Mr. Dasje Banned in Agra! (India)

Early February, 2006

The 28-hour train ride north was pleasant enough. My travel companions in the sleeper carriage included a Russian couple who spoke very little English, some Korean youths who spoke even less and a Canadian with a goatee beard and a djembe. Since my Russian and Korean both need a little work to reach conversational standard, I spent much of the time talking to Adam the Canadian. The Indians in the carriage were quite focused on the Koreans, being drawn as they are to whatever is the most exotic-looking target for the barrage of "which country? what your occupation? where is your husband/wife? how many children?" questions. It was quite a relief to have these directed elsewhere for once, and for this I was very grateful to the beleaguered Koreans........

The long ride enabled me to get to know Adam quite well. He had a small bottle of Indian "rum", (paint-stripper hooch tinted brown), and I had a bag of clementines so we were all set. We sat on the top bunk and played backgammon on the lovely little wooden travel set that Celine and I had bought on the street in Margao, and on which she had taught me to play. Since I learned to play I have become addicted to it, and taught the game to quite a few people I have met, consequently generally winning! However, Adam's faux naivete about the rules and strategies started to shine through as the gentle hippy proceeded to "whip my ass" in game after game. I retired to my own top bunk to sleep surprisingly well for a night in second-class sleeper, so I guess respect is due to the Indian "rum" after all!

I got a train from Delhi straight back out to Agra, arriving in the middle of the night which is never much fun but at least I had accommodation booked, and the rickshaw driver I used to get there was no more or less a shark than is usual. The next day I set out to see the main reason anyone would go to Agra - the Taj Mahal. I aimed to spend maybe two hours at the most there, but ended up spending at least four hours until kicking-out time at dusk.

The Taj Mahal is just amazing. When something has such a reputation I tend to expect less from it, but that place really lives up to the hype. It is built from an amazing translucent white marble that glows in the light, and when the sun was setting the colours were remarkable. It was also so clean, quiet and well looked-after compared to the Indian norm.

Mr. Dasje almost was denied entry to the Taj. When my bag was searched by the policeman at the entry gate, he found him and told me that I would have to check him in at the gate! (Not quite sure why, but I think that since it is a Muslim mausoleum the depiction of an animal might cause offence). However, the policeman seemed to have a sense of humour and appeared to find Mr. D. amusing, so he allowed him in on the condition that he remain in my bag throughout my visit! Of course I managed to take the inevitable "Mr. Dasje visits the Taj" photo and still keep my word, (he's still technically in the bag!); obviously it would be unthinkable to go to the Taj Mahal and not get that shot......

At the Taj I met Leonor, an Australian air hostess. We got chatting, and decided to have dinner that night. She was on a tour of Rajasthan on her own, being driven by Mahinder, her Indian tour guide/chauffeur, in a nice old white Ambassador car that is typical for a posh Indian taxi. That evening Mahinder drove us to a very pleasant restaurant, where all three of us ate and he poured liberally into all our glasses from his bottle of rum, (did I mention that he was the driver...?). Then at the end of the meal, he insisted on paying! Nice guy......

The next day Leonore and I arranged to meet in Ranthambore National Park in Rajasthan, where we would take a short safari together in the hope of seeing a tiger. I took the train; Leonor offered me a lift with her, but understandably the tour company wouldn't allow an extra, (non-fare paying), passenger in their car. The safari was very enjoyable, and we saw all manner of deer, antelope, birds, monkeys etc. etc. but no tigers. Hardly surprising really, as we were hooning around the park in a noisy 20-seater 4-wheel drive vehicle; any sensible tiger would slink away before we got within two miles!!!

We then moved on to Jaipur, the state capital of Rajasthan, and met up again. By then it had become apparent that Mahinder no longer approved of me, and had started to suggest to Leonore that I might be "a bad man"! It turned out that this was the first time in 20 years of driving he had been required to drive a lone female tourist, and I suspect I was cramping his style.....!

While Leonore was given a tour of Jaipur by Mahinder, I took a bus tour of the city and surrounding areas run by the local tourist board. All my preconceptions about such tours were reinforced as we were whisked through The City Palace & Museum, Jantar Mantar, (a very cool ancient observatory), Amber Fort, Narhargarh Fort, Jaigarh Fort, Laxminaryan Temple, (in which we had literally 10 minutes!), various craft workshops and associated retail outlets, all in about eight hours. They should slow down and "feel the quality", instead of getting caught up in cramming as much in as possible. Anyway, I was so exhausted by the end of the day, I cancelled dinner with Leonor and just went to bed! It's times like that when I realise middle-age is winking lewdly at me and beckoning from just a few birthdays away.....

I met a nice couple on the tour though. They were young Indians from north London, and because they looked the part and spoke a bit of Hindi they were getting into all the monuments for the 10 Rupee "Indian Price" instead of whitey here paying 250! The two-tier pricing system, (one for Indians, one for tourists), exists both formally and informally; formally with respect to things like entry fees to national monuments, and informally with respect to the starting price in any negotiation. Rickshaw drivers will always swear that the price they are offering you is their "Indian price". Yes my friend, of course it is!

After Jaipur we met up again in Pushkar, before Leonore had to leave for Delhi and go home. Pushkar is a holy city built around a holy lake, and has a charming reputation for people who abuse it's holy status to make unholy Rupees.....

Fake priests hook tourists into a complicated "puja", (prayer ceremony), by the water, involving flower petals, a Hindu "smudge" on the forehead, a thread bracelet wound around the wrist and lots of "repeating after me"s. They ask you to name all your family members and you both then "pray" for them. At the end they "ask" for a "donation to charity", usually specifying the amount and weaving your undertaking to give this specific amount into the "repeating after me" mantras! If you refuse, or reduce the amount, they try to give you a guilt trip by asking you if your family's happiness is not worth the "paltry sum" that they are asking for!

So Leonore and I duly got nabbed in the Brahma temple, (do Brahmin priests usually wear camouflage combat pants?!?), but we knew what was coming and went along with it to see what happened. In the end mine wanted 700 Rupees (about 9 pounds), but got 50 Rupees from me, (about 70p), in return for the "interesting cultural experience" he had provided me with. Leonore gave hers even less, accompanied by a strong insistence that she put the money in a charity box, rather than onto his plate! They quickly lost interest in us and the happiness of our loved ones, and started looking for the next pair of tourists. So if anyone dear to me has bad luck in the near future, you can blame my refusal to buy your happiness in Pushkar!

Pushkar also saw my first instance of Delhi-Belly, (despite being several hundreds of kilometres from Delhi). It was quite manageable as these things go and not really debilitating, but it did make me feel constantly slightly nauseous. This had two main effects; it put me right off Indian food, which made eating more problematic, and it meant that many of the more "exotic" experiences of the street.... the cows, the cow shit, the pigs, the pig shit, the food smells, the vehicle fume pollution, the constant noise.... were now intolerable to me.

For the first time, I stopped politely acknowledging the incessant "hello! hello!"s from everyone in the street, which come both from people just being friendly and people trying to sell you something. I was concentrating on holding my breath, and trying to get off the streets as soon as I could. In addition to this, my room was right on the lake and this meant that every morning at around 4:30, someone would crank up some chanting or devotional music through a distorted PA system on some nearby ghat. Not what you need when you are sick, (or indeed at any time)!

I decided it was time to try somewhere else, (and even went as far as considering another country and fleeing to Nepal for a "peace and nature" fix!), but decided that Udaipur, a little further west in Rajasthan, was a good idea. Thankfully feeling better after a couple of days, I took another overnight train to this beautiful city on the biggest man-made lake in Asia.