Amritsar

    Amritsar has a place which, for a British citizen or perhaps that of any former colonial power, raises unsettling questions. Jallianwala Bagh is a beautiful park situated a stones throw from the Golden Temple. It was bought by public subscription, a monument to a moment as crucial to the Indian national story as Hastings is to the English or the storming of the Bastille to the French.
    The etched signs pull few punches. They describe the abject slaughter of 379 unarmed and nonviolent protesters in the square in which the park is now located by British troops in 1919. The protest was against the Rowlatt Act which allowed arrest without trial of any civilian on the basis of only suspicion. Several agitators for independence had been arrested and moved to Dharmasala.
    Mistaking a crowd movement for a charge, Reginald Dyer ordered the opening of fire on 20,000 civilians. Hundreds were shot dead and many crushed against the walls and in at the bottom of wells that many jumped into a deep well towards the back of the square. Winston Churchill, himself no friend of Indian political rights, described the occurrence as "a monstrous event, an event which stands in singular and sinister isolation".
    This outrage was a spark which solidified the disparate and separated Independence movement behind Ghandi who went on to start the passive resistance and Quit India campaigns which ultimately, alongside post WWII bankruptcy and an anti-colonial Labour government, took Britain out of India 28 years later.
    It is a legitimate question to ask why we should dwell on these moments of history now buried beneath time and . But this is not an issue of self flagellation, just an understanding of what we have inherited from the past. To me at least, the ignorance of our country's previous excesses is alarming as it encourages distortion and a sense of unwarrented superiority..
    Most Britons who I have met moving across India have had the vague notion that the Empire was a benevolent and kindly influence - building railways, urban centres, legal systems and providing economic opportunities. This is certainly true for a relatively tiny Anglicised upper crust which acquired great wealth through trade and access to educational institutions.  Nehru, the first Indian PM, attended both Eton and Cambridge - somewhat ironically if you consider his instrumental role in the independence movement. Yet for the vast undulating majority these opportunities were not offered. At the time of the massacre only 10% of Indians were entitled to vote for a legislature rigged to favour pro British interests and subservient to Westminister. Few public services were offered outside the major cities, and a feudal labour and taxation system that resembled pre Soviet Russia which British textbooks heartily look down upon was in force.
    Perhaps the lack of awareness in travellers is explainable by the UK school curriculum. The story of Britain I was taught in history classes was a broadly glorious one, focusing on World War II, World War I, the Industrial Revolution and the development of the parliamentary system. All justifiable and worthy and should be taught. As a nod to our darker past the carving up of Africa was explored, and the horrendous nature of the slave trade, although guilt is mollified by the emphasis of Britain's outlaw of the slavery well before the US, Spain or Portugal. After being in India it seems utterly astonishing India is neglected entirely - a British Territory that contained a fifth of the world's population. Why? I don't know. Perhaps this has changed more recently? Perhaps it is because of shame?
    It is true that India's current economic position today - where 400m live in poverty - has much to do with appallingly bad policy adopted in the decades since independence, as well as structural issues such as extremely poor infrastructure and unsustainable leaps in population which are hard to attribute blame for. However the role of Britain in both suppressing and neglecting India's people, and its encouragement of the entrenchment of great inequality which has persisted to this day is not to be forgotten.
     There seems to me a perverse nostalgia in some sections of Britain for the days of Victoriana, perhaps built on the image that rises from history books of fighting the good fight for democracy in Europe. Those who pursue this partial history - and that is it all it is to me - would do well to think of the savagery the Empire that funded these advancements was partly built upon.

McCloed Ganj

     Raz swept us off the street promising a folk dance show which would enlighten us of Tibet's cultures core values and traditions. Perhaps we should have questioned this as he was wearing day-glo pink star shaped shades and a big mane of blownback Jimi Hendrix hair at the time, yet ever the earnest tourists we herded upstairs anticipating a a bit of packaged Tibeten culture. In the small rooftop bar Raz told us solemnly that he would now perform an tibetan prayer dance while he donned what looked like a smoking jacket. Playing a CD of suitably reflective chanting he then started to hop around the room and do twirls, all the time reverently looking up the the ceiling. There was nothing wrong with it per se except it was, well, a bit amateur. Indulgently we in the crowd nodded at each other and when he finished clapped in the encouraging way you might reserve for your musically challenged child's stab at their recorder recital.
     Another slower and slightly more surreal dance followed, seemingly influenced by Tai Chi, climaxing on a long awkward moment where Raz curled up on the floor for six or seven minutes while the audience glanced at each other nervously, unsure how to respond
     The third dance Raz ominously presaged with the comment that it would be "more modern". A few eyebrows were raised around the room, which turned to puzzled slightly apprehensive looks as the CD was started. A synth and saxophone soundtrack coiled out of the stereo, the sort of Casio symphony you might find in a bad eighties soft porn movie. Raz had now lost the jacket and was standing in what appeared to be a child's set of pajamas. Detectable shuffling had started to rustle in the audience, and that Raz was performing in front of the only exit was widely noted. We were cornered.
     What happened next is too traumatising to go into exact detail. Suffice it to say at one point I was licked, the fellow three seats in front was lifted by Raz while still in his chair and humped enthusiastically, Raz stuffed dumplings up his nose and blew them onto the ducking audience, a woman of 60 was passionately kissed, and finally we found out that under the pajamas Raz was wearing a thong. And under the thong nothing at all.

