Our Indian Holiday

And so we began our Indian Holiday. This will be the only blog entry regarding our holiday for various reasons. One was that our camera broke less than half way through so we're light on photos of the second half. Another reason is that the photos we would have taken would have been of us in front of various temples and forts -- the kind of stuff that's good for a while but there's probably enough photos of the Taj Mahal in cyberspace. The final reason is that the holiday was too long and much much harder than we'd imagined.

We started in Delhi where we saw some temples, mosques, forts and Ghandi's tomb (photo above). Delhi was hot, humid and dirty and we were glad to get on the train to Shimha. I can't understate how tiring a 12 hour train journey is with a tired, bored one year old girl.

Anyhow, to Shimla and to one of the highlights of the Journey. Despite Delhi being hot as Hades, Shimla is in the foothills of the Himalaya and is much cooler. Our hotel had no heating and the electric heaters they offered barely functioned, if at all. After getting wet in a rain shower we spent a very cold first night in our hotel.


But aside from the temperature, Shimla is a charming, interesting town. It was the Summer capital of the British Raj and is the very definition of faded glory. The place abounds with delapidated tudor-style houses and our hotel was a well maintained/restored manor house.
We travelled there and back on a very narrow-gauge railway, also known as the 'toy train.' It takes 3-4 times longer than going by car but it's very picturesque.


After 3 nights in Shimla we spent the night in Delhi and then set off on our jouney via the Taj Mahal in Agra, and out into Rajastan for nearly two weeks.
The Taj Mahal is a beautiful buiding with a beautiful love story to go along with it and it was the thing I most looked forward to seeing. I'm glad I've seen it but I've no need to return. Partly because I think there's better many better sights and partly because it's located in India, and the rest of our holiday has served to ensure that neither of us wish to return for a very long time.
This is probably due to us spending a lot of time in Rajastan which is the poorest state in India. The infrastructure is atrocious and not remotely suited to family travel.
It's also due to us finding that so many things in India just don't work. Whist much of this can be (quite reasonably) put down to lower levels of education and funding than western countries, many things were needlessly bad. People constantly underestimate how long things will take. This is fine for the most part, but when our travel agent (who knows full well how long journeys in India take) had allowed 4 hours for a journey that ended up taking over 12, it spoils the day's holiday somewhat.
The photo above shows a very common scene that irked me every time I saw it. The cow is highly sacred to Hindis, but so many choke to death on the vast piles of plastic waste that litters much of the countryside or are hit by vehicles.
India's litter problem is beyond my wildest imaginings. Whilst refuse collection costs money, there is little attempt to even try to tackle the problem. Towns, cities, trains, shopping malls and other public places are frequently devoid of rubbish bins leaving everybody to just drop their waste as they go. Hotels would simply drop their rubbish over the wall where it would attract low caste members and cows (who would then choke on the plastic).

I could go on for a very very long time as I've not touched upon the bureaucracy and the organised begging. But I won't. I'll finish up by talking about another wonderful town.
Udaipur demonstrates to the rest of Rajastan and India how to harness [western] tourism without becoming a Hindi Disneyland.
We stayed in one of the many hotels that overlook the lake, which contains a beautiful palace that seems to float on the water's surface.
By this point our camera had broken so I've no photos but Google knows of plenty.



So that's all that I have to say on our Indian holiday. I hope that Leanne will find the time to add some comments to supplement this entry.

I don't suppose that Daisy will remember her time in India but I hope that our many stories and photos will inspire her to take off on travels of her own.

So that's it for India, but our travels aren't over yet. Next stop Singapore and a world so vastly removed from the one we'd just left that we truly discovered the meaning of 'culture shock.'