The Wobble

And so to dehli – big bad dehli if you believe what alot of people say about the place. I was expecting this massively filthy sprawling mess of a city where it would be hassle hassle hassle from the second I stepped off the bus from jaipur to the moment I take my seat on the train to amritsar. It didn’t get off to the best of starts, the place where the bus dumped me was on the polar opposite side of the city that I had expected to be dropped at. Bear in mind that there are 12 million people in this city. I had to exit the bus quickly, luckily I only had one bag to look after and even I couldn’t lose the big bright red backpack. The first objective when you get to any place is to find a place to stay – I had the added responsibilty this time to find a place that would be acceptable for my brother who was visiting me while I was in dehli. There was one place that seemed to fit the bill and my budget, about 5 kilometres north of Old Dehli is Manju Ka Tilla – a commune set up for tibetan refugees. It claims to be a peaceful escape from the madness of the city so for the week that I will be in dehli I figured it was the perfect fit.

The trouble though was that all the places listed in the guide book were booked out, I must have tried at least 6 or 7 before finding one which had a spare room. Luckily enough it was a twin room, hot water and a tv. All for 300 rupees a night, in other words ‘feck all’. Whether it would live up to diarmuids high expectations time will tell – it does remind me of a conversation we had some weeks ago about him wanting a good hotel and didn’t mind paying 5000 rupees per night for one, I could’ve cut myself a tidy profit there but I am too honest to do such a thing.

I had a couple of days before his arrival – time to check out my passport situation. It was just a case of applying for a new one. After that I just gave myself a few days to arrange our trip to agra to see the taj and spent the rest of the time hanging around the tibetan commune sampling the food (they serve beef and pork here – mad stuff) and trying to haggle with the tibetan stall owners. They couldn’t be more unlike local indians, they refuse to haggle over prices, the price is the price – which is no fun at all. They don’t beg you to look in their shops or even acknowledge you as you walk down the street. Its weird, its almost as if you are at home. I dunno how I am going to cope when I get to a first world country, kinda getting used to the attention.

I met diarmuid in dehli airport friday afternoon. Its completely surreal meeting someone you know so well in such strange surroundings. We jumped in the cab and made our way back to the commune. Luckily enough he didn’t object to the room so we were sorted for the weekend. Now for some sightseeing. We grabbed a rickshaw into the red fort in the middle of the old part of dehli. Its this massive fort with huge thick red walls, it was nice to walk around there for an hour or so and catch up on all the latest goings on back home. After that we took a rather long walk in search of connaught place which I guess you could describe as the grafton street of dehli. To get there though we took a pretty dodgy route, the sun was going down and the street lights weren’t the may west after a brief stop for some food and some consultation with both diarmos fancy new gps phone and the more reliable dude that worked behind the counter in the pharmacy across the road we were on our way. Connaught Place is Massive, because this part of Dehli is just about 50 years old it is all planned out and very tidy, the Place itself is circular and takes about 25 minutes to walk around the circumfurence. We were more interested in sampling the local tipple so we ducked into a bar and selflessly propped it up for the remainder of the night.

We fell out of that place at about 11.30 and jumped into a rickshaw out to manju ka tilla. The rickshaw driver was a complete nutter, he insisted on giving us a disco version of a rickshaw by pumping up the volume to the last and swerving the vehicle violently to and fro – he even offered us a spin at one stage – I was half tempted if I was honest but before we knew it we were gone again. We made it back in one piece somehow – there waiting for me was a packet of Tayto – oh lord how good was that packet of tayto, it didn’t stand a chance.