     In a weird way this tradition meets kooky modernist madness is an extreme representation of McCloed Ganj. I doubt many others Tibetan exiles here are parading around with thongs under their robes, but the culture is generally very schizophrenic. The Buddhist temple, the presence of the Dalai Lama, the museum and scriptual centre give McCloed its reflective spiritual credibility, drawing monks and dreamy soulful types seeking enlightenment. But around this core a booming liberal humanitarian fantasyland has been built with everything the compassionately inclined want to see for their donations - messages of peace, evidence of real poverty, and the ongoing drama and moral certitude of the injustice of the the plight of the Tibetan population in exile. Upon this a third layer of shopkeepers and humorous t-shirt sellers rests - the attendant decidedly non spiritual cacophony and comforts of free market globalised economics.
     The restaurants serve outstanding international food (I have had Italian here that is better than much I have had in Italy), the streets team with vast numbers of 18 year old gap year students passing on their dubious english to Tibetan monks. Beer is drunk in vast quantities and every second building is an intenret cafe. There a couple of really flashy shoe shops too, I suppose because this is the only part of the outfit the monks are allowed to customize. And some decent socks too as you can see....

Manali

A typically stunning mountain view

  Manali is an odd little town in an extraordinary setting. The Kulli Valley is one of those geological wonders where over thousands of years a tiny river has cut a wide and deep valley between snow topped mountains. You can walk amongst orchards and green pastoral land and into villages which have managed to hold onto their wooden traditional buildings in the face of the steel and concrete onslaught that tourism has encouraged.

A hippy salivating at the awesome
cake gorging opportunities

  Cider is served which is great as the dull thin taste of Kingfisher has been irritating me. And there are dozens of bakeries here selling cake to the multitudes of hungry hippies, stoned out of their mind on Manali Charras (a type of cannabis resin which is world famous). I have been working my way through Apple Pie, and Mud Cake, and Brownies with deep and satisfying relish. Nightfall has seen some predictably strange conversations with dreadlocked folk who possess strong opinions about witchcraft and the effect of wifi microwaves on the human brain.

  Biking has been fun, although brutal - 50km across the valley today and I am totally knackered.  Wondered around in the grasslands yesterday and followed the river up stream with my mouth gawping at the mountains. I was desperate to do some trekking but the passes are closed due to snow - apparently they only open May to September....!

Moody

Shimla

The Viceroy's Residence

    From the building above a fifth of the world's population was ruled up until the 1947. The Baronial style makes it look like it belongs somewhere in Scotland, reminiscent of a ritzy sort of private school or a manor house. In actuality it sits 2000m above sealevel in the hill station of Shimla, way up in North India surrounded by a mountainous landscape. The jurisdiction of the Vice Regal who sat within the building extended from the far edge of modern day Pakistan to the furthest side of Bangladesh, from the Nepali boarder down to the southern tip of Sri Lanka. The partition of India and Pakistan was drafted here, as were the terms of independence. Gandhi visited many times, as did Nehru. In some ways it was more important than Calcutta or Delhi.

A retro fire engine

  Yet for all its exotic history of subcontinent dominance central Shimla comes across as a slightly daft Victorian town suspended in the mountains. Mock gothic private residences, shabby hotels, a little library, a post office, a toy train that winds the five hour trip from the valley, a promenade that traces the back of the mountain where you can imagine the fine ladies wondering along a hundred years ago. It captures that quintessentially awkward and paralyzingly sentimental 19th century Britishness right down to an amateur dramatics society
     I happily watched a performance of this society at the theatre where I was delighted to see that the acting was terrible and the plot totally incomprehensible and bizarre - as everyone hopes from amateur dramatics. Something to do with a robot being stolen by Nazis or something. And the robot did a spot of really bad breakdancing at the end. Magic.

A perplexing part of the play when the robot was
imprisoned in what seemed to be a mosquito net

Chandigarh

The parliament building, a typically modernist building in this new city

     Chandigarh is sort of astounding. An entire city built out of nothing to house hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing from the brutal post partition wars between Pakistan and India of the 1940s and 1950s. It was ambitious, designed from scratch by a team of American architects at the behest of Nehru (India's first PM) to symbolise India's promising future. One of the architects died in the early fifties and Le Carbussier, the famous Swiss-French visionary, took charge from this point and the emergent metropolis took shape. Wide gridlike streets mixed with modernist apartment buildings and vast adminstrative and educational complexes. In many ways it was and is outrageously successful - today it stands as the richest and cleanest city in India. And while the central shopping district is reminiscent of the concrete travesty which makes up Stevenage's town centre (if you don't know Stevenage count yourself lucky - watch the film Boston Kickout) the gardens are magnificent.

