the mother of all travel days

so... we had a pretty tough schedule on leaving pushkar. the plan was to do agra in a day as everyone we had spoken to who had been there said that apart from the taj mahal it was awful, and then on to amritsar on a train leaving at midnight and arriving at 5pm the next day. that was the plan anyway.. we failed to take into account the ridiculous system of booking rail tickets that they have here.

i'll get to that later though - for now i'll tell you about pushkar, which was bloody lovely. the legends say that brahma dropped a lotus flower on the earth and pushkar floated to the top. it is a tiny pilgrimage town with rows of bathing ghats surrounding the tiny lake. rooftop restaurants, market stalls, and hippies everywhere. we spent the first day trying to get some internetting done and largely failing, before an evening of really nice food and bhang lassis. before bed we sat on the roof terrace of our hotel and listened to the music blaring out from the loudspeakers so the whole town could hear it. apparently a local elder had died recently and this was the funeral. the music was haunting, and as i sat there looking out over the town and its temples it struck me that i was having one of those once-in-a-lifetime experiences you hear about

anyway, the next day was all about the travel day. as we went to the bus from pushkar to ajmer (the nearest travel hub) hannah started to feel really really ill. the trip to ajmer was mercifully short, but on the way to the bus from ajmer to agra (scheduled to leave at 9pm and due to take 10 hours) she started to be really really ill. while she was away being really ill 2 puppies got hit by a car right next to the streetside chai stall we were waiting at. the noise they made and the whimpering afterwards struck me somewhere really deep and even now i feel uneasy thinking about it. we got on the bus and as anticipated i was right over the rear axle and my sleeper berth was 6 inches too short. the window had been replaced by a flimsy piece of card which opened every time the bus topped 5 km/h and the nights here are really cold. luckily i had my trusty blanket which i had bought in pushkar (i also had one of the locals show me how to wear it as a kind of smock... very jedi which i approve of) so i wrapped myself up and tried to sleep. well, that didn't really happen. the state of the roads in india is ridiculous, at times it was so bumpy that i thought the driver must have taken a shortcut across the desert. i got airtime at one point after a particularly large pothole, it was impossible to sleep. we finally arrived sleepy and very cold in agra at 6am. and it began. "rikshaw agra tour guesthouse rikshaw you want taxi you want i take you to taj" from all angles.. all fucking day. we negotiated a guy down to 30 rupees to take us to the taj and headed over. it cost 750 rupees (a ridiculous amount of money) and it took me 3 attempts to be let in. first i couldn't take my bag because it had books and playing cards (?) in it. so i took it to the free lockers and went back. i was turned away again, this time for having a pack of cigarettes in my pocket. so i went back, and when i went through the security check again i was finally allowed to go in. i have to say i was massively underwhelmed by the taj mahal. yeah it was pretty, yeah it must have taken yonks to build, yeah it's the greatest monument to love blah blah blah but to be honest it's not all that. maybe it was the weather (freezing cold, with lead-grey skies) maybe it was the constant hassle, maybe it was the lack of sleep. who knows. i much preferred the two mosques which flank it, huge great red buildings covered in urdu script inlaid into the stone. i had the oblgatory diana shot, then as we headed back we gasped... we had arrived just in time it seems as the world's supply of tourists had just arrived, literally hundreds of them. we headed off back onto the streets and into the taj ganj area which was where the labourers who built the taj mahal made their homes. again with the instant, non-stop hassle "you want postcard you want marble you want this you want that you want rikshaw you want haircut you want sari" and so on and so on. i was starting to fail at the whole tolerance thing, getting ready to yell "how many times do i need to tell you people NO!!!" but managed to get a grip of myself. we found somewhere to eat and decided that the fort was within walking distance. pretty much every step of the way "you want rikshaw, 1km to the fort you want rikshaw you want rikshaw you want rikshaw". by the time we got there i was not a happy bear, and when i found out that depsite our taj tickets saying 'entry to taj, the fort and a couple of other places' we had to pay yet more money to go in there was an official sense of humour breakdown. luckily kim and hannah had seen this coming and they suggested we go and lie down on the park surrounding the fort and have a snooze. we did just that, and then spent the rest of the afternoon doing not much really before heading to the train station to catch the midnight train to amritsar. total time in agra so far = 14 hours too much.

