The Hermetic World of Indian Railways

We've completed two six hour journeys on India's amazing railway system now, from Jaisalmer to Jodhpur and now Jodhpur to Jaipur.  Both times we travelled air-conditioned class, which seems to be like the equivalent of business class on a plane, although the networks "sleeper" and "second' classes might be better described as "steerage" rather than "economy".  Our first journey was delayed by around an hour and our second by three and a half.  No explanations are offered for these seemingly "normal" problems.

The first thing that struck me on entering Jodhpur Station for our second journey was just how strangely hermetic the system is.  Outside the streets are covered in shit, but once through the threshold of Jodhpur Station the platform is clean and glistening from constant washing and sweeping.  Overall, the railway network offers an illusion of timeless order in a World of disorder and confusion.  It has its own police force and justice system and it employs 1.4 million people, a bit more than the Indian Army, a lot of whose soldiers it seems to spend much of its time transporting around the country.

Despite the delays and the age of the rolling stock it seems to work.  People get from A to B and our purchased online e-tickets were translated into a long sheet of computer paper produced on an ancient dot matrix printer which was taped to our carriage and included our names and seat numbers.

Rattling through the endless dry countryside, at speeds varying from ten to about ninety mph, vistas open up before you through the dirty windows of castles on hilltops, cows, sheep and goats grazing and traffic jams at level crossings containing every shape and style of vehicle from bullock carts to the latest four wheel drives.  All close enough to reach out and touch and yet strangely dreamlike at the same time.

Christmas in Jodphur

After our first experience of Indian Railways we arrived in Jodhpur on Christmas Eve.  Our hotel, the Haveli Inn Pal and its smarter sister Pal Haveli, seem to be something of a Jodhpur institution and are well placed in the old city near the main market and Victorian clocktower and immediately below the looming presence of the Mehrangarh Fort.  As you can see from the photo Jodhpur is called "the Blue City" for obvious reasons.

On Christmas Day I went for a run through the streets of the old city, providing locals with some harmless amusement, before Sue and I scaled the heights leading to the Fort and did the tourist thing with our audio guides.  The scale of the fort is awesome, like something out of a fairytale or a fantasy novel and the decoration exquisite and well preserved.  Somehow the plummy Indian tones of the audio guide narrator sucking up to Jodhpur's royal family just added to the grandeur.  But like everywhere in this country the sheer numbers of people and the noise are overwhelming.

In Christmas Day evening we dined at "Indique" Pal Haveli's rooftop restaurant with superb views of the Fort and the Clocktower.  Occasionally it's nice to play the affluent tourist and go somewhere smart that serves alcohol, though it comes with the uncomfortable reminder that however much we pretend otherwise, we are of a wealthy elite surrounded by an ocean of dirt, poverty and despair.

Jaisalmer to Jodphur

We left the Secret House Hotel in Jaisalmer at 6.00am this morning in a battered tuk tuk for Jaisalmer Railway Station.  It was bumpy and chilly and we had to lean over the back seat to hold onto our luggage as there was no tailgate.  I was expecting chaos and in fact the station was fairly calm.  It turned out that our 6.45 train was coming from Jodphur where it was then scheduled to return at 12.45pm.  It wheezed slowly out of the gloom with a big headlight shining just before 7.00am and finally set off about 7.20.

It’s our first Indian train and we travelled 3 a/c, which basically means compartments comprising eight berths, six in two tiers of three and one tier of two berths.  But, not being an overnight train the berths don’t appear to be allocated so the idea is the middle tier berths are folded down making room for everyone to sit on the lower berths.  Well maybe that’s the idea, but the reality is a bit more of a free for all.  But folks are patient and polite on the whole.  About two hours down the line we passed a huge army camp complete with tanks milling around and old canvass ridge tents and a mass of squaddies boarded, causing more confusion and examination of tickets.  At this point a young American couple realised they were in the wrong coach and sleepily decamped down the corridor.  They looked tired and stressed and Sue told me the girl was complaining of the runs.  Sue is not too well either, having a very bad cold and cough and was able to tuck herself up out of the way in one of the vacant upper berths.

It’s warming up in the carriage as the sun gets up and the landscape is beginning to change.  The arid scrubland dotted with the odd camel is being replaced by more fertile countryside including the occasional field of crops.  So far my first impression of the Indian Railways has been slightly better than expected, our internet booked tickets worked fine and the carriage is comfortable enough, although so far there is no sign of anyone coming round to take orders for food or drinks, which I thought was supposed to happen. 

OK just arrived at Phalodi Junction, which I guess is over half way on our six-hour scheduled trip.

