Stamped out of India

Bangkok skyline [Enlarge]

When we went down to check out of the Tara Palace Hotel, the manager was sitting at reception. He asked us if we'd enjoyed our stay and, choosing our words carefully we told him that we liked his hotel very much—our views on Delhi and India we kept to ourselves.

India only had one final opportunity to irritate us and she did her very best. Knowing what we knew about Indian bureaucracy and organisation, the rigmarole and queues at Indira Gandhi International Airport came as no surprise at all. We left early to allow for Delhi's evening rush-hour traffic, and we arrived at the terminal nearly three hours before our flight to Bangkok was due to leave.

Check in and immigration went smoothly (by the way, why do they still call it immigration when you're leaving the country?). The security checks were a different matter however. The queues were so long that we were almost late for our flight by the time we got through to the gate. And then we were subjected to another manual search at the gate itself. Indian law has a daft requirement where you must have a luggage tag on every piece of hand luggage. This tag gets checked and rubber-stamped at security. There is a man whose job it is to check the tag and stamp it, then another man whose job it is to check the freshly stamped tag. At the gate there were two more checkers, one to again check the stamped tag and the other to make sure that the first one is doing his job properly. These are in addition to the vast number of other uniformed people milling around doing (apparently) absolutely nothing. In this rule-obsessed, blindly unquestioning environment, nobody has thought to ask what this hand-luggage tag's presence actually achieves (apart from employment for two checkers per security scanner and another two checkers per departure gate). How does putting a stamped, easily removable luggage tag onto a piece of hand luggage prove in any way that the contents of that bag have been screened? In any case, we noticed tags on several people's luggage which were not even filled in! They had been stamped all the same, presumably because the person's job description says "Check that each piece of hand luggage has a tag, and then stamp the tag."

Glenn said in one of our earlier Indian posts that he was optimistic that the problems India has will be overcome because its society seems to be dynamic and hungry for success. After a few weeks here he has completely changed his mind. We think that India is in for a very tough time in the short or medium term, because of its terrible inefficiency and mind-blowing scale of over-employment. The corporate downsizing seen in the West in the 1990s will be nothing compared to what happens when someone realises that all these utterly redundant jobs are costing money. An example is the luggage tag stampers at the country's airports. Here's another example: on Goan building sites, we saw lorries dropping off their loads of bricks at the side of the road. At each site, tens of workers were employed to carry the bricks across the road to where they were needed. Like a line of ants, this was their job, and they did it all day by the bucketload (on their heads—ouch). When, probably due to the rampant inflation being seen in the country, the site owners realise that they could save money by buying a wheelbarrow and employing just one person to transport the bricks, what are all the others going to do? Maybe investment from outside the country will generate jobs faster than this process will destroy them, but we can't see it.

The overnight flight was not too bad—we didn't bother trying to sleep, deciding instead to watch some movies. We had nothing planned for our first day in the land of smiles so we thought we'd go to bed for a few hours when we got to the hotel in the morning. Five hours after leaving Delhi we were walking through Bangkok's stylish and brand new Suvarnabhumi International Airport. Even at 06:30 the Thai staff were, true to their reputation, smiling as they opened another immigration desk to save us having to queue. No hassles, no visas, no fees, no waiting: just turn up with a British passport and you can come in for up to thirty days. Even the baggage reclaim area is calming, with a huge glass wall at one end looking out onto an ornamental garden. We had read that the new airport has had teething troubles since it opened late in 2006, and that there are calls for international flights to be moved back to the old Don Muang Airport while the problems are sorted out. But for us it really was a breeze.

The Airport Express bus looked like the best option for getting into town. The smiley staff were familiar with where we needed to go and pointed us at the right bus for the Bobae Tower, the location of our Expedia-sourced hotel. We climbed aboard and perched wherever we could as all the seats were taken.

Bangkok's traffic is notoriously bad and it took an hour and a half to get into the city centre. We were woken from our dozy stupor by the driver shouting "Bobae Tower!" and we tumbled out into the heat and humidity and followed the arrow on the GPS until we found the hotel. The heat is incredible if you haven't experienced it before (we haven't). It was some time around seven or eight in the morning and yet it was like being in a hot, steamy bathroom with all the windows and doors shut.

We took the hotel a bit by surprise turning up so early, so we had to wait for a short time while housekeeping cleaned our room. By 09:30 we had taken a shower and were in a super comfortable bed in our lovely clean air-conditioned twenty-third floor room, fast asleep. We got up some time in the afternoon and lounged around until dinner. We love Thai food at home, but this was our first Thai meal in Thailand. It was worth coming for!

