Two towns that tuk tuk our breath away

Agra, India

Unless you were born here, I imagine nothing on earth can prepare you for India. I suspect even people who were born here find themselves startled, confused and discombobulated from time to time. You've watched the travel documentaries, read the books, seen 'Slumdog Millionaire'. You know it's kaleidoscopic, crazy and chaotic. But not until you set foot here, for us it was central Delhi, do you feel its insanity full in the face.

With Penny safely stowed in a container in Aqaba awaiting her sea journey to Mumbai, we flew to New Delhi to backpack our way south to meet her as she docked in 'Bombay' (as sailors still call it) in mid December. Our introduction to India was something of a baptism of fire. We'd booked a budget hotel in the middle of Delhi's bazaar area and the pre-arranged cab that took us there at 6am was breaking almost as fast as the dawn. It wasn't even a 'car' as you'd know it. I think it was made of Meccano and cardboard. Doors didn't latch, wheels wobbled when its speed passed walking pace and every lurch and bump greeted us with an alarming screech or scrape from below. I sat in the front squeezed next to the cabbie, our faces lit by a plastic disco temple flashing brightly from the dashboard. Jill and the girls squashed into the back, 1 wide eyed in horror, 3 almost instantly asleep. After about 40 minutes we reached the kind of back streets that make Danny Boyle's 'Slumdog' Mumbai look like Surbiton. It was almost 7am and already heaving with life. 

Dogs, hogs, camels and cows shared rammed alleys with rickshaws, cyclists, traffic and tuk tuks - the tiny gas powered 3 wheeled rickshaws that fill every gap in every street. Cooking smells merged with the stench of litter, drains, heavy incense and an open trench being used as a gents' loo. There is simply no point of reference for the Western psyche. No high street banks, no car parks, food shops, bars or fast food outlets. All these things exist, of course, but in a form unrecognisable to our English eyes. I found an ATM bank machine, but it was behind a plastic door jammed between a bicycle repair workshop and a fabric stall. Food is available everywhere, you just won't see any brand names (apart from Pepsi of course, a pioneer of globalisation).  Downtown Delhi feels like the design of a child who drew all his streets with a big fat crayon and filled them with his favourite vehicles, shops and animals, before handing the plans to his younger brother, who didn't rub out the original, but simply added more, until several generations later we have the finished product - a multi-coloured chaotic scribble of noise and mayhem.

The hotel was cheap. Not the cheapest, but cheap enough to have damp beds and mice. We got moved to slightly drier quarters, but I think the mouse on our landing had residents status. We sank into an uneasy jet lagged sleep until mid afternoon when I tried to convince my family to brave the streets and see Delhi. A walk through the bazaar (just the name for this quarter, not an actual building) brought the same level of pestering we'd been used to in Syria, but it was obvious from the start that  we wouldn't be quite so isolated in the crowd. There were other westerners here, not coach parties, but every now and again the white face of a traveller wearing relaxed hippy clothing and an SLR camera would drift by. The pestering hawkers were keen, but not aggressive, and as Edie noticed quite quickly, they almost all wore similar clothes to ours - jeans and tee shirts. We'd stuck out so much more in Syria because almost everyone there wore robes.

It was still a lot to take in though, and by the time we'd battled our way past Delhi's train station mayhem and been approached a dozen times by people offering to take us wherever we wanted to go, Jill buckled.

"Let's go back."

"But we haven't got there yet" I whined.

"Got where?"

"Connaught Place. It's a big circle with loads of shops and stuff."

Simply standing still to have this sort of conversation will invite at least 2 random strangers to stop, listen in and offer their advice.

"Connaught Place is just up there." offered the first.

"No, no, come with me," interjected the second. "You must bear left."

"I will take you." insisted the first.

"No, really, we're fine." assured Jill, but a polite refusal won't shake these people, you have to walk away, and even then most will follow you. We pressed on, ignoring several urgent invites into tourism shops all claiming to be the 'official Government office', until the only thing stopping us from reaching our destination was the 6 lane outer ring of Connaught Place. All the traffic lights on the main road had been switched off. Clearly installing them had been a pointless waste of electricity, as no one on India's roads adheres to any rules at junctions apart from 1: Keep going and do not give way to any living thing.

As a result all 6 lanes of one-way traffic were a relentless stream of cars, motorbikes, tuk tuks and rickshaws, none of them sticking to a lane, but all weaving, dodging and constantly edging into any gap that might give them an advantage over their competitors.