The Nev Chand Rock Garden

  The Rock Garden is a bizarre subterranean universe of figurines made by a single man, Nev Chand, from 1957. He started the project in his own time, creating strange little characters out of bulldozed scrap from villages cleared to make way from the city. A civil servant stumbled across his menagerie in the forest and realised its worth, and the city planners gave Chand his own plump piece of real estate and workers to create a dedicated exhibition. It is really quite something.
  There is also a vast rose garden which stretches for a whole city block, and another half dozen parks and green spaces which vary in design, and the air is one of self satisfaction and contentment.
  Yet for all its Gallic modernist majesty the challenges here are large. The well designed and wealthy nature of the city has made it an understandable magnet for economic migrants, and Le Corbussier's target of 500,000 residents has doubled, thousands spilling over into shanty towns and slums on the city's periphery. Dealing with this is one of the great questions for the city's advancement. There is a distinct sense that the city is a pretence well beyond the reality of India, a bubble inflated which shows the sharp relief between those inside and those without this mid twentieth century fantasy. But then it is true without ambition there is no advancement.

This plan shows the grid structure of the city

Delhi - Patriot Games

  The roof garden of the Everest Kitchen lies six stories up above Parhanj, a grubby suburb next to New Dehli railway station. Within the open air restaurant I sat with a rag tag bunch of backpackers, Indian tourists and locals. The air was as thick with static tension as you could find in any tropical storm - India had around a dozen balls to beat Pakistan, their most crucial rival in any sphere of national consciousness sporting or otherwise. All the anxiety and expectation seemed to breathing, seeping and expanding up into the already hot and heavy city atmosphere.
  The thudding of Bangra beats drowned out the commentary so I went to look for the source over the railing down into the square below. Way beneath us a marquee tent had been erected, the sort of semi gazeebo sort you get at village fetes. TVs were scattered liberally around the place, keenly watched by the vast Indian crowd under the night sky. On a small stage troupes of dancers were performing to the music - rotating from traditional, bollywood and hip hop styles. The mood became ever more jubilant as each delivery was dispatched. The exceptional Pakistan bowling attack had not managed to blunt the razor of India's aggressive batting line up, Tendulkar in particular surviving dropped catch after dropped catch and two appeals.
  And now with the roles reversed Pakistan's batters were losing wickets too easily and accruing runs too slowly. The middle order was sliced away well below 200 runs. India is so attached to notions of destiny that it is common practice for new borns to have their futures mapped by astrologists, and the cricket team seemed to be marching towards their's.
  And then down to their last wicket Pakistan stood with Misbah-ul-Huq at the crease and Zaheer Khan steaming in. Huq skied the shot and was caught. India's victory was assured.
  From the balcony way above the scene around the marquee descended to total pandemonium. Almost instantanously from the moment of victory there was an explosion of people as they broke away from the pressing spectator crowd, the demented frenzied running with flags bending, thousands jumping and dancing and beating the air with their fist. And as these people expanded, so others from front rooms and restaurants poured into the square. Motorcycles and scooters with people piled up and honking their horns, running mobs screaming at the top of their lungs, a group of bearded men held a small child in an India cricket shirt above their heads, drummers thrashing out an almost military rhythm. The police arrived swiftly, perhaps anticipating a crush, holding their long cruel looking bamboo canes in their hands.  Yet there were broad smiles on their faces, illuminated as we all were by the sky crackling green and gold and white as it was lit asunder by fireworks.
  Passion is the only word for such scenes. Passion borne of triumph, community and perhaps other deeper things.

Camel College of the Great Thar

Desert is a richly freighted word - one that turns the mind to endless dunes, a relentless beating sun, oasis, turbans and camels - images supplied by Lawrence of Arabia, Disney's Aladdin and a thousand other romantic sand odysseys in film and on page. However the reality in the Great Thar Desert does not meet this dreamscape exactly. There are dunes but they are sporadic, and the unerring flatness of the scorched plain is scattered with scrubs and bushes rather than sand alone. The sun in March is not as savage as it might be, while there are no palms trees crowding the oasis. And the 'ships of the desert' in this neck of the woods are dromedary (one hump), not camels (who have two) - although I will grant you they are as keen on farting and spitting as their more famous brothers.....

One lesson learned is that camel riding is (very) sore. I'm writing this on the train to Delhi lying on my belly as I can't sit down normally. What path of evolution lead camels (and dromedarys) to such a bizarre and almost pneumatic method of walking I cannot comprehend. Yet they are sort of likeable in their non-plussed and slightly vacant way, despite the damage they have done to me.
The guides who took us were interesting. A set of three men (30, 26, 22) and a boy of fifteen. Although not related they did seem to have a strong fraternal bond, and a rich sense of humour. They also referred to their activities out here in the blasted plain as 'Camel College'. They  knew a vast array of languages from the tours - Rajan the 26 year old  - could speak English, Hindin, Rajistani, Mewar, Gujurati, Marahastra and Urdu. And they were also fine cooks, whipping up a rich and spicy thali - a kind of smorgasboard of anything from two to six or seven different curries served with rice, chappati and poppadoms.
We slept under the stars which were unbelievably bright and clear. Two Indian girls we were with were able to point out the reddish tint of dying stars and the vague haze of nebula in the sky - something impossible in the light polluted south east of England. These ladies, like a lot of Indians, were born astrologers so we were able to point out Orion and Taurus and the Great Bear. I even got the hang of it, and it is funny when you recognise these constellations you realise you have been seeing them all of your life. And I was struck how the familiarity of the night sky, the stars of which are roughly the same across the whole north hemisphere, invokes the strangest memories of places and times from my own life. And these past moments - looking up in the sky as boy in Sheffield or amongst lying flat on hay bales in Hertfordshire - were as far from the Indian desert as it is possible for the imagination to travel.  Yet the commonality of those star shapes brought them vividly to bear.

