The Golden Triangle
This triangle that is made up out of Delhi, Agra and Jaipur and this is where we spend the first week of our trip. The capital Delhi is with its 24 million inhabitants by far the biggest city I’ve ever visited, and the smog in the air tells me we are not supposed to live with as many people on such a small area. Agra is much smaller than Delhi but in my view the pollution here doesn’t get much better than in Delhi. We only had one day in Agra and basically did what every tourist who visits Agra does, we visited the Taj Mahal. To be honest, the Taj Mahal is the most Majestic place with its well maintained green gardens lined with flowers, trees and a pond leading up to the building filled with Turquoise water. There is one downside to visiting the Taj Mahal and that is once you’ve visited it nothing else is really impressive anymore. Of course it is possible to describe every monument we’ve been to, but pictures speak a thousand words, so please visit my India Gallery for some more impressions of the places we’ve visited. This post is about the experiences and adventures I had in those places, with locals and the impressions they left on me.
Making a fool of myself while dancing to Punjabi music was part of that experience. At one of our last nights at our host family in Delhi the extended family visited to present their new born baby, who by the way was really cute. The whisky came out and the table was moved away and the room was transformed in some kind of dancefloor. The bass was so strong that the whole building could enjoy the party with us and anyone already in bed was now vibrating along with the beats of our music. It was so loud that I thought the windows would break. We needed to shout to hear each other and the alcohol kept on coming. However not everyone joined the drinking so at one point it was just me, my girlfriend and the dad drinking. And yh I got a bit too drunk but well, oops. Whisky pi Lau; this means get me some whisky. This is the sentence that stayed with me. It keeps on amazing me to see how locals love it when you speak just a few words of their language, like showing them you’re willing to make an effort to learn from them.
The monuments in India are all so massive and most of them are very well maintained but don’t let this façade prevent you from seeing the other side of India. Next to all these monuments you will find poverty, and not just a little. People without anything sleeping on the floor, communities living in tents made from materials that they could salvage somewhere, and the dozens of rickshaw drivers at every monument begging for their next ride. It is ironic that these monuments are supposed to show the rich history, wealth and potential of the indian future, but they are surrounded by places that would not be worthy of any country in the modern world. These people have to walk bare feet and ankle deep in waste to make their way around their tents (we really do have a plastic problem guys). Their skin looks weathered and it shows the hard life they have behind them and most probably in front of them. These people can’t rely on their government to take care of them, they’ve only got family. But no money means no healthcare, food or basic security. It is hard to go through here as the white traveler and not to think how privileged I am. Just because I was born in Europe I got all the chances I needed to live the life I want. It is hard to believe that I sometimes think about why I do not get more likes for a picture I post on Instagram, when I see what a struggle life can be for others. Of course I won’t decide to give these privileges up, but it sure makes me able to put them in perspective.
When you take the train in India the contrast between casts and wealth gets very clear. You will find 1st, 2nd and 3rd class. As you’d expect 1st class is the best your money can buy on the train, shortly followed by 2nd class. Both these classes have allocated seating, air-conditioning and while it’s not clean it is also not filthy (at the start of each journey even the toilet was ok, I know people have different experiences but at the start of a journey the toilets were usually alright). Then there is 3rd class, when you see the train come into the station you see many coupés with windows made out of metal bars, my first impression was this was some kind of coupé for prisoners or criminals to transport them from one city to the other. As the train arrives you see faces appear behind these bars and hands coming through them. Then people started disembarking making me realize that this was not a prisoners transport but 3rd class. These people were crammed together in this hot wagon and as an outsider it seems like there is nothing worse than having to set foot inside of there. The train is really a good means of transport in India and except for one instance where the train arrived about 4h later on an equally long journey it was fairly well organized. We did also drink the Rail Neer water that they hand out in the train and just one tip: DON’T. We got a nice Delhi belly which ruined the next 3 days of our journey. We also looked it up online and it seems that most of the time it will be alright but sometimes the tests show that the purity of this water is below standards (even Indian standards).
After spending some days with belly issues in Jaipur we did manage to go out a little and see the main attractions. But having been sick we didn’t take the time to organize our way back to Delhi. Last minute this proved to be much harder than we had expected. We tried the train; full. We tried a flight; expensive. We were left with the option we least preferred and that was a car. We tried to reserve one on Make My Trip but they didn’t take a foreign credit card, seriously?! So we actually just took an Uber. It was 3400 rupees from our hotel in Jaipur to our host family in Delhi including tolls and taxes. This is about twice the price for a train ticket for 2 people but we had to improvise. We got into his car and the first thing he asked for was 7000 rupees for tolls. Hey, good morning to you too. We didn’t believe him so called our Indian friend to confirm and he quickly got him back to reality and 500 rupees. Yeah, the day pretty much went down from there for the driver after that. While we got to enjoy the scenery and the many near death moments the Indian traffic has to offer, he got a flat tire, lost internet connection with his phone and got lost, and to top it all off he got a fine for calling behind the wheel. He latter also admitted that he had a “bad” day, I mean how unlucky do you have to be to get a fine in India with all that is going on here. Well Karma as our host put it.
I’ve personally had a very hard time to adapt to India in these first days. I thought that after living in Africa for 10 years I would be prepared for this, but this is something you can’t prepare yourself for. I heard people saying that they love India and find it beautiful and I guess it is possible to think this way, I just think that these people chose to ignore a lot of things that happen around them. Except for the dirt and poverty it is overwhelming to go outside and wonder onto the lively streets of these cities. It takes a lot of energy to visit anything here and it is different to anywhere else that I’ve ever been. It is not because this feels like this for me that it will feel the same way for you. There are beautiful sights to see and the food is amazing, so if you’d like to see for yourself I would encourage that, just prepare yourself for the unexpected.