I'd always considered New York must be a difficult place to take children mainly because of the traffic, but although it's busy and loud, they do at least obediently stop at traffic lights allowing pedestrians to pass without dying. No such luxuries in Delhi. We grabbed the childrens' hands and waited, forlornly, for a break in the mêlée. After a minute or so of white knuckle half-attempts that saw us scurry back to safety, a boy of about 15 joined us.

"Come with me." he said, his gleaming teeth smiling broadly. "Takes practice!"

He stepped out in front of a speeding Ambassador - an ancient car, prolific here, built like a tank and based on the old British Morris Oxford. I held my breath, the kid held his nerve, the car held back. I dragged Ella and Bethan with me in the boy's wake as he progressed, expertly timing each step to perfection so that we wove through the onslaught like salmon defeating the rapids. If you're a child of the 80s and you ever played the computer game Frogger, we were living it. Relieved and joyous, we reached the other side and thanked the boy who simply said "No problem".

"Wow!" I said, turning to Jill.

Who wasn't there.

"Oh no!" shouted Ella, laughing. She was looking across the traffic to the distant figures of Jill and Edie, still standing on the other side, mouthing "Help". I shrugged. Did she really think I was going to fight my way back to get them? I'd just been helped across a road by a 15 year old boy - I'd lost any shred of pride at lane 2.

Seeing the situation, the lad effortlessly dodged back through the deafening traffic to rescue them, guiding them into the path of an oncoming truck while Ella, Bethan and I witnessed Act 2 of the circus from the safety of the stalls. I tried to capture this moment for you on my phone, but you only see Jill as she reached safety. Look very carefully at the first blurry photo of the speeding yellow tuk tuk, though, and you can see Edie's red top through his window. It's only now, when I look at these photos that I realise there's a zebra crossing on the road! Brilliant.

The same thing happened at the next junction we crossed, a young lad of about 19 stepped forward to slow the traffic and we ducked gratefully into his wake. I got chatting to him as we walked. He told me he could never remember the traffic lights having worked here, and that it takes most visitors at least a fortnight to master crossing the road. I think he was politely humouring me. His name was Bahrat and he was on his way to buy cinema tickets for a later showing of a new Bollywoood film he'd arranged to watch with his girlfriend. He asked all about our trip, and told us he was visiting the UK for the first time next year. His family ran a restaurant in Delhi, but he had the night off - Friday night was date night. When I told him we were getting around by train, and commented that our afternoon of internet searching had proved frustrating as most of the trains were full, he said "Always full online. You need to go to the rail office. They have a tourist quota they hold back."

Even better, the rail ticket office was just opposite the cinema. He showed us there, then nipped off to buy his Bollywood tickets before re-joining us in the office in case we needed any help. The upshot of our investigations in the rail office was that we could get to Mumbai quite easily, but filling the next fortnight with other sights would be almost impossible by rail. The stations weren't placed near the places we wanted to go (a tiger reserve in Rajasthan, for one) and the fact that we'd always be buying 5 tickets forced the rail representative to reluctantly admit it would be much cheaper for us to hire a car. The thought of battling the madness outside in a hire car with a £500 damage waiver hanging over my head didn't really appeal, but that's not what he meant. Most tourists book a car and driver - it's cheaper than hiring a car because you're not paying huge insurance premiums and far cheaper than repeatedly buying 5 rail tickets and numerous cab fares. Soon a deal was done through a local firm and we had secured the services of Naresh (known as Nick - I asked him why. He said it's his nick name. I laughed at the pun. I don't think he got it.) and we were planning days in Agra, Ranthambore and Jaipur before getting the overnight sleeper train (huge tick for me, long held dream, The Darjeeling Limited and all that) from Delhi to Mumbai. We thanked Bahrat (who had ordered us some tea), swapped email addresses, promised to help him with his visit to England and, as we'd spent a significant few minutes discussing Bollywood, promised to visit Asia's Biggest Cinema when we got to Jaipur.

"It is a palace. You will love it!" he beamed, and left to get on with date night.

So now we were tourists. Being without Penny was inconvenient because we missed having our own transport and cheap beds for the night, and it also felt, after 3 months together, like we'd lost a family member. But worse than that we'd lost our credibility as overland travellers. No amount of explaining to people that we were driving around the world and our van was on a ship could change the fact that we were just tourists now. Backpackers, sure, but we needed transport and accommodation just like every other holiday maker from the west. This didn't sit very easy with any of us, so Jill made a mental adjustment.