*Respect to Mum who pointed out that I was riding round on dromedarys, not cormorants which are a type of bird fond of water....

Jaisalmer - Hands of the Departed

Jaisalmer is not more than 100 miles from the Pakistani boarder and near the old trade route of the Silk Road, so could reasonably be said to be to be a pit stop on one of history's great highways. The impression however, as you cross the sparse and arid landscape to be confronted by the otherliness of this fortification, is that this is one of the last outposts before the ends of the earth. Ramparts rise out of the sand so majestically and coherently that they seem shaped from the desert itself.
Within the fort the there are six temples which serve a substantial Jainist population - another outgrowth from Hinduism like Buddhism and similar in its devotion to vegetarianism and pacificim. This committed nonviolence however stands in contrast to athe sad and savage story played out in three equally tragic episodes some few hundred years ago. Unlike the Jainist's the Rajput kings lived the hard edge of unforgiving barbaric war.

On these three occasions jauhar was performed. This was when the Rajputs found themselves at war yet surrounded and outnumbered, without hope of relief and too proud to sue for peace or offer surrender. The rule of order was death before dishonour, and this code was not limited to the warriors in this totalitarian society.
Once defeat had be assessed as certain the wives and daughters were instructed to prepare themselves as an enormous bonfire was constructed in the main square. The women would say prayers, braid their hair, adorn themselves with their best jewellery and ritually dance. As drums were played and songs sung, the girls and ladies would file up to the balcony of the palace and throw themselves onto the fire while husbands and fathers watched impassively as they burned silently in the flames. After this the menfolk armed themselves and charged out into battle to die in man to man in combat as had been predicted, and the city then overtaken by the invaders.
Hauntingly the women left handprints on the door before they burned themselves, and these are still maintained to this day.

The Gargantuan Fort at Jodhpur

  After the Venetian splendour of Udaipur, Jodhpur was a rude awakening back to open sewers and rotting garbage, ubiquitous roaming cattle and piles of dung. There was however one imperious exception.
  If you are a fan of the epic architecture of Lord of the Rings (I have a soft spot for it myself....) Jodhpur is the closest representation outside of 3D rendering. The fort here is so absolutely vast that the scale of it defies understanding. Especially when you consider it was built in the desert.
  In comparison it makes the Tower of London look like a shoebox. And despite its muscular and brutal size it is also extremely aesthetic, wrought in the typical Rajasthani Hindu-Mughal hybrid style.
  Rather than witter on I've just included a bunch of photos. Hope you enjoy.

Udaipur, Princely States and the curious nationalism of India

Not my picture! See here:- http://www.tsperspective.com/2011/02/25/dailypics-22511-udaipur-view/

  Indian cities are not beautiful up close. That is one lesson I have learned over here. Dirty, crowded and haphazard is the order of the day - and if you want to appreciate the aesthetic of something you need to take a step back from it. However Udaipur totally explodes this conclusion through being resolutely and resonantly gorgeous.
  This 17th Century city sits on a tributary to a large artificially expanded lake which glints charming deep blue and turquoise in the changing light of day. Ghats cling to either side of this river as it sweeps beneath several bridges and then into the open water. Two palaces rise elegantly up like islands in the lake, while on the hill above the city yet another palace - the pre-eminent seat of the descendants of the last maharajah (great king) - looks out to its waterborne cousins. In the city itself the well appointed Havalis of historic nobility cluster the roads while scented gardens full of lush green, budding yellows and purples are liberally scattered across the landscape. This is a place that can truly hold a candle to the most beautiful cities of the world. Indeed it is of such glamour that it was decided to film Octopussy here - one of Roger Moore's James Bond movies - back in the eighties. I am not sure there is any greater allocade than that. It was an absolute pleasure to explore.

  Also, the history of this corner of Rajastan is an interesting one which raises questions about how India came to be the nation we know today. If you go back two hundered years, before the British had penetrated this far in land, Udaipur was its own fiercely independent city state which in turn was part of the loose confederation of 'Rajputs' - Hindu warrior kings yet greatly influenced by but at war with the Islamic Mughals. There was no notion of an overarching 'Indian Identity' here or anywhere else. Languages ranged quickly from one territory to the next as did ethnicity and religion, and there were far closer cultural similarities with Persia or what would be Pakistan than with southern or western India at that moment.

