Letter from India 1990

Ladies from Rajasthan

My father passed away in 1990 and I was carrying my father's ashes on our trip to India.  

My partner, I and my father’s ashes started our journey in Delhi visiting all the highlight of the city including the old Delhi area where the Muslim population lived. My partner bought a local train time table book in Delhi and planned our train journeys linking nearly all the cities we had in mind to visit. From Delhi we moved to Agra to see the Taj  Mahal and then to Varanasi to scatter my dad in the scared river Ganges so that his soul would meet up with my mum whether he wanted to or not? We moved back to Delhi for a journey to Rajasthan region to visit the palaces of Ajmer, Jiapur, Udaipur and then made our way to live the fast life of the modern city of Mumbai, from Mumbai a short trip to Ahmadabad brought us back to New Delhi.  

 

To show off real India I would have been happy to stay in crummy old hotels throughout our stay in India, however my partner wanted my crummy old hotel to have at least a real English bath tub in the bathroom; anything else, like a bucket job, will not do? This left me very little choice but to live like a maharani in some of the most expensive hotels where beautiful women hovered around the lobby for business from foreigners and local nawabs.

 

 

    The great experience of visiting India for my partner was filled with sheer joy of  watching the                                                       snake charmers on the streets of Delhi.

                                          Meeting the Sikhs showing off their warrior armour.

 

                           Having a ride on an elephant just like the old maharaja from England.

 

 

Discovering cricket net in the Rajasthan Palaces, visiting cricket grounds in Bombay and Ahmadabad where the goats did the job of a lawn mover.

 Before visiting my beloved India I had failed to prepare my partner with few ground rules.

 1…. do not have any eye contact with street vendors, however my partner’s polite English manners could not avoid eye contact followed by smile and few words like “no thanks” which all fell on deaf ears of the vender as he followed and chased us until we purchased unwanted goods.

2…. a foreigner on Indian soil should walk away from any abuse from the local in crowded places. One white tourist questioned a local man for molesting his girl friend found his arm slashed by the crowd.I found myself continuously protecting and sheltering my partner from any angry crowd scenes we found ourselves in. On our journey to Delhi our train was high jacked my thousands of union members from Kolkata, my partner unable to cope with the crowd panicked; started to fight his way out by pushing the crowd in the hope of catching an air flight instead. Off course this was not possible ( there was no airport nearby to go to) fortunately help was at hand from the local police who found our place in the train which brought us back to Delhi incredible late but safely in one piece. 

3…… 99% of Indian are vegetarians, so do no to eat meat but my partner could not resist the meat on the menu and finished up with such a severe tummy problem the day before our departure that I had to call the hotel doctor to help me get my partner well enough to travel to the airport the next day for our next port of call: Thailand.         

      

                                                    Varanasi where I scattered my father's ashes