I can't quite believe how efficient I'm being about writing about India here! Anyway, here goes a little bit more of our amazing trip:

DAY 5: Bombay -> Jaipur

• We got up hideously early - AGAIN! - to go to the airport - AGAIN! This time Nair took me, Christian & Michaela to the domestic terminal, which is a good deal plusher than the international one. We were heading with Jet Airways, one of India's many domestic carriers, to Jaipur in Rajasthan, a huge province of India on the Pakistani border.
• The security arrangements were - as in so many airports around the world - somewhat farcical: there was a monster queue to have your luggage X-rayed before checking in (we cheekily jumped right to the front of the queue because it was stretching right out the door into the car park); and I was able unchallenged to bring a whole 1.5 litre bottle of water through in my rucksack, despite "no liquids" signs everywhere.
• The flight was pleasant enough. The speakers playing muzak right in my ears were a big minus, but the food was pleasant enough (Christian lucked out with the veggie option: masala dosa) and I was able to doze a little. Just as we were landing, a small child vomited all over a nearby businessman. Lucky he was facing away from us when he had his little explosion!
• We were supposed to be met at the airport by someone from the hotel we had pre-booked in Germany, but there was some cock-up so we ended up jumping in a taxi into town. Here, finally, was the India we had been expecting! A little less traffic, a little less glass & steel, a little more "authentic" India with camels and oxen and bicycle rickshaws on the roads instead of 4WDs and SUVs.
• Our hotel, the Umaid Mahal, was a delight to behold! Delicate artwork in a traditional style, and sumptuous fittings in the rooms and shared spaces, all for a reasonable price. The rooftop restaurant was pleasing too. But we didn't have much time to settle in, because our city tour was due to start.
• Oh my God! The guide was AWFUL! His English was worse than bad: he had a total of perhaps three phrases, and he used them all the time, regardless of where they were appropriate. One of them was "one hundred seventy five year old" (used to describe, well, pretty much everything), another was "beautiful panting" (yes, you guessed it, every picture hanging on any wall), and the third was "sir! sir! you look! you look!" (used admonishingly every time one of us tried to slip off and read one of the information panels, rather than listening to him ranting on).
• There were a few other phrases which quickly became straplines for the whole trip: "Pink City Beautiful City" (and its variant "Old City Pink City New City Not Pink City"); and - most memorably - "red, ruby, green, emerald, yellow, gold". Some time later, we discovered that he hadn't just been shouting out random colour words. In fact, the frescoes we saw in Jaipur actually used ground precious stones and gold dust for the colours mentioned. For this reason, the colours are as bright today as they were when they were thrown up in the first place. Quite beautiful pantings in fact.
• We saw the Jantar Mantar observatory complex, with the world's biggest and most accurate sundial; the Hawa Mahal, or Palace of the Winds, with its marvellous Dutch-looking façade; and the City Palace, with textiles museum and artisan's workshop area. Then we went back to the hotel to have lunch and to complain about the guide. Yes, folks, he was so bad that we were driven to overcome our natural English reserve and actually have a little moan! But our tour organiser was totally cool about it and said we'd have a different guide for our second day in Jaipur city. What a relief!
• After lunch on the rooftop, we had a lovely sleep (it had been a long day already since waking up at Gareth's), before heading off to a model Rajasthani village out of town. Our driver for the duration of our Rajasthan trip, Mr Singh, had a fabulous collection of music in his car for our listening pleasure. He was also a most amusing chap - more on that later...
• The model village was so-so: we had a painful neck & back massage, a slightly bizarre meal of local specialities (I stuffed my face with the jalebi desserts, memories flooding back from my childhood in Harrow with its large ethnic Indian population), we saw a frankly ridiculous dinosaur complete with dodgy roar effects, and we bought some tourist stuff. The place was HEAVING with visitors, but almost all of them were Indians, which was interesting in its own way.
• Back in Jaipur proper, Michaela & I headed to a bar to get some carry-out beers, because at midnight we celebrated the start of Christian's birthday!!

Right, I have a plane to catch tomorrow morning, so I'm going to sign off there. I'll write again soon, I promise!

Are you ready for some more Indian madness?