Worshipping at the Temple of Experience

We visited the largest of Jaisalmer's Jain temples today.  An ornate stone labyrinth pregnant with symbolism.  Like everywhere here it was packed with visitors snapping away on everything from battered smartphones with smashed screens to the latest digital slr cameras.  Snap, snap, snap we all went until in the end the temple dissolved for me into a series of photo opportunities and I forgot entirely to actually look and take in the things I was supposedly trying to capture.  I look down on the vacuous and self-absorbed fashion of taking selfies so that a distorted image of oneself becomes the star of one's own "B" movies, but am I any better?

Maybe compulsive picture taking is just another facet of our worship of the individual and their "experience".  So, just as Jains come here to worship things I don't really understand, so I come to worship at the temple of experience, burning images onto an artificial retina to be shared or not at a later date with my friends and acquaintances as I construct another chapter in the story of my life.

Jaisalmer

We arrived in Jaisalmer on Wednesday evening after an uneventful couple of flights and were met by a lad from our hotel who whisked us straight there in a taxi.  In some ways this felt like the real beginning of our holiday after orientation in Delhi and then a kind of duty call on Amritsar, because Sue has been friends with so many Sikhs over the years. 

Our first full day was largely occupied by a trip to the Royal Palace, which has an excellent audio guide, although we had to struggle through the crowds.  The toilets are strategically placed at the end of the tour, which meant that after an urgent need to have a pee I had to fight my way back through the throng up and down narrow stone stairs.

We have also been around one of the beautiful sandstone family mansions or "havelis" in similarly crowded conditions and apart from that have spent much of our time walking the narrow streets of the Fort and the surrounding city, where our small hotel is situated.

Yesterday we bit the bullet and did the obligatory desert tour in a four-wheel drive followed by a half hour camel ride to some nearby dunes.  As I get older I find camels are a long way up and consequentially a frighteningly long way to fall.  But all was well and the desert was so peaceful after the clamour of Jaisalmer and we even saw a few deer sprinting fitfully in the middle distance.

Our guide, Pupo, was an entertaining and informative companion on the trip.  He has a great CV, imagine being able to begin a story "when I was a camel driver ..."

The Partition Museum in Amritsar

On the afternoon after our visit to the Golden Temple we went to the newly opened Partition Museum in the old town hall.  It doesn't have any grand artifacts to display, just a historical narrative illustrated with the recollections, photos and possessions of some of those affected.

It's a very moving experience and an uncomfortable one for a Brit, given the British government's role in this tragedy, which may have led to the death of a million souls and the the displacement of millions more.  Having exploited India for all we were worth for a couple of centuries and creating the myth of the "white man's burden" to help us deal with our guilt, we happily dropped that burden like a stone as soon as it was politically and economically necessary to do so.

Not only did we British use a "divide and rule" policy to exacerbate tensions between Hindus and Muslims thus increasing the pressure for a post-colonial partition, but the way we administered the process made things even worse - crashing the timetable at the last minute leading to the drawing up of an ill-considered border between India and Pakistan and cruelly not disclosing the border line until the day of independence, thus creating a chaotic dash to get to the right side of it.

At the end of the trip visitors are invited to write their reflections on a paper leaf and hang it from a tree made of twisted wire.  I wrote a message talking of my sadness for Britain's role in partition and my hope that in the future we can all spend more time looking to what unites rather than divides us, which I spiked onto a piece of barbed wire wrapped around the tree trunk, which seemed appropriate.

And Brits today, especially the English bleat about the unfairness of the European Union and the need for Britain to fall back on its long-established commonwealth relationships.  Blind f***ing idiots.

The Golden Temple

The morning after we arrived in Amritsar we set off after breakfast armed with Google Maps.  I managed to get us completely lost as we strode through the narrow streets in the city centre, fortunately quiet at that time of day.  By a stroke of luck we ended up approaching the Temple from a rear entrance.  We left our shoes and socks with an attendant and then walked through a freezing foot bath after which I was given a lurid pink headscarf by a smiling Sikh, through and archway, down some steps and then wham, into the brilliant white and gold buildings of the temple complex under a beautiful blue sky.

Thousands of Sikhs and other visitors filled the complex and in the presence of so much devotion I felt both moved and insecure, unsure how to behave and react.  We quickly found ourselves close to the queue for the Golden Temple itself and so shuffled along with the devout along the pier over the central lake or "tank", all the while the music and chanting coming from the Temple were relayed through a PA system.

In the end it was a relief to reach our goal, where a small group of musicians and holy men were played and chanting surrounded by the faithful.  A couple of hours passed very quickly and by the time I was putting on my shoes and socks again I felt as though I'd been drawn in and then spat out by something.  Reflecting on the experience, the fact that the Temple had been the centre of a bloody siege in 1984 in which thousands died had added to the intensity and been very much on my mind throughout the trip.  Indira Gandhi had ordered the troops and paramilitaries in and as a result was assassinated by her own Sikh bodyguards not long after.

