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 ...

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...

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 a...

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 dat...

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. ...

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...

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 com...

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 thing...

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 G...