DAY 3: Historic Bombay

• After a relaxed morning of getting our shit together, Christian & I had Nair drive us to the Gateway of India, almost at the southern tip of the peninsula which Bombay sits on. It's probably about 30km from Hiranandani, Gareth's area of town, to this historic part of the city, but the heavy (but off-peak) traffic meant it takes about an hour and a half. In rush hour, you can add an hour to that. !!!
• Once at the Gateway (a huge stone arch built to commemorate the first visit of a British monarch to the Raj - not that long ago in the early 1900s) we walked around. Clearly, we had TOURIST tattooed on our foreheads: the number of city guides, Hindu blessings and (this last one for some unknown reason traditional at the Gateway) enormous flourescent pink balloons we were offerred beggars belief!
• We slowly made our way through the old heart of the city, visiting the Prince of Wales museum with its eclectic collection of Indian art & culture, then walked past the courthouse, the university, and the cricket grounds, surrounded the whole time by cacophonous traffic and crowds of pedestrians, the tropical sun beating down on us.
• Soon (well, in Bombay terms anyway) we reached Victoria Terminus, a railway station that deserves the description "St Pancras on acid". For those non-London connoisseurs among my dear readership, London has quite a few fantastic architectural gems posing as railway termini, but the drab weather leaves them looking a little more subdued than this fabulous confection of a station that serves the centre of Bombay.
• From opposite the station, Nair drove us back through the pre-rush-hour traffic to Gareth's apartment block in Hiranandani. It only took two hours... We met up with Gareth and accompanied him to the Renaissance Hotel on the waters of Lake Powai just up the road. Gareth had his hair cut while Christian & I gorged ourselves on the freshly-roasted cashews and the wasabi-coated green peas that came with our HUGE gin & tonics in the supremely elegant bar area with its sumptuous leather seats and Indian fabrics everywhere.
• Back at Gareth's, his housemaid had cooked us some chicken biryani which we devoured. It was a bit mild; I think she thought we would be curry woosses; how wrong she was!

DAY 4: Hiranandani

• I woke up hideously early on Wednesday. Michaela was arriving from Munich and I promised to meet her at the airport with Nair. Well, the one plus point was the hot sweet masala chai tea stand just outside the exit from the terminal, which made waiting for her to appear more bearable (Nair, ever the careful driver, likes to leave plenty of time to get across town, so we were way early).
• Once Michaela had arrived, we headed back to Gareth's and crept back into bed. Michaela slept all morning - fair enough after that journey - while Christian & I took it easy. In the afternoon we walked to the Galleria shopping arcade just a few minutes down the hill from Verona. We were looking for Indian-style clothes because Gareth's friends were holding an Indian-themed leaving party for one of his colleagues. We turned up trumps in one shop with very helpful assistants and yummy chai.
• After that, we stopped for a bite to eat. It was a slightly dodgy-looking greasy spoon type place, but the chaats were delicious! Just how I remember them from the Indian vegetarian restaurant next to the cinema where I grew up in Harrow, where they always put on the Bollywood films.
• Once Gareth got home from work, we all got dressed up in our Indian gear and headed by rickshaw to the party, which was in another building in Hiranandani. It was great to meet some of Gareth's friends and to learn more about the expat life in Bombay. We finally stumbled home on foot at 2.30am. It had been a long day!

INDIA!!!!!!!!




INDIA!!!!!!!!



INDIA!!!!!!!!




...




I'm tempted to leave it at that, actually. I'm still digesting the trip, which I'll now try to pass off, unconvincingly, as the reason I haven't written anything on this blog for the last SIX WEEKS. Even though I've been unemployed since the day I got back (about which more another time).

...

Oh, okay then, I'll list everything I did as well!

But first a few overarching comments:

- India is huge, and we really only scratched the surface. It was an action-packed two weeks, but you could spend years travelling around India and still not do it justice. I have a feeling I will be going back for more; I just don't know yet when that might be.

- That said, it WAS an action-packed two weeks! (This shall become clear to those of you who bother to read everything I write later in this blog.) And I am indebted to my mate Gareth (whose wonderful blog you can see at http://garethinindia.blogspot.com/) for allowing us to crash at his place in Bombay and - wow! - use his car & chauffeur, which came in VERY handy.

