Delhi, through the Punjab and up to Shimla

"Well, India is a country of nonsense."
Mahatma Gandhi

The flight was a cheapie - 350 pounds - with a stop-over in Amsterdam. Not too painful, I told myself. But what mischief did the Royal Dutch airlines have up their sleeve for the second leg? 'Sorry, but your flight is overbooked.' I waited till the last minute, as a stream of turbans flowed into the plane. But no seat. 'We've booked you in for a later flight, but with another stop-over at Abu Dhabi.' KLM gave me 600 euros in compensation, just to show how very sorry they were. It was so very touching; I stifled a 'fuck yes.' An Anglo-Indian from Birmingham and I bonded in suffering. His speech was of the charming Asian gansta variety: KLM's slovenly conduct was 'bang out of order, man.' On reaching Abu Dhabi airport he tactfully shouted 'dude, look at all these Muslims.' It was a sad parting at Delhi airport.

The bus from Delhi from the airport threads through a majestic concrete sprawl, enlivened by abandoned industrial estates heaped with upturned earth. A dismal approach. But preferable to that from Mumbai airport, which escorts you on a grand tour of the largest slum in Asia, and would make a grotesque game of I spy: 'daddy, I spy with my little eye...an old man whose arms are rotting with polio, a woman sifting through discarded raw meet with her bare hands, three kids shitting on the road just outside our taxi.' But such a grotesque game could be practiced equally in the suburbs of Delhi, and too a lesser extent in the centre.

Delhi is awash with con artists. As a foreigner, anyone who approaches you, however friendly and wholesome they may appear, should be considered trouble. The most popular scam is too lure lost tourists to the many fake government tourist offices, where they are cajoled into booking hugely over-priced accomodation or fake train, bus or plane tickets. But I stumbled accross a rather elaborate one. After the bus from the airport dumped me in Connaught Place, I headed to a nearby hostel reccomended by my guide book. Outside was a man who claimed to be the owner. He regretted that 'his' guest house was full but he recommended I head to the 'main market' (which I assumed to be Paharganj, the tourist hotel hub) for cheap accomodation. He called over a rickshaw driver (a crony) to take me there at a cheap price. But this rickshaw-wallah proceeded to take me somewhere far from the centre (where I was initially), while insisting that this random suburb was 'very very central.' He stopped outside a basic hotel, took me inside and the hotel owner announced that his room prices started at 100 US dollars, and that this was a reasonable price for Delhi (they would normally cost about 5 US dollars). At this I flew into a rage, probably rather comical, and marched out in search of another rickshaw-wallah to take me to Paharganj. While the first few exclaimed that Paharganj was closed because of a riot/festival/metro construction project (the lie varies), but that they knew of a 'very very good guest house for cheap price' nearby (one which payed them commision), I eventually found an honest driver. Now, every major city has its tourist ghetto. Bangkok has its Khao San Road, Jakarta has its Jalan Jaksa, Calcutta has its Sudder Street. But Delhi is the proud owner of Paharganj, where you can take your pick of a smogsmahord of stuffy shoe-box guest houses to sweat the night away in, often with such inspired names as 'Guest House Very Good,' or 'Hotel Fun Fun.'

Delhi is like a juicy orange with a rank, putrid skin. And there is much tasty juice to had, and once tapped into it doesn't stop flowing. Wandering through the mess of old Delhi, dodging people, motorbikes, carts and cows, you'll stumble accross an exquisite haveli (city mansion) or Mughal mosque, almost buried in the clutter. Plus it has some of the finest monumental buildings in the world. Though the Red Fort is a tad decrepit and sad, the Jama Masjid (Friday Mosque) is awe-inspiring, and Luytens parliamentary complex is perhaps the finest building the British have ever erected, anywhere. Delhi just needs a little peeling.

One thing I had forgotten since my last trip to India is the extent and pervasiveness of its filth. Plastic waste overspills from gutters, the side of railway tracks are strewn with human excretement, cow pat smothers pavements. The stench is overpowering. But the filth of India can not be explained by its under-funded infrastructure: its lack of dustbins, and few street cleaners or rubbish collectors. The answer is largely cultural. The general filthiness of Indian toilets for instance, is rooted in the Hindu caste system and its varying degrees of purity and pollution. To maintain one's toilet is to associate oneself with the latrine cleaner, down there with the leather tanners at the bottom of the caste hierarchy. It is to pollute oneself. And so it is beneath the consideration of any dignified Hindu. This fear of contamination also explains their preference for squatting and horror of the toilet seat, and further the habit of men to simply piss against a building in the open street without embarrasment. For why fear shame when Indian passers-by simply choose not to see the act, when to do so would be to degrade themselves?

I'd seen the Red Fort on my last visit, so this time in Delhi - as well as much aimless rambling around Delhi Old and New - I re-visited the Jama Masjid, explored Raj Ghat with the memorial site of Mahatma Gandhi and its eternal flame, as well as the memorials for Nehru and Rajiv Gandhi (if you haven't heard of them, please slap yourself), then re-visited the excellent National museum. It was hot, very hot, the sort of muggy humid heat that makes you want to have a shower ten minutes after just having one. I had to head to the cool of the mountains. So before long I boarded the Himalayan Queen to Kalka at 5.55 am, day three. We passed through hours of the Punjab: fertile fields of intense green, interspersed with scruffy concrete townships in which people appeared to do nothing, lounging in charpoys (string beds), smoking bidis, occasionally rising to defecate in the middle of a field. This time at Kalka I decided against the Toy Train to Shimla. Constructed in the early twentieth century, the train track remains a marvel of engineering, elegantly bending and looping from the Punjab plains up to Shimla at 2, 000 metres. But the train takes forever to make the clime; a beaten up bus for me, uncomfortable but quick, making alarming work of the hair-pin mountain bends. The cool as we rose was an immediate relief.