Our train the next morning was at 7.00, this required us to be up at 5.45 as the train station was the other side of the city. I was dying, shocking hangover, my only consolation was that diarmo was as bad as me so couldn’t rididule me. We took a taxi to nizamuddin train station and jumped onto the train which took about 3 hours to get to agra. Agra not surprisingly was pretty busy though we didn’t get that much hassle from the touts. We managed to get a dude to bring us around for the day for a pretty good price, it involved us stopping into some shops so he could get some commission which to me is a pain in the hole but diarmo was interested enough to see what was in the shops, tis good for a bit of shopping aswell. Lazy fecker left all the bargaining up to me though.
The driver we got was a decent skin aswell, a muslim whos name sounded like hashish but was something else spoke about how he planned to marry off his daughters in the next year or two. I offered to take one of his hands for nothing but he wouldn’t budge, had something against catholic boys from ireland, not good enough for his little girl! oh well..

After that it was the taj – its an expensive site (relatively) and the queue was a pain in the ass but the Taj – Its just incredible. Its massive, its beautiful at one stage we were sat beside it talking about some random crap – probably about how woeful liverpool are this season – when I had to litterally thump diarmo and say, dude we’re sitting right beside the Taj Mahal. Its hard to get your head around it, its impossible to take it all in. After the taj we took in agra fort which I intended to take in first as I knew the taj would still be in our heads. On its own its still a very attractive sight but it and the taj on the one day makes it a little tough on it. After a beautiful feed we headed back on the train to dehli where an early night was called for and was got!!

The next day we didn’t do much, though I am sure some of you have already seen the footage of my negotiation with this tiny kashmiri shopkeeper. Some of you have even berated me over the amount I was arguing over with him. The thing you have to understand is that it is fun negotiating with the likes of him, I would’ve given him the money if I knew I would be that entertained but as diarmo found out that day once they agree a price they won’t accept anything lower or higher than that price. It becomes a matter of principle to them. We walked around the shops some more and picked up random bits and bobs all the time negotiating the best price. We had a bloody delicious feed in the Chicken Inn (this place is sounding more and more like kilnaleck every bloody day) before going for yet more beers in connaught place.

Diarmo caught his flight just about that night. He made it back to dublin in one piece I have been told. It was great seeing him, in a way it was a kind of a test for me to arrange the weekend and make sure everything went off okay. Its not often that I end up having to look after him in some situations it was always the other way around when I was growing up but because I have spent this little amount of time in india I had a better idea of how to engage the indian lads. It can be intimidating when you are fresh off the plane and you can easily fall into the trap of seeing them as the enemy but I can be so rewarding when you don’t fall into the trap as you can see from the clip below of my haggling session with Ahkmed.

Phil Vs The Fearsome Ahkmed

The following day I took in some parks around dehli, called into the embassey to check up on my passport application before finally buying a ticket out of dehli to go to amritsar and the golden temple… Dehli was great which surprised me no end, I will definitely return…

Later,
Phil

And so we made it to bundi. The road from ajmer was pretty ropey but for once I was glad off the multiple stops as they provided ample opportunity to go out and sample the local produce in terms of fruit or the firey hot dishes that they were throwing together on the street. Now I know that will make most people go ‘the fool is eating food off the streets’, Of course I am. I think that if you are to spend any decent length of time in this country that you will have to eat from the stalls on occasion, in fact in a lot of case the food from these vendors is safer than the stuff you get in a sit down restaurant because the ingredients are invariably bought in the nearby stalls and cooked right in front of you – you cannot get any fresher than that. As long as you make sure that you are eating in a place where all the locals trust the food well then you cannot lose really, the fact that I haven’t had any stomach complaints at all so far in almost 3 months is testament to the fact that the food is safe.

We arrived in Bundi in the late afternoon – the sun was still up so that made finding a place much easier. As it turns out most of the accommodation in this town is on the same street or immediate area so it wasn’t long at all before we found a place that was suitable to our needs. They are all called Havellis which is basically a type of house which has an open courtyard in the middle with rooms on several floors surrounding this open space that stays open up to the roof. It really gives it a nice effect, while this one had a steel grid over the ground floor to allow foot traffic above the place where I stayed in udaipur and one of the places where we had some food in Pushkar had an open court that opened all the way up to the heavens, tis a good job that it doesn’t rain too much here 🙂 .