this brings me rather neatly to the stupidity of the indian railways reservation system. being good, organised little travellers we had booked our train tickets in jodhpur 3 days before. the train was full, but rather than tell us this they took our money and said we were waitlisted. ok... would we get on the train? of course we would, go and check at agra train station on the morning of travel. ok. so i went and checked on the morning of travel, we were still waitlisted in positions 12, 13, 14, come back at 4pm and check again. ok. i checked again at 4pm, great news! we were up to positions 2, 3 and 4. does this mean we'll get on the train? most definitely, there'll be seats for you. cool. at around 10pm kim went for a wander and saw some charts with our names next to seat numbers. sweet. the train arrived.. there were people in our berths.... who we woke up (the train had left mumbai 12 hours before and these people had been asleep a while...) and they went to find the conductor. who started screaming at us the instant he got there "you people are waitlisted why are you on train get off train why are you doing in here this is wait list ticket" and threw us off despite protestations that the charts clearly showed our names. turns out the chart on the wall was the waitlist chart... they don't actually bother putting the reservation chart up.. that would make far too much sense. as i jumped off the moving train i thought "great, alone in arsefacing agra at god knows what hour with nowhere to sleep" as i didn't think for a second he would throw the girls off a moving train as well. as i'm finding more and more in india, what is unacceptable behaviour pretty much everywhere else in the world is perfectly normal here. and sure enough, about 50 metres down the platform i saw two red blurs leaping from the train, baggage following. this left us in a position where it was nearly 2am (of course the train was late, you didn't think it was on time did you?) with a worthless train ticket that had cost 2200 Rs between us, no train until 8:30 am, no chance to buy a ticket until 8am, and nowhere to stay. as we pondered our options a couple of guys started hanging around sympathising, and offering suggestions as to where to stay and what train we could get in the morning. the trouble with guys like this is they invariably turn out to be con men, only after your money. they start off nice and helpful but soon turn aggressive and demand that you stay in their cousin's guest house or whatever. before we could go to sleep we had to get our refund for the train ticket so we went to the station manager. who stamped it, wrote all over it and sent us to the ticket conductor's office. who stamped it, wrote all over it, and sent us to the unreserved booking office to finally get our money. the unreserved office was full of homeless families, heaps of blankets dotted aroud the place. a heated argument was taking place between a gaunt, worn-out looking chap in filthy clothes and a policeman with a shotgun who looked to be losing his patience. we waited for the situation to diffuse, ready to leg it at the first sign of it all going a bit scary and went to the counter. we got our money back. less 60 rupees. i'm sorry what? 60 rupees for what? for ticket cancelling. why? 20 rupees each sir. 20 rupees each to be not given a seat and thrown off a moving train? at which point kim gently but firmly took hold of my elbow and steered me away from the counter. we picked a guest house, and asked one of those guys who were hanging around earlier to take us there. he took us to 2 others beforehand because he would get commission there even though we kept repeating the name of the one we wanted over and over. we started to get a bit arsey with him but then realised that it was 3am, in the middle of nowhere and he could turn on us at any minute. we finally arrived at the guest house we had originally asked to be taken to and woke up the man in reception, who went to wake his father. we could hear the father screaming at the son from outside so kim went in to try and smooth our way into a room for the next 4 hours. she said that the owner was in bed, and he patted the end of the bed rather suggestively as she went into the room. she negotiated us a bed (without sitting down) and we were in. the owner was to throw us out at 7:00, which suited us as we needed to be back at the train station early doors. so we had about 3 hours sleep before being woken up by loud banging on the door at 7am. we packed up and tried to get out but we were locked in from the outside! plenty of yelling and screaming from us got us let out and we bundled our way back to the train station, bought a ticket (standard unreserved class) and went to the appropriate platform for our train to amritsar. which arrived on time (this should have been a warning sign...) so we got on to the 3ac section, paid the extra for our ticket to upgrade it to 3ac and were told with a big smile that we were on the wrong train. our train was an hour behind this one and we could change in delhi. so we settled down and tried to sleep amongst the cockroaches and noise. we finally got our train to amritsar and bedded down into standard sleeper accommodation. this is the mode that most indians use to travel long distances, no air conditioning, no nice carriage fittings. i noticed a plaque stating when the carrage had been built, earlier i had estimated it to be at least 30 years old such was the state of it. i was astounded to see that it was built in 1998. as we left delhi train station towards amritsar hannah and i were sat opposite each other, mouths agape at kilometre after kilometre of rubbish, filth, plastic bags, and people living in it, kids playing in it, cows and dogs eating it.