Constructed by the British largely in the late nineteenth century, Shimla (formerly Simla) was an attempt the re-create the English village in the Himalayan foothills, in a temperate climate comparable to Britain. The capital of the Raj during the summer months, it is now almost impossible to imagine that here, in this twee hill-station, the British once lorded over one fifth of humanity. Mock-tudor houses still line the ridge, and the old men of Shimla still stoll along the mall of an evening in stipy v-neck pullovers, neat moustaches, puffing on pipes and greating old friends with a 'how do you do.' But India has largely reclaimed Shimla. Though the main drag may be a garish hoarding of Dominos Pizzas and cappacino houses catering for fat Punjabi tourits, the real gem if the 'middle market', which falls in tiers down the hillside, connected by near vertical steps. In the narrow steep lanes are all types, Kashmiris, Nepalis, Tibetans, Kullus, selling spices, shawls, pirate bollywood movies, everyting. I did little in Shimla except take the odd stroll in the hills and visit the 'Monkey Temple' on a hill above town, where Shimla's monkeys (possibly the most vicious in the subcontinent) frequently fight a pitched battle with Indian tourists. They even sell sticks on the way up to beat them off with. I can personally attest to the vileness of these critters: on my last visit one crept up behind me and ripped a banana out of my hand. My only great exertion was to obtain a permit for entry into Spiti, a restricted area due to its proximity to Tibet. So I once again had the pleausre of suffering Indian bureacracy, as I was bounced from one bespectacled clerk to another, a flustered English pinball, collecting a farcical amount of stamps on my paperwork before the permit was mine.

Now finally, a note of reflection....

On paper any Indian journey reads like an epic of sustained suffering, relieved only by the odd exquisite palace, temple or masala dosa. There's the overcrowding, the filth, the stench, the poverty, the stubborn refusal of any bus or train to leave on time. Indian budget travel would certainly appeal to the masochist. But India reveals its beauty in the smaller moments: the tea stops in ramshakle dhabas, the instant friendships on train journeys, the clanging evening puja in a Hindu temple. There's a profound quotation by Leonard Woolf (publisher, India-hand and wife of Virginnia Woolf): 'India, oh how you hate it. But oh how you love it.'

Anyhow, I'm leaving Shimla tomorrow for Kalpa in the Kinnaur valley. Look it up on google maps if you can be arsed. From there I shall press up into the lonely mountain desert of Spiti.

I'm missing you all. Toodle pip!

Ben x (wayfaring student)

P.S. As I typed this I was being audibly assaulted by a Bollywood film soundtack, and some Indian teenage boy kept staring into my screen. His fascination is understandable.

Quest Briefing

Firstly, apologies to all those who followed my previous gap year blog, which was terminated early in its life due to unforeseen laziness on the author's part. The complaints were thick and passionate, and I now write with a renewed dedication and all-consuming love towards my readership. I shall not let you down this time, so keep f*****g checking this blog and leave flattering comments below.



Now, I regret to inform you that all the gap year cliches are true. In 2007 I really did "find myself" in India. But unfortunately I didn't take myself back to the UK. Hence this current trip back to India, where I must find myself, again. Such is the dilemma of the travel bug.



Roughly sketched, my plan is to start in Delhi, leave for Shimla, then bus it into the Kinnaur valley, up through the Spiti valley, sideways into Lauhaul, onto Manali, upwards into Ladakh, possibly a side trip into Zanskar, then finally a flight back from Leh to Delhi, where I shall buy vast spoils of useless crap before flying back to London. Now, for some of you these names may as well be referring to Siberian mining towns. But simply put, I shall be pushing far up into the northern reaches of the Indian Himalaya, mostly within Jammu and Kashmir state - but not in the Kashmir Valley (Srinigar and thereabouts) where nasty bombs like to go "bang" rather a lot. I shall never knowingly step out of India, despite often being a yak's spit away from the Tibetan (/Chinese - take your pick according to political bent) border.

The lure for me is not only the high altitude scenery - barren moonscapes a la Afganistan - but also the well-preserved tantric buddhist culture harboured in Spiti and Ladakh, possibly more Tibetan than Tibet itself, considering that Chinese soldiers haven't been scampering around trashing the monasteries and slapping up the monks (though a chunk of Ladakh is currently occupied by China). Indeed, the cultural links between Ladakh and India proper are tenuous, and its inclusion in the Indian Union was due to its former status as a British protectorate, just like the easterly Himalayan state of Sikkim (I've been there too - not boasting).

In the course of my seven week quest (26 June till 14 August) I shall suffer endless excruciating bus rides on less-than-perfect roads (some among the highest in the world), brutal heat (Delhi), bitter cold, an absurd amount of chai and extreme isolation. Much of my time will hopefully be spent trekking - the plan is to gang up with other travelers in Leh (I'm traveling solo), hire a peasant and pony to guide us, and head up yonder mountains.

My blog posts may well be a tad erratic, as rural Ladakh is hardly dotted with internet cafes. But never despair - your hero shall do his utmost to keep you posted. Who knows, he may even inspire you to head to Ladakh yourself. All the best, see you in a little while.

Love Ben (wayfaring student) xxx

P.S. There shall be no pictures of me sat on elephants. Ok? Get over it.