  When the East India Company did extend it's influence into Rajasthan in the nineteenth century it did not seek to annex these territories outright. Rather the British formed broad alliances which gave them trading monopolies and a control over foreign affairs. Udaipur remained an absolute monarchy which was able to run its internal affairs as it saw fit, although the Maharaja did decide through his own free will to appoint a British first minister (Colonel Monroe) to help with modernisation.
  In 1857 after the First Indian War of Independence (taught as the Indian Mutiny in British schools, but it's India's history so they can call it what they like in my opinion) the EIC was relieved of its executive role and the Indian territories governance inherited Westminister with their existing arrangements. So Udaipur came to the British State as an autonomous kingdom where the British exercise little influence on internal government.
  This state of play persisted to the dismantlement of the British Raj in 1947 where each territory was treated as a separate unit right to the arrangements for transition to independence. In the Indian Independence Act of 1947 three options were offered to each Princely State- to join Pakistan (a Muslim majority state), India (a Hindu majority state) or maintain individual sovereignty.*
  Virtually all of the Princely States - a third of the territory of India in 1947 - chose to join India or Pakistan rather than independence, including Udaipur and the other Rajasthani princedoms, due to the groundswell of nationalism which had its birthing in the late nineteenth century and was spearheaded by Mahatma Gandhi in the 20th Century. Such was the potency of the idea of India's nationhood that the Maharaja (great king) of Udaipur said on the accession to the Union of India that:-

  “Today is a day of which to be greatly proud. India is independent. It brings to fulfilment the 1500 years’ struggle and endeavour of my forefathers. It becomes my holy duty, on behalf of my ancestors, to hand over to the leaders of free India, this cherished and sacred Flame of Freedom to the country as a whole.”

  This was no small offering. For the Maharaja it meant giving up a right to power that had been his family's alone for 1500 years (the Udaipur monarchy was the longest running living dynasty in the world). And his statement makes a manifest destiny argument which contended India was always supposed to come together as a single entity. There is no real historical basis for this view as far as I can see, but such was the fervent  nationalist climate of 1947. It's a curious phenomenon I would like to investigate further, how a vast rainbow of nationalities artificially compressed together by a foreign imperial state can transform into a broadly single coherent identity. I suppose it is something which can be seen in Africa as well, but in India it seems extremely successful as can be seen in the rabid support for the national team at the current Cricket World Cup.

Not my picture! - See here:- http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/2KO_Q7KT-s6uqxl4o7CRXw

*Hydrabad, the largest princedom geographically locked into the heart of India, was the sole exception as it decided to try and maintain independence as it's Nazim (prince) was Muslim and had little sympathy for the Hindu dominated India. However the Indian government refused to accept an independent and Pakistani sympathetic state in the centre of it's territory and invaded in 1947 in an action called Operation Polo. This was resolved in a matter of days and Hydrabad was incorporated into India successfully, mainly due to the massive groundswell of support amongst the Hindu majority of working class Hydrabadis for Indian nationalism.

Holi

     Sunday was the religious festival of Holi, another occasion of pure pandamonium. Hoil, for me, is the key to the spirit of Hinduism. Religion in the West is celebrated as a outwardly solemn event, lead by a priest.in an ordered fashion in contemplative churches. Hindu ritual on the other hand is noisy, it is invasive, it is exuberant, and it goes on for a long time. Chanting, the crush of bodies filing past the temple, dancing, pushing, grasping, praying. And Holi catches all of this and elevates it to a further level.
     The outward concept of Holi is that entire populations of a city arm themselves with a vairety of coloured powders and run around throwing them at each other.  It's a lot of fun and based on the idea that 'God isn't looking' so I am told.

     The specific backstory is a little bizarre. A deamon called Hiranyakashipu was elevated to the positon of invulnerability by Brahma. This privilege eventually inspied him to vanity (quite a big paralell here to Satan in the Biblical tradition) and he wanted to be worshipped instead of Brahma which was wicked. Hiranyakashipu then had a son and a daughter. The son was good and prayed to Brahma, the daughter was bad and followed in her father - therefore evil Hiranyakashipu wanted to kill his son. He attempted this a variety of ways which failed, eventually deciding to burn him on a fire with his sister (the sister was luckily invulnerable to fire so he thought this was a good trick). However Brahma protected the son and revoked the daughter's (called Holika) invulnerability so that she died.
     Why this means you throw around colours is not clear. And it is a convoluted origin I know, but this is the sort of detailed richness of Hinduism that goes right down to the wall carvings of temples which team and overflow with images and deities.

     Sadly there is a bit of abuse of the festival too. While most of the decent sort celebrate Holi with their families many local sex starved young (and old....) men on the street use it as an excuse to grope foreign women. This is done in a sort of good humoured way, as after all 'God is not looking', but I lost my rag as the line was stepped over time and time again with the people I was with. The constant regarding of foreign girls as sex objects by a proportion of the locals gets you eventually. Such is life I suppose.

The Elephant Festival

  On Saturday I headed out with a group of girls I met at the Polo Grounds in Jaipur to the "Elephant Festival". We were pretty excited - the program promised a parade, tug of war, and a game of elephant polo. Upon arriving we were shepereded into rows of seats alongside a pavilion looking out over the polo pitch over the low barrier. It was a cloudy day, not too hot, and the grass was clipped underfoot while green deciduous trees ringed the playing area. The whole setting was reminiscent of the cricket pitches out the back of the school I went to in Hertfordshire, so really quite incongruous with being in the middle of the Rajastani desert.

  The crowd was touristy. Baseball caps and swimming shorts, large bumbags, octogenarians, a liberal spread red sun burn. Two upper class sounding Indians from the tourist office simpered about the entertainment in store for us in the curious subcontinental interpretation of RP, their approach to event announcing seemingly inspired by 1950s Pathe newsreels.