"Let's treat it like a holiday. We can't get on with our journey until Penny gets here, we've got transport, we've got hotels we can stay in - OK they're not exactly luxury, but all the same - it's a holiday. Let's be tourists." 

"Good plan." I agreed.

"I'm getting a guide" she added.

"What?"

"Nick can get us a guide in Agra to show us the Fort and the Taj Mahal. It's only a fiver for the day. I'm going all 'cruise ship'"

She was living the dream. She'd be having a spa treatment next.

So we started the next day in Delhi at the government buildings - their equivalent of the Houses of Parliament - where we happened to witness the changing of the guard, a daily ceremony with even more pomp than London's. It includes ranks of cavalry men and a marching band, yet incredibly only about a dozen members of the public happened to be there to enjoy it. We seized the opportunity to cover some World History with the girls by visiting Indira Gandhi's house, now a museum, which tells the story of her life and assassination. Most macabre is the display of the sari she was wearing when shot by her own guards in 1984, grizzly dark brown blood stains still clearly visible around the bullet holes. This had the effect of engaging young minds, otherwise bored by newspaper cuttings and photographs, not just of our own kids but of the army of neatly uniformed and beautifully polite school children we shared the museum with.

I mentioned New York earlier, and if you're ever lucky enough to go, you should make a visit to Ellis Island an early priority. It tells the story of how immigrants built the city and gives you a foundation of knowledge that benefits your entire understanding of the place. We had a similar experience - understanding a country's history early in the visit -  at the Mahatma Gandhi memorial. To put Gandhi's life in perspective the museum explained in simple terms the various periods of India's history, including of course the British occupation, which is painted in a predictably poor light. Again, it was his violent end that captured the girls' imagination. You can walk in the great man's final footsteps from his bedroom to the prayer ground where he was shot before taking a public prayer meeting, and read an eyewitness account of how events unfolded.  There are quotes dotted around the site, some from Gandhi - 'My life is my message' and ' I don't preach a new message. Truth and non-violence are as old as the hills' are a couple I recall. A particularly fitting one was from Albert Einstein.

"There you go, girls", said Jill. "You can say that when people ask why you missed school for a year."

'The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education'.

Agra is as busy, colourful, polluted and chaotic as any large Indian city, but has one massive USP. The Taj Mahal was built by Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan in memory of his second wife Mumtaz, whose death in childbirth in 1631 is said to have turned the Emperor's hair grey overnight. If it wasn't such a poignant story I'd make a joke here about Phillip Schofield. It's often described as the most extravagant monument ever built for love (the Taj, not Schofe's hair) and is therefore a must-see for any visitor to northern India. Its design is clever in that you can't see it from outside its symmetrically placed gates, so only when you pass through one of the mighty arches do your eyes meet its dazzling splendour. It's breathtaking. No, really, it is. Jill nearly cried. I'm not kidding. First of all, it's much bigger than you think. All those travel brochure snaps, and 'that' Princess Diana picture don't do any justice to its scale. When you walk into its gardens and see how tiny the people are at its distant doorways, you do a double take. (I don't mean they have tiny people at its doors. Indians do tend to be quite small, but...well, you know what I mean). The white marble has 4 changing colours each day - pink at sunrise, white in the daylight, golden orange at sunset and a milky cream by moonlight. We were there at sunset, so having taken the obligatory family snaps at India's most famous landmark, we sat down leaning against the west wall's mosque and watched the crowds milling about (almost all Indian, by the way) and the Taj's dome, walls and towers assume a warm orange glow as the sun slid away. It was a trip highlight.

After walking back to the car through the increasingly gloomy park as the wild monkeys came out to play, we made an unscheduled stop.

"Stop here!" several voices shouted from the back of the car. Ella had spotted Agra's Costa Coffee.

"Aahhhh, a taste of the west." I explained to Nick. "Indulge us. We'll see you tomorrow."

We slurped coffee and hot chocolate from familiar corrugated cardboard cups and chattered about the things we'd seen. The feelings of uncertainty that had overwhelmed Jill and the girls back in Delhi were slowly ebbing away. Stepping into the darkness I hailed a tuk tuk to get us back to the slightly cleaner budget hotel we'd checked into, and as we raced through the night, the 4 girls squeezed on top of each other in the back, me hanging out of the front seat perched next to the driver, the wind rushing through our hair, we weaved and beeped past crowd, cows and camels through the busy Agra streets and allowed ourselves several whoops of delight. Giddy and laughing we piled out, and for the first time agreed that India might be quite cool after all.