Towards the Taj

Udaipur is famous for a couple of things.

It’s said by many to be the most romantic city in India. With its floating palaces, endless rooftop restaurants and perfect lakes, set amongst an amphitheatre of hills, I’m inclined to believe it.

I was also the setting for a significant portion of 007 flick, Octopussy. Specifically, the Lake Palace Hotel played the major part. A fair amount of restaurants screen the film every single night at 7pm, allowing you to chow down whilst Sean Connery defeats the bad guys whilst sleeping with them at the same time. Rest assured, my amazing Sean Connery/James Bond impression got the full work out in Udaipur.

Despite the presence of a higher number of tourists than Jaisalmer and Jodphur, it was still possible to head in to the back streets and meet some real Indians - ones who weren’t interested in selling you something. I had a charming experience one evening where, on my wanderings, I stumbled across an engagement celebration. I mingled with some of the younger guys, who even invited me to join the shindig. They seemed a bit star-struck to be speaking to a young Western man to be honest. The kids were a delight as well, yelling “One photo? One photo?”, beaming some of the brightest smiles I’d ever seen. See the three girls in my photo collection.

From Udaipur we headed up to the pilgrimage town of Pushkar, for a one night stay. This is a pretty important place if you’re Hindu. It’s full of temples, but one in particular is unique. According to Hinduism, Brahma was the God who created everything, and is one of the three main Hindu Gods (along with Vishnu, who watches over daily goings on, and Shiva, who destroys the universe every 311 Trillion years, for Brahma then to re-create it). In non-religious speak, Brahma cheated on his missus whilst on a trip to Pushkar. His missus found out and, understandably pissed, decreed that he would be forgotten by the people of Earth. Eventually she came to compromise, allowing people to worship Brahma only in Pushkar. Thus, the Brahma temple is the only one in India. Interesting huh? Yet another lesson on the perils of crossing your other half.

If we had passed through Pushkar two weeks later, we would have just in time for the world famous camel trading fair it hosts once a year. Men and their camels travel for sometimes months just to make it, from all over Rajasthan. Thousands of them. Now that would have been a sight.

Sadly, despite there being dozens of temples in Pushkar, they seem to be yet outnumbered by hotels. Even worse, a good percentage of the tourists are righteous hippies, out on their “spiritual journeys”, and all that bollocks. And because Pushkar is only tiny, there wasn’t anywhere to go to escape the throngs of tourism and its effects (touts etc). One night was enough, and Lise and I were both happy to leave.

Jaipur, Rajasthans capital, was something else altogether. A city of 4 million souls, it wasn’t overly enjoyable as a tourist destination. The main thing to see was Amber Fort, which was actually almost 20km outside of Jaipur, and the old capital of Rajasthan. We did get to ride an elephant as it dawdled its way up the winding path to the fort though, making the step over in Jaipur worthwhile.

We did also make our best attempt to experience the only other past time in India on par with cricket - Indian cinema. aka Bollywood. Turns out you have to book your ticket at least a day in advance, and although we were prepared to sit through a 3 hour film in Hindi, we weren't up for the 1 hour line up for tickets. Next time maybe.

Agra was the next obvious stop after Jaipur, but we decided to take a bit of a detour, lured by the possibility of spotting Tigers in the wild at Ranthambore National Park.

In the end, we spotted no Tigers, although we did come across plenty of Monkeys, Deer, Antelope and pretty jungle scenery. We also came across roughly one thousand small beetles, who had been drawn uncontrollably to our irrestistable fluorescent bedroom light. Upon asking for another room, the reply was an unflinching “Welcome to the jungle”. Indeed.

And so on to Agra; another sprawling, polluted, filthy, uninspiring city. In the words of one Indian man we met, if the Taj Mahal was uprooted and moved elsewhere, not one single tourist would visit the city. Ever.

But, as it happens, the Taj Mahal is firmly planted and not going anywhere, and it attracts bus loads, boat loads, and rickshaw loads of tourists.

To be fair, the Taj is pretty impressive from afar, and due to its iconic status, you can’t help but stare in wonderment, as a strange feeling of familiarity comes over you, realising you’ve viewed literally thousands of photos of it before.

Up close though, and inside, it’s fairly ordinary. However, when you force yourself to remember that it is in fact only a tomb (not a church or a temple or a museum or anything else of similar grand scales), the realisation dawns on you - this place is WAY over the top!

Agra gave us a much more memorable experience than the Taj Mahal though, and it took place at the train station, as we were waiting for our overnight sleeper train to Varanasi.

Our train was scheduled to depart at 9pm, and although we arrived at the station 4 hours prior to that, we passed the time by playing that timeless card game - Uno. Lise comprehensively kicked my arse I’ll admit, but I was too busy trying to keep my feet off the ground, avoiding the colony of rats which seemed to inhabit the station. (These were not holy re-incarnated rats either - just the regular diseased mortal type.)

At 8.30pm I inquired with the station master with regards to our train. He spoke no English, but after me pointing to my ticket and him getting on the phone, he abruptly stated “11.30pm!”. Ooookay then.

So we continued to wait, and discovered that the station not only housed hundreds of rats, but an entire flock of small birds as well, all perched on the various crisscrossing wires above the tracks and platforms. It was their giant nest to sleep in. Evidently, birds seem to shit in their sleep, so any walk up the platform was greeted with assaults from not only the rats below, but the bombing-like attack from above. It brought back 'Nam flashbacks.

To add to this, I managed to get two more sentences out of the lovely station manager. “1am!” was followed roughly one hour later by “2am!”. I felt our friendship was really starting to prosper.

At some point in the night, I entered that stage where you start to go a bit crazy. You all know the one. You’ve been up too long, when all of a sudden, the sane part of your brain shuts down and you’re no longer flying the plane. The legions of rats surrounding me suddenly became furry little friends. Lise was no longer there in my mind... all conversations I was having were with myself. I also started singing, whistling, humming and tapping, quite loudly, Elvis Presley songs. My rendition of “All Shook Up” was particularly impressive, and drew a rapture of applause from both the rats and the birds.

Sanity returned when our train eventually turned up at around 2.30am, bringing to an end an almost 10 hour odyssey, worthy of any Homer epic.

Soothed by the gentle swaying and hypnotic rhythm of the train once on board, I drifted off in seconds, and in to the kind of deep sleep you have maybe once every few years.