aaah india
trying to love india is like being in an abusive relationship: having seduced us with four blissful days on the andamans it ruthlessly battered us with travel misery immediately afterwards. planning to fly from port blair to cal, cal to delhi and then get the train to agra that evening was always ambitious but we could not have envisioned how wrong it would go, nor how quickly.
i've always sought to avoid air india/indian airlines wherever possible, largely because they have always been perenially useless. as however they appeared to offer the only cal-andaman option i had booked our flights with them, naively presuming that the worst that could happen would be a sniffy air hostess or two. as we rolled up to port blair airport at 7am on friday morning for our 8.30am flight it became rapidly apparent that their incompetence could lead to far graver consequences. the flight was delayed - fine, these things happen. for how long? Who cares, but at least over four hours. any other information, maybe the odd update or reassuring word? go away, i'm trying to have a cup of tea. it wasn't just the delay (although four and a half hours for a two hour flight is absurd), it was the haughty, disinterested air of the staff that was most frustrating. to my further dismay it became apparent as we waited, starved of information, that a host of new airlines were now serving the andamans, none of whose flights were delayed and all of whom had helpful staff buzzing around. we finally landed in cal just under five hours late and, obviously having missed our connection, were forced to buy new tickets to delhi costing twice the price of those which we had already bought. we found out later that the delays were not caused by fog or any other unavoidable malady, but rather because various air india pilots were striking. if anybody wants a cod economics lesson on the benefits of competition and the failure of mollycoddled untouchable state enterprises they could do worse than looking at air india over the next few years as it continues to be shamelessly humiliated by the new breed of young, dynamic budget carriers providing twice the service at half the cost.
unsurprisingly we arrived in delhi far too late to get to agra and feeling rather gloomy, so checked into a nice hotel to cheer ourselves up. a good night's sleep and breakfast buffet later we were feeling much chirpier as we headed out to get our train tickets to agra at delhi station. again the uneasy dichotomy of positives and negatives which permeate india shone through, with the excitement of our trip to come being undermined by deceitful touts trying all manner of scams to extort money out of us as we elbowed our way to the ticket counter (via the international ticket bureau where we caused a minor diplomatic incident concerning a very british queue and a very angry russian). none of the scams worked on us, but we do pay a price of sorts. india is a country where there are millions of genuine people who are happy to help for the small price of a couple of sentences of conversation and a chance to talk to someone new. the constant sniping from the sleazy tourist-fed underbelly however means that we are constantly obliged to keep up a glowering wall of suspicion, with no mechanism by which to filter the genuinely helpful from the conmen. as a consequence, the opportunities to meet and interact with the locals have to be sacrificed to keep their avaricious countrymen at bay. all very frustrating but typical india; nothing can be simple if in any way it can be made to be a struggle.
the hassle continued apace when we arrived at agra station, with the prepaid auto rickshaw and taxi stands, a haven for tired travellers after long journies, fully subsumed into the scamming game. i saw two english kids get overcharged by the official government employee manning the taxi stand, who was clearly in cahoots with the local taxi mafia rather than regulating them in any way. still we had our arguments, got the right price and finally, wearily checked into a hotel and made our preparations for the next day, sadly questioning whether it could ever be worth it.
it was worth it. the reason that people put up with the shit that india throws at them isn't masochism; it's because as a country it has so much to see and offer. even the most cloying of overcharged taxi rides seem utterly irrelevant the first time that you glimpse the shimmering white taj, a glorious monument to fantasy and excess which, despite all of the expectations, did not disapppoint at all. we got there early in the morning and wandered around whilst it underwent its morning ablutions, waking up wreathed in mist before groggily shaking off its foggy shroud to stand gleaming and resplendent in the early morning sunshine. truly, truly amazing, and hopelessly romantic: i'm glad i waited until i had vicki before going to see it (despite her penchant for taking hundreds of identical photographs).
after the taj, fatehpur sikri was always going to struggle. an interesting red sandstone abandoned city, we wandered about happily enough but, in truth, my mind couldn't stop flicking back to the transcendent beauty we had witnessed in the morning. for anyone going to agra to visit the taj i would say go first thing in the morning then find a nice hotel room or bar and spend the rest of the day happily musing about it and letting the images wash over you. to squeeze in another monument straight afterwards is simply unfair: it's hard to see what could hope to compare.
