UPDATE: 06 January 2005
Adventures in India
GUEST
REPORTER:
NINETEEN
MONTHS OF EARTHROAMING...
What a
hectic nineteen months it’s been for travelling around this globe of ours. Our
world is so small compared to the rest of the universe, but so large when you
have to travel around it. In the last nineteen months, I’ve been blessed to
have visited the US on two occasions, as well as Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong,
Indonesia, New Zealand and India.
Some
of it has been for business and some of it for pleasure, but even when it’s
the former, I always try and make sure I get out and see the local sights. I can
sympathise with Art Cox’s diary of South Africa and his experiences with
Billy, as I am sure I have met some of his contemporaries along the road in my
travels. But back to the point of this exercise being to share some of my recent
experiences on my time in India. For those of you with a British bent, the
Indian sub-continent (the land of the British Raj in times gone past) remains at
times an impenetrable mystery.
Stories
of Delhi Belly and other woes that affect travellers normally tend to put off
the average traveller, and here I was actually being paid to go to a country
that had always fascinated me. As an Australian, we have some connection due to
a common British influence (forget that I have a French-Irish heritage) and also
that wonderful game that my colleagues and friends in the US cannot understand
– CRICKET. But, I was heading off to the mystical sub-continent, well dosed-up
with antibiotics and other various legitimate pharmaceuticals, off to see the
world’s biggest democracy with over 300 million registered voters and a
population of around 1.047 billion. (Thanks to the CIA website for the
population statistics in case they are watching.)
I have
to be honest and say that even given my desire to travel to India (and my
experiences with other Asian countries), that my expectations of India were not
high in some respects, such as the amount of poverty and third world conditions
that I expected to encounter. Yes it was all there, but India has it all, the
culture, the history (right up there and probably even exceeding the Chinese and
Egyptians) and of course the population and traffic jams right along with it.
(Rule One, never get stuck in a Delhi traffic jam on a night when it rains, as
it is an auspicious time of the year for Hindu weddings so there are over 17,000
taking place).
In my
short time there (just under a month), I only scratched the surface of India,
and of course going for business I got to stay at a better class of hotel than I
could normally afford so it’s a bit easier. Yet India showed enough of its
treasures and delights to make me want to return to explore the many aspects it
has to offer.
That’s
enough of the preliminaries. After a stopover in Singapore, I touched down in
Mumbai (Bombay), the financial capital of India which has over 10 Million
people. It’s hot, it’s humid, it’s crowded and it was certainly an amazing
place. I straight away went to a shopping district called Bandra, as I wanted to
get out of the hotel as my fellow travellers were not arriving for a couple of
days. A quick ride for 300 rupees in an air-conditioned taxi (which costs more
than the un-air-conditioned alternative) and when I alighted, there was not an
Anglo Saxon face to be seen in the crowd, and I didn’t see one in the two and
a half hours that I was there. I went into the side streets to look at the
stalls and luckily being tall could easily navigate around as it was quite
crowded. 
Onto the next couple of days, we hired a driver – not being
adventurous enough to try any of the local public transport which Mumbai allows
to readily share with more than your fellow citizens than you really want to be
that close to. We drove around Mumbai and looked at the city which is a vast
mixture of the old and new. We went down to the “Gateway to India” and took
a ferry to the Elephant Caves which are about 1 hour off the coast. These are
seriously impressive and the creative foresight that went into them is amazing.
How you start with some of these structures is beyond – and the pictures I
took do not really do justice to them.
Next
stop was Delhi – the capital of India. Up to this point in time, being so well
medicated with antibiotics, I had no inkling of feeling ill at all and was
enjoying the food. Even though the Canteen at the office only had vegetarian
food, it was still good and very tasty. Whilst in Delhi, we met up with a couple
of work colleagues who had been working in Mumbai, and we all went to Agra to
see the Taj Mahal. Wowwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww!!!!!! It is one of the most
amazing places I have ever seen and is right up there with the Pyramids, Angor
Wat and the Parthenon to name but a few of the more amazing sites in the world.
It incredible and so awe inspiring that I was not even tempted to buy a souvenir
as nothing could do justice to the memories I had of it, plus in comparison they
were pretty tacky. After work each night we would venture out to restaurants
with local management, and again they were fantastic with plenty of variety and
hot and spicy food. The local markets frequented by the natives were also on the
agenda and I came away with plentiful supplies of local merchandise at
ridiculously low prices. 
So low that I kept adding some rupees as I felt like I
was stealing the products. On our last days there, we drove around the central
parts of Delhi. The colonial influences of the British (in terms of buildings)
could be seen everywhere. I also visited the Red Fort as well as a number of
Hindu Temples (plastered with Swastika-like characters which are based on a
Hindu symbol) and mosques.
Next
it was on to the state of Tamil Naidu and the city of Chennai – the smallest
of the main cities I was visiting, but as far as a city of live, the best of the
three. It had not rained in months according to the locals and surprise
surprise, it poured down the first day we were there which made the town even
more humid than normal given the hot and trying conditions we were encountering.
I visited Mahalbalipurum whilst in Chennai and visited a number of temples
whilst there. The work that has gone into the temples is amazing and
unbelievable, especially when you realise the types of tools they had available
in days gone past. Just visiting a number of the local shops still 
specialising
in stone products it’s incredible what they produce with basic tools, but
unfortunately for pay that is a pittance and is less than most people would
spend on a cup of coffee. Unfortunately as time went on, it was evident that I
was not going to get sick or fall prey to any horrible disease, so it’s no
surprise to me that I had put on weight whilst in India even given the fact that
we were constantly on the go. Closer to leaving, I picked up some amazing
bargains at a local market specialising in leather. I baulked at asking what
some of the products were made of, but they all looked great.