- It was HOT HOT HOT over there! No surprise, coming from a murky European winter. But it didn't even get cool in the evenings. Daytime temperatures pushing 40° and nighttimes maybe 20°: fantastic.

- Traffic in India is INSANE!! To a man, drivers only look forwards. What goes on behind or to either side of them is of absolutely no interest. Obeisance to traffic lights is at best optional. Lane markings on roads go utterly unregarded: weaving is obligatory, overtaking on both sides the norm and a typical three-lane highway will host anything from one fat lorry to seven lanes of cars, taxis & rickshaws - not to mention the pedestrians who dash out in front of you. I would never want to drive myself here, but even being a passenger is not for the faint-hearted.

- The people (especially the women) wear all sorts of different clothes, but all in very bright colours. This was noticeable enough in town, with thousands of different shades of sari livening up the pavements, but in the country it was striking to see fields tilled by peasants not in dull grey but in flourescent yellow or fiery red.

- I have taken more photos on this trip than ever before. There's over 1000 for me to trawl through - hence the delay in uploading any pictures from India to my site - and Christian took another 1000 himself. But I will get there. Patience, my dear holiday snap viewers!

Okay, hold onto your hats while I spin you through my Indian fortnight:


DAY 1: Munich -> Doha

• Christian & I left Munich on a cool, damp morning. It was perfect flying-away weather - and it turns out we missed a filthy two weeks of sudden winter in Bavaria - yay!
• The flight was uneventful and reasonably empty. Qatar Airways has great TVs and tasty food. A couple of films later, and we were already at Doha.
• The bus from the plane to the terminal seemed to take longer than the bloody flight, though! Doha airport itself is a shabby affair, and the food is outrageously expensive.
• We picked up some Bombay Sapphire as a pre-thankyou for Gareth (coals to Newcastle, one would have thought, but in fact you can't get the stuff in India, so Gareth informed us) and then headed off on the second leg of our journey.

DAY 2: Doha -> Bombay

• Once again, the flight was fine, but this time there wasn't a single spare seat. I managed to get some sleep, but it was a shortish flight, so I arrived feeling pretty dishevelled.
• Bombay airport seems huge. Or perhaps it was just that we were made to walk the entire length of the terminal building to get to immigration. At least the queues were fast-moving.
• On the groundside, we had to negotiate first a building site and then hoards of people. The luggage took a while to appear, and then we fought our way to the customs desks, joining yet another queue in a cavernous but down-at-heel hall with money changing desks and did I mention the hoards of people?
• We were met at the exit by Nair, Gareth's driver, and he escorted us through the hoards of people and the pre-dawn gloom to Gareth's 4WD air-conditioned Toyota Innova (everyone who's anyone has an Innova here).
• Part of me thought "what a pity that we're not 'Indianing it up' with a rickshaw or one of those cute little '50s style taxis" but the other - kanckered - part of me was relieved at the simplicity of being met and chauffeured.
• We reached Gareth's flat half an hour later. I didn't expect to see so much traffic at 5 in the morning, but then again this is a city of some 30 million people, so I suppose it's logical that at least some of them will try to avoid daytime driving, where traffic is SO much worse.
• Christian & I were both pretty dead, so after an initial hello with Gareth (who looked even more tired than us when he emerged from his bedroom to meet us) we sank gratefully into bed and got up mid-afternoon local time.
• Nair drove us to Bandra, an area in the west of town with bars and restaurants where Gareth came to meet us later. The traffic was INSANE! (see above). We wandered around a bit, drinking a coffee (yes, the coffee shop has reached India, but no, thankfully it wasn't Starbucks but rather a local chain).
• As the sun was setting, met Gareth in an über trendy bar called Zenzi for a couple of cocktails, before heading off to a trendy restaurant called Out In The Blue for delicious sizzlers: piles of meat served on hotplates. Nair drove us all home through still insane traffic, and we fell once more into bed, still a bit woo & a bit wah from the jetlag.

D'you know what? Just to keep things interesting (and to stop my fingers from falling off), I think I'll do the India story over a couple of blogs. So I'll stop there, and I promise to write again very very soon! Mwah mwah, Richard