  It was all a bit staged to be honest, and had the tepid air of school sports day so I wasn't anticipating much. Thank God for the elephants. As soon as they turned up the crowd went totally bananas, and a mass pitch invasion took place to get pictures of the ridiculously tarted up big mammals.  Ethically dubious as it is to paint a bunch of elephants and march them round a field for the enjoyment of a bunch of wealthy tourists, it does not diminish how awesome they looked as you can see.

  As it turned out the polo never happened which was a shame, the pitch invasion completely derailing the arranged events, but I think I preferred the chaos of it to the intended spoon feeding of culture that seems to imply a lack of independence of thought and deed on the part of bovine westerners.

Jaipur

     The Pink City of Jaipur was set out in a grid like shape in the seventeent century to make it the first planned connurbation in India. The city itself which is made of a strange powdery sandstone, and the enormous Amber Palace nearby, manage to mix a Persian Islamic style with that that of organic Hinduism - this was due to the intricate relationships forged out of peace and war between the Rajputs (the Rajasthani Hindu kings in this province) and the Mughal Empire (the vast Islamic state which covered much of Northern India).

      One example of this cross pollination of cultures is that the Rajputs would enforce purdah - the Islamic practice of maintaining entire hareems of women in almost total seclusion from the rest of the city. No man, unless very carefully vetted or a eunuch, was allowed to see the women let alone interact with them. This was achieved through the construction of huge intricately carved building faces, latticed and without glass, through which the concubines could sit behind and be able to see the cityscape outside without anyone outside being able to see in.. The largest and most beautiful of these is the Hawa Mahal (the Palace of Winds).

     The people in Rajastan are interesting to look at. There is a tendency to be taller and leaner, with the cheek bones more defined, and a keeness for enormous curled moustaches. The men have a habit of wearing jewllery - including pairs of evenings - and there is a massive predisposition to wear bright colours (Rajasthan means 'land of colours'). Turbans are in bright mixes of different shades while the saris glint and shift in the sunlight, from reds and golds to greens.

Agra, Rickshaw Mecca

As if you don't know....

   India changes you sure enough, but perhaps not in the ways I had suspected. I've been touched by the ideas and clarities of Buddhism, humbled by people's generosity and kindness, awed by the monuments to civilization I have seen, taken aback by sheer scale and diversity of the nation. Yet the single most remarkable alteration is a desensitisation rather than anything more noble.
  Not just to poverty which is ever present, and frankly sometimes frightening to the point where you filter it out. But distancing of yourself extends to basic interaction with the local population. The countless times I have been asked if you want a rickshaw, where you are going, if you want to see a shop, to spare some rupees, to enter this or that restaurant, to see their friend's hotel - this has made me both consciously and unconsciously cultivate a persona. Grim faced, staring ahead, walking quickly, never making eye contact with anyone in the scant hope of being left in peace. It has got to the point where I ignore people completely when addressed, especially here in Agra - the epicentre of India's tourist industry.

The stupendously massive Agra Fort

  And what's alarming about it, probably partly a product of travelling alone, is that it this habit is getting so entrenched that it has started slipping into my normal demeanour. Today in the Taj Mahal I was stopped by a kindly lady in a sari and a Bindi dot who asked if I was depressed. We were inside the grounds, well away from the rickshaw-wallahs and chai vendors, and I realised that I had been walking round this fabulous wonder of the word with a face like thunder, locked in from running the gauntlet in town. It is ironic that while  travelling to see a country I am putting a barrier between myself and it. I don't want that. But the other side of the coin is it is a necessity if you want to do as you intend rather than be constantly waylaid and pressed to purchase things.

Me cycling Amir's rickshaw

  Anyway, I did have a bit of a conversation today with a rickshaw fella. Called Amir, he pursued me down the road for about five minutes. I explained I wanted to walk the 4km for the exercise. This alien concept took sometime to sink in, then he suggested that if that was the case maybe we could reverse roles and I could cycle him in his rickshaw. This struck me as a great idea and it was a laugh, although the rickshaw was hard to control. Eventually we ended up with an arrangement where he sat on the front and steered while I peddled. He took some photos, I got off and gave him some money, we shook hands, I thought we were done. But then he pursued me for around 45 minutes more looking to give me a lift somewhere else,. So I had no option but to ignore him eventually just to be left alone. It soured what had been a jovial and friendly experience and essentially made me feel like a very bad person. Hum.
   Ah well, enough moaning. The Taj is beautiful. Agra fort also huge and impressive. And I have lots of photos, a couple of which are here.

A traffic jam and nine people in a rickshaw. Typical India?

