India – October 1-9, 2024

[Martin Hash]

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In 2020, right before the COVID outbreak, just days before our plane flight, we were preparing to go to China when it was canceled. We waited for the sanctions to be lifted, however, we’d already paid and the Chinese travel agency said our credit would expire soon if we didn’t join another tour. In 2016, on an 8 month overland tour, sleeping in a tent in the heat and the cold, my wife, Gwynne, and I were intending to go through India. Unfortunately, there were regional difficulties, and we missed it. Now seemed like the perfect opportunity to finally visit India.

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India is the seventh-largest country by area; the most populous country in the world with 1.5 billion people. It’s bounded by the Indian Ocean to the south, the Arabian Sea to the southwest, the Bay of Bengal to the southeast, and it shares land borders with Pakistan to the west; China, Nepal, and Bhutan to the north; and Bangladesh and Myanmar to the east. It has a violent history, but the coming of the Mughal Empire in 1526 began two centuries of relative peace until their expulsion by the colonial expansion by the British Crown in 1858. Indian independence occurred in 1947. India is multi-ethnic: 80% Hindu, 14% Islam, and the rest Christian, Sikh, Buddhist or Jain. They speak 447 languages; the state languages are Hindi & English.

Delhi – October 1-2, 7-9, 2024

Our tour was to include what the travel companies refer to as the Royal Triangle, consisting of Delhi, Jaipur & Agra, including the drives in-between. We landed in the part of the capital city called New Delhi, which was built by the British in 1911 in the southern region of the ancient city of Delhi, part of the National Capital Territory of Delhi. It’s home to 20 million people. When I see the such crowds, I try to imagine what they’re thinking? They must have the same base motives & aspirations as everyone else in the world but I suspect they would consider me rich & famous in comparison to their own lives, but that’s primarily a matter of birth & circumstances.



The thing I dread most about travel is the traveling. Getting to India, we lost a whole day. I used to be able to sleep on a plane but I’m lucky if I can get a nap in now, and that’s usually when I watch a movie which puts me to sleep halfway through, plane or no plane. After arrival at the Indira Ghandi Airport in New Delhi, we were impressed by the heavy traffic and daredevil driving among the eclectic mix of vehicles; among the cars, buses, trucks, motorcycles & motocabs, we saw a bicycle hauling barrels. Like other places we’ve been, they use their car horns as turn signals & brake lights. It reminded me of an old joke I made up 45 years ago in Italy: “The car horns are hooked up backwards compared to America; they push it to stop from honking.”



Normally, in hot, humid weather, I would wear shorts & flip-flops, but in India, it was too dirty. We stopped at a step well where in past times the locals had obtained their drinking water but was now a roast for pigeons. From there, we were taken by bus from place to place, even where we ate was intricately preplanned, some with entertainment and the high prices foreigners are used to. One restaurant adorned each of us with a lei of marigolds as we entered; both Gwynne & I wore them for the rest of the trip, which went uncommented on by the locals until a bearded man at the Sikh temple made us take them off before entering the area. Both men & women had to wear scarves on their heads, and remove their shoes before going inside. The most impressive thing about the temple was that they fed 10,000 people a day free of charge; a truly heroic effort,. On the side of the road, a double-jointed beggar girl performed unnatural contortions; I felt guilty not giving her or any of the young children money but our guide told us they were controlled by syndicates and wouldn’t get the money themselves. He said many of them were kidnapped from the countryside.



We drove through the ritzy district when the seat of government resided. The prime minister has all the power but the president has the big house. One beautiful garden established by a political party had no visitors because there was no parking, not even for buses. Road signs are written in English, Hindi, Punjabi & Urdu. We stopped at the Qutb Minar heritage site, included a call-to-prayer tower, all constructed in the 14th century; now mostly in ruins but it had been partially reconstructed with lots of artistic license, like many such places around the world. (The Maya pyramids come to mind.)



The most famous tourist location in New Delhi, if all the colorful billboards on the facing street are any indication, is the Red Fort, which, historically served as the main residence of the Mughal emperors since 1639. It was originally constructed of red and white, designed by the same architect who constructed the Taj Mahal. Inside the large area, which contains a modern shopping mall, mostly catering to tourists, were a number of mahals, mausoleums, constructed throughout history, made of white marble.



I couldn’t imagine myself driving in Delhi, let alone navigate through the packed streets in a rickshaw, which we did, in fact, do as passengers. The young man pedaling our vehicle had corded leg muscles and a manic intensity while threading our way through the dense traffic, accompanied by the constant blaring of horns as he cut between vehicle bumpers without an inch to spare. We stopped to see inside the courtyard of a mosque, once again having to take of our shoes.



I’m of that age that remembers Mahatma Ghandi as an Indian independence icon so I reminisced in the peacefulness of his memorial and its perpetual flame. For about 10 minutes anyway, then we traveled through an automotive aqueduct to a tourist restaurant for dinner & drinks.

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Akshardham Temple

The Akshardham temple was built in 2005, which amazed me because the architecture and decoration look ancient, taking 300 million hours to created. It was so beautiful to my sense of aesthetics that I was tempted to become a Hindu just for the iconology. I so loved the statues that I wanted buy one, the dancing Shiva, and set up a little shrine at home but Gwynne vetoed the idea because incense makes her cough; as her brother says, “There’s no sense going into anyplace incense is coming out of.”