so, 15 or 16 hours after we had left agra we arrived in amritsar. and man was it cold. we found a guesthouse and i collapsed into the filthy bed. the next day i saw one of the sights i had been eagerly anticipating since before my trip - the golden temple, and one which i hadn't really thought about but enjoyed just as much - the border closing ceremony at attari. the golden temple is just lovely. a huge complex, with a marble temple crowned with beaten gold in the middle of a big man-made lake. i spent a couple of hours wandering around, taking the place in and generally being awestruck. somehow this was more of an experience for me than the taj mahal and i was much more tired, grumpy and cold than i had been when i was in agra. the sikhs really are a lovely people. very personable, ever so fierce to look at but always quick to help you out and offer assistance. there was none of the hassle in amritsar that had blighted my memories of agra and we felt completely at ease wandering around the crazy narrow winding street markets. i really liked amritsar and decided to spend an extra day there. we went to the border closing ceremony at attari in the afternoon and it was great fun! incredibly tongue in cheek, the indian and pakistani border guards perform an elaborate ceremony of posturing, marching, high-kicking and flexing before closing the border each evening. on both sides there were bandstands for the crowds to watch the ceremony and on each side there was a chap with a microphone whipping the crowd up into a patriotic frenzy. the ceremony was brill and i had a photo with the tallest soldier in the world. on the walk from our jeep to the border (about 1km) we were constantly hassled by kids trying to sell us dvds, cds, photographs, postcards etc. etc. and kim gave one of the more persistent ones a taste of his own medicine. she had a bag of popcorn from one of the streetside chappies and she said "you want some popcorn little kid?" to which he replied "no" and she just thrust it in his face and said "youwantpopcorn youwantpopcorn youwantpopcorn popcorn popcorn popcorn popcorn" until he ran away. looking back it's kind of cruel to do that to a kid who could only have been 5 or 6 and had nothing but the constant hassle really gets to you after a while.

that evening i said farewell to the girls, who were off into the hills for a bit of a ski. the plan for the next day was to go to the jallianwala bagh and then grab a bus to chandigarh (where i am now). jallianwalah bagh, for those of you that have seen gandhi, commemorates the site where 2000 indians (men, women and children carrying out a peaceful protest) were killed or wounded by a squad of 150 british soldiers commanded by general dyer following unrest sparked by the rowlatt act in 1919, which basically gave the british the power to imprison dissidents without trial. it is a beautifully looked-after place with a huge memorial at the far end. there is a plaque stating where the troops opened fire from and the well that people jumped into to escape the bullets (leaping 50 feet or so to their death) has been given a roof and plaque. there were parts where the bullet holes were visible in the walls, and all over there was an air that something really bad happened here. it was an interesting experience.

so yeah, now i'm in chandigarh, and i'm not 100% sure i approve. it was designed as the new capital of punjab after partition, and like all designed / planned cities it's a bit weird. it's like someone's lifted up a city from the former soviet bloc and dumped it in northern india. there's a conference on in town at the moment so after 2 hours of searching in the dark i had to stay in a guesthouse in one of the seedier parts of town over a bar which stayed noisily open until 4am. i was only planning to be here for 1 night, due to head to shimla (and some prettiness at last!) at around noon today. but wouldn't you believe it? the poxy train left early!! so i had to find another hotel which took ages. but here i am, and i've got the whole afternoon to do nothing so i'm going to get all freshly laundered, grab some food and read my book awhile.

as you can probably tell i'm starting to hit the wall. the filth, inequality, hassle, rudeness, lack of any kind of infrastructure that works, even the fact they don't have pavements here - it's all starting to get on top of me a little. i found myself getting really angry at the tv last night at an entertainment show which was all about how much disposable income the middle class have and how great it is to be indian. but a couple of days ago i was giving some money to a homeless kid and a stallholder nearby came and kicked him away, really f*cking hard, right in front of everyone. nobody batted an eyelid and the kid ran off crying. i found him eventually and bought him some food but this place is ridiculous. there's loads more stuff that you see on the news and in the papers, kids being thrown off moving trains for not paying the bribe to the police to be able to trade and ending up losing an arm or foot, men beating women on the streets, gang-rapes and murders in villages. there was a story that i saw in the newspaper when i was in aurangabad which i am still shocked by. a brahmin girl (the highest caste) had fallen in love with a dalit labourer (the lowest, "untouchable" caste) and as society and her family would never stand for them to be married they ran away to the countryside. the girl's family found them, took her back, and shredded the man's eyes out with daggers.

i hope shimla's pretty.