shrine to Sikhism on the
dashboard. The first place he took us to was the Red Fort. It took us a week of
visiting various forts and temples in various cities in Rajasthan to realise
that it was just too hot to do endless sight-seeing, so we channelled our
concentration into getting to know the locals, eating A LOT of curry and
playing chase with children in the street. In the end, we felt that we saw more
of the true India this way. I think Aineul will always remember us as being the
four sweaty blonde girls who came to India and refused to see any temples.
When I said a lot of curry, what I meant was Aloo Gobi for
breakfast, lunch and dinner. We made the mistake of trying western food in
India once. Lizzie, who will usually eat anything, couldn’t even look at her
pasta again. It was thick with a tomato sauce which tasted sweeter than angel
delight. When in Rome… eat Indian food.
Getting a driver was definitely a good idea for us. Aineul
was fantastic (after he understood that no, we didn’t want to be taken to his
cousin’s, uncle’s, brother’s “mall” with beautiful scarves made out of something
pretending to be bamboo) he took us to the most incredible places. After Delhi,
we went to Bikaner, Jaisalmer, Jodhpur, Udaipur, Pushkar, Jaipur and Agra.
Jaisalmer was our favourite; the people were so welcoming and high-spirited. It
was not far from Jaisalmer where the four of us took a camel ride
into the desert. Here, accompanied by the camel and his guard, we played
drinking games and listened, agog, whilst Manuel the camel guard told us about
his despair at having to marry a woman he didn’t love in the coming months. After
this, our minds contemplating the vast difference between our world and his, we
fell asleep under the stars. We also saw a bug. Not just any bug, a glow in the
dark, skeletal, futuristic looking creature the size of my hand which looked
like it could kill a man.
Udaipur, the city of lakes, was another highlight. We all
have fond memories of sitting at the edge of a pool, drinking Kingfishers…stronger
than you think… and playing endless card games with some Scottish boys we
adopted for a few days – one of whom saved me from being trampled by a large
cow on one occasion.
Later, we visited Jaipur, where everything and everyone
moves so fast and so erratically that it’s a blur. This is a huge city for
industry in India and we found refuge in its cinema. Going to the movies in
India is an experience. Men and women queue separately, the seat tariffs range
from “Pearl” to “Platinum” depending on where you’re placed. Decoration inside
is nothing less than extravagant. The cinema was showing the latest Bollywood
blockbuster, “Bhaag Milkha Bhaag”, a film about an Indian sportsman whose life
was tragically complicated by the India-Pakistan partition. Despite none of us
speaking a word of Hindi, we were all in floods of tears by the closing credits,
moved as we were by Farhan Akhtar’s ripped torso and the incredibly catchy
soundtrack.
Agra, home to the Taj Mahal, quite deservedly one of the
wonders of the world, is where we parted with Aineul. It was the only part of
India where we experienced the full extent of the monsoon; I saw more rain in 2
minutes than I have whilst living in France during a whole year. Unfortunately, we
didn’t get to see much of the city itself as we arrived very late and awoke at
4am in order to see the palace at sunrise. So, as promised, at 4am, Aineul
knocked on the door. Sleepy-eyed and with a mouth as dry as Gandhi’s flip flop,
I opened it. Aineul informed me that we needed to leave in the next 30 minutes
in order to be on time. It was at this ungodly hour that I had one of the most
bizarre conversations of my life:
Me: …Yawn… “Good morning Aineul”
A: “Ellie Boss! Good morning!”
Me: “Could you please bring us some water?”
A:“Samosa?!”
I cannot for the life of me understand why he thought I would
want a samosa at that time. This encounter pretty much sums up the language
barrier between us. I miss Aineul.
Although we were sad to leave Aineul and his lovely ways, we
were relieved to be out of that car. In India, the motorways are havoc. Massive
craters cover the concrete, cows weave in and out of beeping cars and the
drivers all play a game of chicken. On one occasion, Aineul was driving head on
towards a lorry coming in the opposite direction at 70 miles an hour only to
dodge out of the way at the last minute. So, to put it mildly, we were looking
forward to train travel from Agra to Calcutta via Varanasi. One slight problem:
our train tickets said platform 23, there are only about 10 platforms at Agra
train station… We did make it to Calcutta and then on to Thailand, eventually! India was one of the most exhilarating experiences of my life. The food was out of this world, the people were enchanting and the wildlife was... wild. I’m just glad I lived to tell the tale.
