Fantastic India

Well we've just returned from a whirlwind tour of the "cultural triangle" of India, and what a trip it was. India is just fabulous, a growing, vibrant country as geographically diverse as Australia, but instead of a paltry 23 million inhabitants it manages to squeeze in over a billion.

Driving into Delhi from the airport the contradictory nature of India becomes instantly apparent, as brand new mercedes speed down highways littered with cows and beggars. Scrawny, dusty little brigands surround your car at every traffic light knocking at the window and gesturing towards their mouths and stomachs. Whether they're professional beggars (the local opinion) or not, my first instinct is to pack them all into the hotel swimming pool and give them a scrub down and then a jolly good feed.

The gap between rich and poor is far more obvious here than in SL, but there is also a "buzz" about the place that SL is missing. Everyone, regardless of whether they are begging or working in a shop/ hotel etc has a sense of industriousness about them which is hard to verbalise. It just feels as if everything is on the move (despite the power and water outages).

So our first day was spent touring both Old and New Delhi. It was only 40 degrees (it is HOT here) and we saw Moghul monuments, British monuments, Lutyen architecture and the Gandhi memorial, along with the sites that don't go into the guide books, but that really make India what it is. Like the street kids swimming in the memorial fountains on the Presidential Avenue next to India Gate! or the camels being driven down a major motorway! or people peeing in the middle of a world heritage site!

We stopped for lunch at this fabulous restaurant, where Dunc (the intrepid traveller) couldn't resist ordering the Kashmiri Kebab, despite my wide-eyed look of alarm. Needless to say he regretted it - for the next 5 days (more later). My spinach curry and mushroom curry were much safer options, though most food is a bit taxing on our sensitive Caucasian stomachs.

Next day we headed to Agra, about 5 hours south of Delhi in the province of Uttar Pradesh - destination Taj Mahal. To get there you drive through countryside like the south of France in high summer, hot, scrubby, with sprouts of green vegetation here and there. You pass through roadside towns with all the usual characters that congregate there - brightly clad eunuchs, men with dancing bears (not for much longer - I've dobbed them in to my mates at the Anti Animal Cruelty team at WSPA), more street urchins, and travellers trying to go about their business unmolested.

Finally reach Agra and our hotel which was splendid in a Palazzo Versace sort of way. By now DY's belly problems had begun to take hold, so we admired the marble (lots) and ordered room service and settled in for a nice quiet night .... which it was for me, as I slept through DY's repeated bathroom forays, but poor old DY had a hell of a time.