We took off around the town exploring while they ‘prepared’ the rooms. Bundi was such a remedy to all the stuff that we encountered in Pushkar. The locals weren’t pushy at all, they were so friendly and were almost always up for a laugh. The food on the street was lovely aswell. In the centre of the town is this rather large market, in a typical indian way all similar shops are clumped together rather than being spread out e.g. there are about a dozen pharmacies next door to each other beside the bus stand. One of the streets just north off the square sells just pots – I had a great idea to take a photo of this street and send it home under the title ‘look at all these people selling pot’, but no camera!!! Dang!!! Then there was the street that sold bangles. Bangles are big business in india, an individual ladies street cred rests on what she has wrapped around her wrists. And so shari took to this street like a dog to a bone, I played the chaparone as curiously all the stalls were run by men. Now I know I don’t have a clue about bangles and what goes and what doesn’t but the lads here really took the biscuit. Within a matter of minutes every last one of the them from the whole street had gathered around the little shack that was the first shop on the street – each baying for a look at the two westerners that were the cause of all the racquet, which was just us bargaining. We were eventually told to keep it down by a man on a bike who lived in the row of houses behind the road… So with some new bangles in hand off we set back to the hotel where our rooms still weren’t ready due to the people who had it before were holding on to them while they waited for their transport out of there. This irked me a good bit as we only agreed to stay in the place if they had a bed at 5 in the afternoon it was now pushing on 11 and people were still there. It doesn’t matter if they paid to keep the room longer as we were told it was ours earlier, in finding out this fact I copped a rather unfortunate eyeful when I went to use the rooms bathroom and two elderly germans were laying on what I thought was my bed… Best to store that particular imagine under suppressed memories me thinks.

We eventually got it sorted and to bed for some much needed kip. The following day we took in the fort that dominates the city – it was really beautiful and pretty much deserted – just the way I liked it. Some of the views over the surrounding countryside were amongst the most breathtaking I have seen. I’d go so far as to say it was the most photographic place I have been but maybe it was the lack of a camera that made it feel even more so that way. Another thing about bundi which isn’t in the guidebook is how blue the place is. Jodhpur has the reputation of being the blue city but it had nothing on this place, from the fort every house was blue. Bundi is also awash with monkeys, more monkeys than you could shake a stick at, some quick thinking entrepreneurs obviously latched onto this phrase as there were some guys renting out big 5 ft bamboo sticks whos sole purpose were to beat away the brash simians when they come to steal your lunch.

Shari left for mumbai on the second day there. It was great fun traveling with her, think it was 14 days or so in total and they flew past. The next person or people in line have a big act to follow. After dropping her off at the bus stop I went for a haircut, I am getting addicted to them at this stage. The barber was a skinny man with a permanent smile on his face, his shop was pretty sparse with walls on just 3 sides opening up onto the street. He had two friends sitting in two of the empty seats, these two lads were hilarious. One guy, alot fatter and louder than the other would come out with something in broken english which he interpreted for the other two guys and they laughed, the laughed out loud grabbing all passer bys attention. I didn’t mind, it was funny. I got him to give me a nice tight haircut, the tightest it has been for quite a while.

After the haircut I made my way back to the favella. I have to admit I was feeling bummed out having parted with shari, for all the benefits of travelling on your own sometimes you need that second person there just to share a thought or the moment a sight or a sound, its so much easier to remember something when there is someone there to share it with you. So I sat in the courtyard and watched the tv, the young lad who works in the place came over to me and we started chatting. ‘Mr Phil, you want some whiskey?’, sure why not. Okay, we go, we go.