Six days in Delhi

I'm sat in our hotel room waiting for a taxi on our last day in Delhi.  I've got tendonitis in one foot, explosive diarrhea and I'm physically and mentally exhausted.  We have met a lot of good people, like the lovely family with the delightful pink baby who insisted on including us in their family snaps on a tour of the Red Fort.  Some hostility and rudeness too, people on tubes and at breakfast who will openly discuss the odd foreigners next to them.  And everywhere desperate people trying to make a rupee or two who will tell you anything to gain your attention and your money. 

The Red Fort was one of the highlights, the site is vast and the architecture exquisite.  Like on the metro and all public buildings there is security everywhere, although much of it seems more ritualistic than effective.  Summed up for me by this guard at the fort engrossed in his smartphone under the indifferent gaze of a sleepy dog.

We did the usual tourist things of visiting some of the major galleries.  The National Museum has a great collection of India art and antiquities, which we shared with parties of cacophonous schoolkids.  Sadly, it lacks that one essential ingredient of all decent museums - a coffee shop.  The same goes for the National Museum of Contemporary Art which tells a fascinating story of the development of Indian art from the sixteenth century and how it has interacted with the art of of its European colonisers.  Before our visit I had no idea that the poet Rabindranath Tagore was also an artist.  Another thing I will carry away with me is an image of Winston Churchill as a malevolent spider at the centre of an imperial web.

More than anything though what I will leave this city with is a vague understanding of what it's like to live in a megatropolis of more than 20 million souls.  On our last full day (Sunday) we went to the Lotus Temple, the centre of the Bahia faith and queued with thousands of people to be searched to enter.  The whole visit was a slow shuffle through the grounds, into the temple and out again, the queue outside the grounds surrounded by taxis, tuk tuks, street vendors and the collective roar of the City.  It was the point at which I reached peak culture shock, angry, my feet throbbing and near to tears in my desire for everything to just stop for a while so I could hear myself think.  Later that day we rode the metro further out into the suburbs and saw nothing but the City extending in every direction under a smoggy brown/blue sky, a patchwork of heavy industry, low lying shanties and public and private housing blocks of every design and state of construction or decay.  Part of South Delhi is dominated by what looks like an enormous slag heap.  This city has no neat edges, the pavements are broken down and plastered with dead, dirty and rotting things.  The infrastructure can't cope and so two lane highways accommodate three lanes of cars and trucks and where necessary the motorbikes just ride the the pavement, honking their horns in threat or warning.  The traffic, like the City is itself, contains an incredible variety of moving things from the latest Mercs and Toyotas to broken down tuk tuks and bicycle rickshaws all coexisting in some kind of dynamic tension.  It makes London seem like Cheltenham on a Sunday morning.

I will be relieved to jet out of this maelstrom later today, but I think I will carry with me the uncomfortable feeling that I'm also running from our collective future.

Delhi

We set off from Newark in the snow on Monday morning and after twenty hours of travel landed in Delhi yesterday morning.  The first thing we noticed was the smokey smell, reminiscent of the London smogs of our childhood.  Then as we emerged through the barrier of bored men holding notices with people's names on, the dogs, barky and fractious, but not threatening.  A young man finally coalesced  from the sea of notices bearing my name and led us to a grey and stained concrete multi-storey, barely distinguishable through the smokey haze, where his battered saloon awaited us.   The drive to the hotel took an hour or so in a honking motorcade with bikes and scooters weaving between the cars and tuk tuks.

Yesterday evening we met up with our friend Sarah and her colleague Lotte, who by an odd coincidence have been working here for the last three weeks.  Following Sarah as she weaved confidently through the middle of a crowded market with the help of Google maps, it suddenly struck me how smartphones are enveloping us in an information bubble which obviates the need to actually inhabit the places in which we travel.  Later, the talk turned to Trump and it hit me that his presidency happened while we were all staring into our 'phonescreens pulling in information confirming our own prejudices and then we looked up and found Trump in the Whitehouse and the UK leaving the EU and we wailed "how did this happen?"

I like to record first impressions because they are so fleeting and then they disappear forever.  Coming to a country for the first time we are especially vulnerable as our preconceptions collide with reality and we struggle to adjust both until they agree with each other.  At the moment the thing that's impressed me most is the dense complexity of Delhi, that there is so much diversity in wealth, social standing, culture, mood and time.  In the space of twenty four hours I've seen:

• Government buildings surrounded by barbed wire and sentry posts, like world war two prison camps.
• Air conditioned shops stuffed with globally fashionable goods.
• Comfortable Indian middle class old buggers eating fine traditional food served by uniformed waiters.
• A tiny frail thin man with a tubercular cough curled up on a metro station wall preparing to die as comfortably as he can.
• Outright hostility and open-handed helpfulness.
• A man having a shit on a piece of wasteground next to a busy thoroughfare.

We've got two and half months of this and as I sit here in my hotel room, satellite TV flickering, I'm facing this prospect with a mixture of intense excitement and outright fear.