First Blog from India

I've been in India one week today.  Spent Tuesday to Saturday with friends, Sarah and Mike, and their 3 children - 2 girls 4 & 6 and boy 22 months.  They have a driver and a "nanny" - it seems as if these are obligatory and all homes have room(s) for a nanny to live in.  When I arrived they were staying in temporary furnished accommodation - an apartment - but while I was with them their furniture arrived and they started moving into a house.  Next time I see them they will be more settled.  Did some 'family' things with them - the children things, school run and an amazing school sports day (the children are at an interesting International School), and coffee morning with loads of expat wives.....  But also Sarah and I took the Metro to central Delhi and had a rickshaw ride through the tiny crowded narrow market streets with loads of run-down shops all selling - shoes in one sreet, saris in another, jewellery in another, leather, wedding outfits, spices, etc. etc. Indescribably amount of people, children, cattle, camels, rickshaws, bikes, motor rickshaws, motorbikes, busses (overcrowded, people hanging off the sides and tops).  Horns going, people trying to sell things, incense sticks, children in school uniform and no shoes dodging the traffic, women carrying anything on their heads - bundles of sticks, bags of flour, water, etc.  Roofs held up by loads of poles, scaffolding with similar poles, none straight, and electric cables as you hae never seen.  Thousands, literally, of them hanging from everywhere and eerything, cross-crossing every street and entrance, all wound around each other and anything on the way.  Thick, think, held up by bits of string or other cables.  It was an amazing 1 and a half huors.  We also had a great evening at a Bollywood type theatre show which was spectacular, colourful and fun, and another evening a great proper Indian restaurant meal. 
Saturday I left S & M and family.  It was so great to stay with them first and get my feet - they were so easy and welcoming and just right.  I then stayed the night in a slightly dubious Delhi hotel ready to start my tour the next day.  As I anticipated, the tour operator didn't arrive that night, but the next morning and I didn't get ,my 'welcome garland and non-alcoholic welcome drink' but I can live with that!  Also as I was expecting he told me that there was no group tour so it is just me in a car with a driver called Sudir.  So meals alone but at least the tour is happening!!
The last 3 days have been varied and good.  Started with a whistle stop tour of Delhi, seeing some of the sights, visiting a temple or two, including a beautiful Lotus temple which encompasses every religion and was very gentle and peaceful.   Then we had a drive to Agra and I now know why no-one drives themselves.  It is not just Delhi being chaotic, the driving is unbelievable.  They have right hand drive cars but drive in the outside lane and undertake with lots of horn blowing, skidding around whatever is in the left hand lane, missing everything by a hairs breadth every time.  Indian cars could not exist without a left hand wing mirror, horn or brakes.  I cannot believe I have never seen an accident.  The roads are shared with cows, camels, goats, sheep, pigs, motor rickshaws with about 15 people in a rickshaw meant for 6, all hanging off and tearing around everything.  If its a dual carriageway its not unusual for something to be coming towards you - and its like that everywhere.  The moment I get in the car till the moment I get out.  Sometimes on long roads its calm, then you suddenly hit a 'town' (conglomeration of run-down buildings, tents, lived in ruins, little shops all selling much the same things, market stalls of veg and fruit, people, more rickshaws, bikes, camels, cows, pigs, sheep, goats, 'cafes' of men drinking beer and smoking, colourful women in lovely saris, barefoot children) and Sudir starts weaving in and out around everything with the inevitable hand on the horn.  He's an excellent driver and has never had an accident in 9 years.
So, yesterday was an early start, we were in the Taj Mahal queue at 6.15.  I had an excellent guide and we finally got through the gate.  For all monuments you have to go through an electronic scanner, have your bag inspected and be scanned by a hand held scanner.  Then I saw the Taj Mahal.  I was a bit knocked sideways by the emotions I suddenly felt and if I hadn't had a guide with me I think I would have been a blubbering heap.   It was just amazing - so perfect and beautiful.  We spent a while there, looking around and  I was sad to have to leave it.  Back to the hotel for breakfast, then more sightseeing - the Red Fort, also pretty stunning, loads of monkeys too! and then a drive to Fahtepur Sigri, the palace built by the last Moghul Ruler who seems to have been quite an amazing bloke.  After a terrible drive over dirt roads, rocks, bits of tarmac which never joined up, then thankfully a proper road with the usual mixture of traffic and toll booths stuck in the middle of nowhere, we ended up in Ranthambore.  The drive had been interesting, through the plains growing masses of wheat and corn.  Seem to be tended by women in colourful saris, wheat stacked up and then threshed, lots by hand, and piled into huge bags which are packed into lorries and hang over the sides like obese tummies!  Past villages of houses which seem to be made from corn, like lived-in haystacks, also make shift tents, houses of any bricks stones etc. stuck together with concrete and dung.  The fuel is bullock dung made into plate sized pats and beautifully stacked into little house shapes and then 'plastered' with more dung and decorated!
Today I visited Ranthambore National Park to see the tigers, but they weren't coming out to play.  It was good to do the visit, though, although we didn't see too much.  Lots of monkeys, deer, peacocks, a few hyenas, crocodiles and some beautiful birds. 
Better stop now as there is a queue for the computer. 
I hope this reaches you all OK.  I'm having a bit of trouble with getting photos on the computer but I'll keep trying.  Speak to you again soon I hope!