We arrived in Delhi pretty hot and confused at 3am, and were met with a wave of suffocating humidity despite the time. We spent the first two nights in a really nice hotel, with air con and good views over the city, so we were able to get to grips with the layout a little better from there. We did a wee bit of touristy stuff, going to see the Red Fort and the Jama Masjid (an enormous mosque that holds 25,000 people in it's courtyard), but mainly we just walked around and tried to adjust to the heat and the culture. We found it really strange that although people will openly stop and stare at me for minutes at a time in the street, they will only talk to Peet. If I try to negotiate with a rickshaw driver or ask for directions I seem to be ignored until Peet asks the same question again. He gets served his food and drinks first, and wherever we go there are shouts of 'sir, sir, you want taxi?' and the like. Would not be a fan of travelling here alone.
Anyway, we left Delhi on a train to Agra, and after some tout-evading action we got a room in a place called Kemal's on the strip of town called Taj Ganj, where the builders working on the Taj Mahal set up camp. The guest house itself was unremarkable, but it had a roof terrace with an almost completely unobscured view of the Taj Mahal. On first sight it was completely unreal, and surpasses every photo or picture I've ever seen of it. We went the following morning at sunrise and walked round the grounds and inside the mausoleum, feeling lucky we're here in the low season, as there were only a few other tourists around. The rest of Taj Ganj was a pretty unpleasant place in all honesty, it was full of touts, scammers and some pretty funky smells. Perhaps it's better in high season as there are far more tourists to go around, but we felt hassled and defensive at every step. We had planned to stay another night and see the fort and the rest of the town, but we felt like moving on, so caught a bus to Jaipur.
Jaipur is very much a tourist-driven place like Agra, but with possibly even more visible poverty. Rats, street children, dead dogs and cows eating litter from enormous rubbish heaps all made us feel as if we really shouldn't be there. We stuck around only until we could get a train to Mumbai, and although we were able to have a reasonable time after planning our escape, we were really glad to be leaving.
We had planned to travel down through Rajastan with three or four other stops, but after Jaipur we felt so frazzled and stressed out by it all that we changed plans and caught an over night train, followed by an overnight bus, and arrived in Goa 3 days ago. Goa had never really featured in the original plan as anything more than an escape route, but in low season it's completely different to the Indian Costa Del Sol it becomes in the high season. Most of the bars and clubs are shut down over the monsoon, and there are only a handful of white faces - only a handful of Indian ones too really. We spent a couple of days in the capital, Panaji, which has only a hundred thousand occupants (bliss after Delhi and Jaipur), and soaked up the quiet atmosphere. It's an ex-Portuguese colony and had a completely different feel to it. It's Christian, full of European-style architecture and is still mainly a fishing town. I spent a day in bed unwell (not Delhi-belly, I managed to get a cold in 40 degree heat) while Peet did some exploring, and we had a couple of nice meals, but generally were just enjoying not being followed down the street by ten screaming vendors at a time. It's completely true that Goa bears almost no resemblance to North India, but that's what we wanted, just for a few days while we relax again.
On to Kerala in a few days time which seems like the sort of place Goa might have been before it was invaded by hippies. They're still here by the way, the die-hards anyway, and do not seem to want to make friends. We probably couldn't deal with the smell of their dreadlocks anyway.
Home now for rapid and frequent aftersun applications for me, and then perhaps a fish curry on the beach. Goa isn't so bad after all.
Cheerio.
39 °C