Varanasi, Death City

The Ghat waterfront temples

  Varanasi is the centre of death in Hinduism. It lies on the holiest river in India, the Ganges which is said to run from Shiva's feet, and thus it is held that if you manage to expire here then - murderer, thief or blasphemer - you will go to heaven and escape being reborn as a lizard or a moth. For that reasons thousands of the sinful and contrite stack up in the guesthouses and hostels across the waterfront.
  But despite the presence of death and religion there is no sense of piety, at least in the Western sense. I watched men on three different occasions hitch up their tunics and shit on in the middle of a crowded pavement without warning or ceremony. The alleys are crowded with bulls, chickens, goats, monkeys, and their accumulated effluent and, preposterously, dozens of food stalls. The cars honk, the sellers scream. And at one point while wondering at night I turned to be borne down upon by four pall bearers chanting hymns and jogging in short steps like soldiers. They carried a bamboo stretcher covered in a purple sheet, out of the bottom corner of which stuck a stone dead foot. They marched passed me and as I pressed against the wall the appendage passed within an inch of my nose. The next day I saw a corpse burnt on a pyre of sandal wood.

More temples

   Yet despite the smell and the chaos there is a lot of beauty here. The water front is surprisingly relaxed and spacious, and the ceremonies of puja (prayer) to celebrate Shiva and the river are grandiose affairs with incense and coordinated hand gestures from young apprentice Brahmans (priests). And as the sun sets and you sit on a roof terrace looking over the temples and the ghats you can feel the age of the place in spirit if not in stone.

Puja

Bodhgaya

The Bodha Tree

   One day around 2500 years ago Siddhartha Gautama sat in Bodhgaya and achieved enlightenment and thus became the Budda. Around 250 years later a temple was started the culmination of which still exists in a beautiful and tranquil yet mosquito infested garden. And while the tree is not the original - this was destroyed by a jealous wife of the Buddhist emperor Ashok who she felt paid it too much attention - there is a replacement a mere thousand odd years old.
Bodhgaya and Buddhism is in someways a parallel of Christianity and Jerusalem - the most important pilgrimage site of the faith now located in the land of another different religion. Bodhgaya is an island of Buddhism surrounded by Hindus. The history is that Buddism flowered from Bodhgaya to be exported across the waves and dominate in Sri Lanka, Japan, Burma, Thailand and Korea. Yet India enjoyed only a short period of Buddhist majority, soon wiped away by a resurgent Hinduism and then its marginalisation compounded by invading Islam.
  So the faces you see here in Saffron robes and shaved heads, gripping texts and Apple iMacs (Buddhists as a whole seem a technological lot), are East Asian rather than South. And each foreign Buddhist nation has built it's own monastery (officially atheist China aside) in a charming haphazard of different architectural styles.
  Unfortunately I couldn't go in to see any of them because the monks were universally on strike - something which I did not realise was philosophically possible. The issue apparently was the electricity bill coming out to around ten times what was expected, therefore went unpaid and the juice turned off. Far too much of an affront for these gadgetphiles who locked their gates in response.

The temple

Kolkata and World Women's Day

   As I flew into Kolkata at night the city reared up from darkness. Spidery half finished concrete structures and teaming blinking lights reminded me of scenes from Blade Runner, less the digital advertising hoardings. There was definitely something dystopian about it. This feeling of unease wasn't much helped by the drive through the city to my hotel in a battered 1950s Ambassador, each block we passed containing at least one shell of a building and vast mountains of rubbish piled by the roads. I had booked on the Internet into a place for three times my budget just to have somewhere to stay as I arrived so late. Upon arriving I found the shabby grotty room bore no relation to the one presented on the slick Flash website sadly.

Typical Kolkata...

   However in the morning light the city was not so grim, the people friendly and cheerful as ever, the downtown area split by an enormous green park called the Maidan which gave it an airy feel.  I went to the Indian Museum - disappointing in terms of actual information but in possession of a lot of attractive sculptures including some interesting greco-Indian hybrids, a legacy from those Greeks who stayed on in the Indus valley after Alexander made his way home through Persia. I've included a photo.

A Greco-Indian Krishna statue

   After that to the Victoria Memorial - a palatial mass of white marble set in well manicured gardens. Perhaps the zenith of Raj architecture in India, and a rival of sorts to the Taj Mahal. It has etched in the main hall a laughable pronouncement from the British queen that ""under our rule the great principles of liberty, equity, and justice are secured to [Indians]" Fine words hardly backed up in action, but such was the imperial way. It is hard not to wonder how history would have been different if there had been serious intent behind this lofty statement.

   I found myself to be there on World Women's Day and a talk was held at the Memorial about the position of women in India today. The speakers, three lady professor' were informative as much as they were eloquent. The feminist situation in India on the surface seems positive, an example even. A current national woman President, several state governors who are female as well and leaders of political parties are well represented by women. Indira Ghandi was smashing heads together in Dehli long before Maggie ascended to do the same in Number 10.

   However more generally only about 8% of the seats in both houses are held by ladies, and the near total absence of women on the streets, running rickshaws, acting as waiting staff, running businesses, points towards a heavily male dominated society.

The Victoria Monument

   One speaker, a lady of seventy or so in a red and gold sari and holder of a lecture chair at Dehli, became impassioned as she spoke, clenching her right fist in the air. "We need to take action now. Feminism in India is not just about the ability of women to buy mobile phones and the vote, it is about jobs, representation, liberty, independence!" Her voice cracked and tears formed in the corner of her eyes.
   But there were only about sixty of us in the room listening, and of those only six or seven were women. The struggle seems a long one ahead.