a comfortable four hour drive later we were in jaipur. we had escaped agra without too much hassle and seen probably the most amazing building which i have ever visited; for all the unnecessary challenges we were still smiling.
i've always sought to avoid air india/indian airlines wherever possible, largely because they have always been perenially useless. as however they appeared to offer the only cal-andaman option i had booked our flights with them, naively presuming that the worst that could happen would be a sniffy air hostess or two. as we rolled up to port blair airport at 7am on friday morning for our 8.30am flight it became rapidly apparent that their incompetence could lead to far graver consequences. the flight was delayed - fine, these things happen. for how long? Who cares, but at least over four hours. any other information, maybe the odd update or reassuring word? go away, i'm trying to have a cup of tea. it wasn't just the delay (although four and a half hours for a two hour flight is absurd), it was the haughty, disinterested air of the staff that was most frustrating. to my further dismay it became apparent as we waited, starved of information, that a host of new airlines were now serving the andamans, none of whose flights were delayed and all of whom had helpful staff buzzing around. we finally landed in cal just under five hours late and, obviously having missed our connection, were forced to buy new tickets to delhi costing twice the price of those which we had already bought. we found out later that the delays were not caused by fog or any other unavoidable malady, but rather because various air india pilots were striking. if anybody wants a cod economics lesson on the benefits of competition and the failure of mollycoddled untouchable state enterprises they could do worse than looking at air india over the next few years as it continues to be shamelessly humiliated by the new breed of young, dynamic budget carriers providing twice the service at half the cost.
unsurprisingly we arrived in delhi far too late to get to agra and feeling rather gloomy, so checked into a nice hotel to cheer ourselves up. a good night's sleep and breakfast buffet later we were feeling much chirpier as we headed out to get our train tickets to agra at delhi station. again the uneasy dichotomy of positives and negatives which permeate india shone through, with the excitement of our trip to come being undermined by deceitful touts trying all manner of scams to extort money out of us as we elbowed our way to the ticket counter (via the international ticket bureau where we caused a minor diplomatic incident concerning a very british queue and a very angry russian). none of the scams worked on us, but we do pay a price of sorts. india is a country where there are millions of genuine people who are happy to help for the small price of a couple of sentences of conversation and a chance to talk to someone new. the constant sniping from the sleazy tourist-fed underbelly however means that we are constantly obliged to keep up a glowering wall of suspicion, with no mechanism by which to filter the genuinely helpful from the conmen. as a consequence, the opportunities to meet and interact with the locals have to be sacrificed to keep their avaricious countrymen at bay. all very frustrating but typical india; nothing can be simple if in any way it can be made to be a struggle.
the hassle continued apace when we arrived at agra station, with the prepaid auto rickshaw and taxi stands, a haven for tired travellers after long journies, fully subsumed into the scamming game. i saw two english kids get overcharged by the official government employee manning the taxi stand, who was clearly in cahoots with the local taxi mafia rather than regulating them in any way. still we had our arguments, got the right price and finally, wearily checked into a hotel and made our preparations for the next day, sadly questioning whether it could ever be worth it.
it was worth it. the reason that people put up with the shit that india throws at them isn't masochism; it's because as a country it has so much to see and offer. even the most cloying of overcharged taxi rides seem utterly irrelevant the first time that you glimpse the shimmering white taj, a glorious monument to fantasy and excess which, despite all of the expectations, did not disapppoint at all. we got there early in the morning and wandered around whilst it underwent its morning ablutions, waking up wreathed in mist before groggily shaking off its foggy shroud to stand gleaming and resplendent in the early morning sunshine. truly, truly amazing, and hopelessly romantic: i'm glad i waited until i had vicki before going to see it (despite her penchant for taking hundreds of identical photographs).
after the taj, fatehpur sikri was always going to struggle. an interesting red sandstone abandoned city, we wandered about happily enough but, in truth, my mind couldn't stop flicking back to the transcendent beauty we had witnessed in the morning. for anyone going to agra to visit the taj i would say go first thing in the morning then find a nice hotel room or bar and spend the rest of the day happily musing about it and letting the images wash over you. to squeeze in another monument straight afterwards is simply unfair: it's hard to see what could hope to compare.
a comfortable four hour drive later we were in jaipur. we had escaped agra without too much hassle and seen probably the most amazing building which i have ever visited; for all the unnecessary challenges we were still smiling.
posted by bicrom @ 9:00 pm
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