So outside onto the street and onto the back of his bike, we picked up a friend of his a wee bit further out of town. Off out into the indian countryside we went. The road runs along the side of a valley so given the time of day that it was we got a lovely view out over bundi, a true blue city, its a wonderful place. In all the time I spent admiring the view I had forgotten our mission, after around 20 minutes of the bumpiest road this side of clonlohan we pulled up out side this battered old shack of a place. It was a mess of rusted corugated iron, split into two rooms it looked abandoned but for the proprietor and his two boxes of illicit liquor. You see bundi is a dry town and alcohol is forbidden within its precincts. Even with this fact I just figured that we would stick the whiskey in my backpack and we head back to the hostel and then imbibe there away from the prying eyes of the hindi police. But no, we had to drink the whiskey there. These bottles were 600ml, thats alot of whiskey between 3 people and to make matters worse I had to drink one all by myself the other two lads sharing. Down the hatch with the whiskey, my chest was on fire and my stomach a bit queasy. The plan was to get back into town before the effects kicked in, foolish, god damn right it was. Disaster struck, the driver was out of it. He could barely stand,  with the two of us on the back he just about got the bike to start, no sooner were we up than he took off and drove us straight into the ditch across the road. Luckily enough we were all okay, ankle was a bit scraped but I could soldier through, if we had’ve gone over the other side of the road I can tell you know you wouldn’t be reading this right now. The whiskey hadn’t kicked into for me yet, I could sense a warm fuzziness kicking in but I was pretty lucid which is more that can be said for the two buckos. Rightly or wrongly I took control of the bike and spun us back into the town as slow as you like, concentrating like hell to keep it upright and at a decent enough speed that wouldn’t attract too much attention. Somehow we made it, I pulled up outside the favelli and had to carry my hotel friend into this house and put him to bed much to the disapprovement of his older sister. I went back into the courtyard to watch some tv but passed out within ten minutes, the whiskey had kicked in…

The following morning I beat my own retreat from bundi – all the way to Jaipur. I don’t have a whole lot to write about jaipur. It was a big disappointment to be honest. Monikered the pink city, there is only one street in the city that is pink. The hotel was okay but the people who worked there were a little ignorant. I asked the main guy to help me pick out some places to eat, shop etc etc and he wasn’t forthcoming with any suggestions at all. On top of that it was pretty pricey. Outside the hotel you couldn’t look around the corner without getting unreal hassle from the rickshaw drivers selling tours, tours, tours. One morning I walked down the street to see how far they would follow me, they must have walked half a mile with me. I eventually succumbed and asked this cycle rickshaw dude who was easily in his 60s to take me around the place.I felt sorry for him because he looked so weak and could do with the money but in earning his corn he had to drag my fat ass around the bumpy streets of jaipur for 5 hours. It must have been an awful sight to the people on the sides of the road to see me sitting back while this 5 stone string of a man struggled to get a little bit of momentum going, I did try to tell him to let me just walk but he was having none of it. I did however insist on plenty of food and chai stops. One particular highlight was the thali I picked up right at the bus stand, just as I was writing off north indian thalis for good this one came along and strode into the top 10 meals I have had so far – so so tasty. The bread was literally straight off the oven and onto the plate while the veg had the right amount of spice with lots of garlic and ginger. I managed to pick up a new camera on this round aswell – canon ixus 75. It’ll do the job nicely. After that bit of shopping I took in a few of the sights, the city palace was okay if a little boring. There was an astrological park which had all these very strange measuring structures intended to tell the time of day and peoples fortunes, as the guidebook says its like falling into the world of Alice in wonderland. Some of these structures were almost 50 metres in height. After that place I headed on up the hill to the tiger fort where I enjoyed a nice sunset, though looking over the vast city you couldn’t help but notice the massive urban slum that lies right beneath the fort. Though its hard to feel bad when all you see are kids running around and playing to their hearts content. There must have been a hundred cricket games going on in the various streets, I almost missed the sunset as I was spending most of my time scanning through this part of the city.

After the sunset I decided to head back to the hotel, having decided it was about time to get my passport situation sorted out it was to be a week in delhi. Brother Diarmuid is coming to see me at the weekend which I am excited about, we are going to see the taj mahal in agra on saturday. In fact I am going to pick up the train tickets right now….

rgds,

Phil

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