Faith

   The cliche is that Western people come to India to find a faith of one sort of another. Perhaps of the spiritual kind - in Gurus and the colourful pantheon of Hindu gods, in Buddhism and meditation. Or through the more modern notions of exploring ones own psychological landscape, distilling the truly fulfilling from the materialistic baggage of consumer society.
   I certainly haven't achieved either as yet. But I have found a faith of another kind.
   At dusty bus stations you wait surrounded by a wild mix of Indians some in shirts and trousers, others wrapped turbans and traditional dress, and spot small groups of white skinned folks offer up little prayers.
  The driver approaches. His eyes are wild with blood vessels inflamed and red, he is agitated and shouting grabbing tickets and ushering and pushing. Many people end up on the wrong bus. The driver does not care, he is outraged that people complain. You turn to a fellow traveller and speculate glumly about what amphetamines the driver has been taking, how many hours it is since he last slept.
   Bags are flung inside. A crush forms as bodies pile up rushing to grab seats - bookings have little currency you find. You sit, squeezing beside three locals who smile and nod accommodatingly in their appallingly carefree way, and then your gaze lifts trepidatiously to the mountain side far above. To the road you can see precariously tracing 500 ft drops onto rocks. With a jerk the bus sets off.
   The first few times you run this high wire gauntlet it is a disconcerting and nauseating experience. Careering by at 50 miles per hour, honking and turning blindly round corners, needless overtaking on narrow cloud sprinkled highways. Each new corner brings fresh visions of the 5 ton 1952 Ashok Layland bus skimming gracefully out into the open air and descending so very fast.
   For three hours white knuckle ride frays the nerves. The brakes are slammed all too often, the bus slewing to a standstill inches from the blinking eyes of an oncoming trucker. You wave at him, hoping that this show of cheeriness hides your grimace. The bus readjusts, a passing point is found, and you are off again.
   Yet slowly the impetus to be afraid dulls. Your glands cannot offer anymore adrenaline. The beating of your heart settles. You start to find prettiness in those deep valleys below, in the endless undulating views. You learn that the only option is to trust the jittery devil behind the wheel. And soon you find you are drifting contentedly, as the dusk comes in and hazes the mountains now studded with village lamplights. You eat an apple your neighbour gives you.
   Is that not faith? Attritionally acquired perhaps, environmentally induced, but oh so very real. These small paunchy men, with their moustaches and disjointed barking English, hardily surviving poor roads and poor judgement. These men are my gods. I pray to them all the time.

Munnar

   North along the mountains from Periyar is Munnar, a hill station perched in the Western Ghats. Hill stations are places set up by the British in the 19th century for two reasons. The first was to escape the suffocating heat and deadly plague of malaria that claimed hundereds of colonial lives on the plains. The second was to grow vast quantities of tea, the greatest cash cow of all the Empire's commodoties.

   In 1947, with Independece, the British left nearly to a man. The Indian middle classes stepped in and bought the plantations up. The greatest of these was the Tata company, headed by Jamsetji Tata - a native of Kolkata who moved south. Branching out from tea this corporation now makes everything from trucks to mobile phones to televisions. In a post colonial irony it also bought up British Steel (or Corvus as it is now known)..
Munnar is a small town of maybe three thousand people. But over seventeen thousand more live in villages situated in the tea plantations. The women work in the fields for nine hours a day plucking the crop for 715 rupees a week (around £10) while the men work in factories and spraying crops for even less money.
Schools, hospitals and tiny two room houses are provided for the workers by Tata. And while pesticides and modern processing techniques have been introduced the field work is largely the same as it was in the 1880s when the Munnar plantations were first created.
   Against this stasis tourism is slowly promising much larger revenues. And you can see why people are drawn in increasing hordes. The tea plantations and the epic mountainous landscape offer a lush trekking environment. I can't get enough of it. I've been out three times, and between the vegitation, the drama of the hilltops and the colourful smocks and headgear of the workers it makes for an intoxicating combination of nature and a bygone lifestyle.
I'd recommend it to anyone.

Safaris demand early starts if you hope to see wildlife in action - so by 5.30am I was in the jeep with three other folks. The sky was pale gray with mist rising above the deciduous forest.
The landscape was stunning - reminiscent of Scotland, the air cool and mountainous and without tropical vegetation. Our driver was a star too, his eyes spotting far away wildlife while piloting the vehicle that us with our eyes and attention free would have missed. Over the course of the day we stopped to see bison, giant squirrels and monkeys jumping from branch to branch. We came across no tigers unfortunately, or elephants. But tigers especially are a real rarity (one guy I met only saw a tiger after 14 attempts) and wild elephants are a mixed blessing as if come upon individually can become very dangerous.

It was expensive - around 2000 rupees for the 12 hour day - but we were fed well at breakfast and lunch, and went hiking and boating through the park. It was so quiet there, so utterly in opposed to the honking and hubbub of the most of the India I have experienced. I loved it.

All the guides and workers in the park are from local villages and proud of their environment. The national parks are about the only place you don't see piles of plastic and other detritus strewn beside the highways and in bushes.
I got a lot of good photos, the best of which are here. Apparently in Rajasthan I will have a better chance of seeing the bigger wildlife. Ron, one of the people in the jeep, showed me some pictures of a couple of tigers he saw playing the other side of the river. I was very jealous.