Delhi

India Gate

Our Hotel was somewhere along here

Evening promenading in the smog at India Gate

Night shift at Delhi Station 

An early start for the rail journey to Jaipur

Retirement had allowed us to travel more widely than during my working years when I had generally limited myself to two weeks for an annual holiday. In this time span, the thought of long-haul air travel had little attraction. My initial attempt to walk the GR20 in Corsica in September 2009 was postponed because of severe storm warnings. We decided that a 3-week trip to India and Nepal would have to satisfy my wanderlust for this year.

An old work colleague who had travelled widely warned me that nothing prepares you for the poverty and overcrowding in India. We had worked together for many years in Glasgow and spent a lot of time supporting and developing projects in poor communities but she was right. Arriving at Delhi airport and travelling to the centre of Delhi in a taxi almost as old as myself was a devastating experience. It took an hour and a half, and the taxi driver could not find the hotel in the back streets of Delhi. The pungent odours of street food, stray animals, polluting vehicles and the steamy heat were an assault on all the senses as we wended our way through the pavement vendors to the hotel that hardly merited its 2-stars.

I had booked us onto a small group tour of northern India and Nepal and the hotel was an inauspicious start. We rested for a couple of hours before a meeting with the guide at another nearby hotel that had none of the faded charms of the Raj. The rest of the group were mainly in their late twenties and early thirties so we were the oldsters of the group. Normally, this would not have worried me but I had damaged my back through heavy work refitting a patio a couple of days before leaving, which restricted my movement and gave me severe back pain that prevented me from sleeping.

In the evening we had our initial briefing and went to India Gate. The civic splendour of the site at Rajpath in the centre of Delhi provides a green lung in the densely peopled city. Thousands of local people were promenading in the twilight and it had all the pomp of a ceremonial setting. We walked to the nearby new underground station with modern trains that marked Delhi as ambitious. city. We emerged in the heart of Delhi and were taken to a restaurant for the first of what became twenty or so consecutive curries.  The noise and smells, as well as the visible street poverty, contrasted markedly with the vibrant hotels, restaurants and shops. We returned to our hotel by the modern underground in the hope of catching some sleep. With the noise from the chaos in the street and my back pain that proved impossible.

We were up at 4am the next day to catch a train to Jaipur. Although a very early start, we were not displeased to be leaving the noise, dirt and smells of Delhi. The train station even at this hour was bustling with travellers. The next hour saw us emerge from Delhi through concentric bands of slums with dogs and children playing and scavenging on heaps of rubbish. Further along the track, we passed the previous day's train crash near Jaipur, the train for Delhi had been derailed killing 6 passengers and injuring 21. This holiday was not for the faint-hearted.