Next day after breakfast we decided to walk across town to the Khao San Road, the main backpacker area, to find a bookshop willing to exchange our India guidebook for one covering South East Asia. On the way we were touted by tuk-tuk drivers and tour sellers pretending to be helpful passers by, but they are rank amateurs by comparison with the Indians. And they do it with a smile and accept your "no thank you" almost straight away. One 'passer by' helpfully pointed out on our map all the sights we must see in Bangkok, then told us that because it was National Police Day (!), there was a special offer on all tuk-tuks with yellow number plates (!!) whereby we could go anywhere all day for just 10 baht (GBP 0.15 / USD 0.29). As if by magic, a yellow-plated tuk-tuk pulled over and the driver offered to take us anywhere all day for 10 baht! And he would even throw in several visits for free to some craft shops where we could see local produce being made! It made us laugh. We got to the Khao San Road, hot but relieved to have been able to simply go out for a pleasant walk for the first time in weeks, and had no trouble finding a second-hand bookshop where in return for our India book and a few baht we came away with the most up to date edition of the Rough Guide to South East Asia. At another shop we got a less favourable deal on a fold-out map of the region that mysteriously transformed from a brand new copy to an out of date and slightly tatty second-hand one after the money had changed hands.

Since then we've just hung out and taken it easy for a few days. Our plan was to get our Chinese visas in Bangkok, and it still is. But the timings have gone to pot a bit because we've managed to land here right at the start of Chinese New Year, and the embassy is closed until Monday 26th February. We've read that it can take up to four working days to get a Chinese visa and we don't want to risk being without our passports for the week that the embassy is closed, because we need them to check into hotels. So we have decided to leave half of our luggage in the hotel's storage facility (so that we can travel really light!), and explore some of Northern Thailand and Laos. We will return to Bangkok after Chinese New Year to take in the sights of the city and get those pesky visas.

In our last post we said that Bangkok is a love-hate city and that we hoped we would love it. Well, we're delighted to report that we do! India is far behind us, and our trip is firmly back on track.

Day 082
New Delhi to Bangkok

This map shows the route we took in this post. Click it to see larger maps of our whole route at flickr.

Maps are taken from the CIA World Factbook.

Incredible India

View from our room in Old Delhi [Enlarge]

This post is going to be a short one. We are so sick of India's filth and top-to-bottom corruption that we are quitting and getting out of here! Our plans to visit north-east India, Nepal and Bhutan have had to be shelved.

Jaipur was just as disgusting as the other cities, and smellier. The difference compared with Delhi was that our hotel was also dirty. We took the train back to Delhi as planned, and have booked two one-way plane tickets to Bangkok overnight on Wednesday night. From Bangkok we plan to tour south-east Asia before moving northwards into China. We will hopefully get our Chinese visas while we're there. Unfortunately, it is another city that people seem to either love or hate—we hope so much that we end up in the 'love' category.

India's main tourist website at incredibleindia.org (challenge: spot a single piece of rubbish or freshly laid turd in any photo on that site!) describes Jaipur as

Settled in the rugged hills of the Aravalis, Jaipur is the pristine jewel in the desert sands of Rajasthan. Jaipur is as remarkable for its marvellous architecture and town planning as it is for the lively spirit of the people who inhabit it. The city presents a unique synthesis of culture that has to be experienced in order to be appreciated.

Let's just say that we disagree. In the words of a wise traveller we met, "When you start hating a place you just need to get out and move on."

Exactly.

Day 079
Jaipur to New Delhi

This map shows the route we took in this post. Click it to see larger maps of our whole route at flickr.

Maps are taken from the CIA World Factbook.

Taxi to Jaipur

Agra Fort Station [Enlarge]

We are beginning to think that India is not for us. Maybe we're missing something, but the amazing architecture and must-see sights just don't seem worth the hassle.

Anyway, another train ride was scheduled for today, from Agra in Uttar Pradesh to Jaipur in Rajasthan, starting early at 06:10. This was not going to be one of the relatively modern Shatabdi Express trains. Instead we would be catching the conventional Marudhar Express which had begun its journey at Varanasi many hours previously.

We left the hotel very early so that we would have enough time to walk to the station if necessary. We found a cycle rickshaw easily enough though, and he quoted forty Rupees—it should probably have been ten. We have a lot more respect for cycle rickshaw riders than their motorised counterparts, because they have to work so hard for their money (cycle rickshaws are large and clunky and they have no gears). So we didn't bargain and confirmed and accepted the quoted price. The ride through the mostly unlit pre-dawn backroads was surreal and the poor rider had to get off the contraption several times to push it uphill. He worked so hard that when we got to the station we gratefully handed him sixty Rupees. At which point he had to go and destroy our new-found good will towards Indian transport workers by saying that his price of forty Rupees meant forty each, so please could we give him another twenty! We could not believe what was happening, and Glenn angrily snatched the notes back from him and told him that because he was dishonest he would be getting only the forty he knew we had originally agreed. In the end he got sixty—we're not sure why we gave in, but we were tired.

Inside the station we found that our train was already running late. Very late. After an hour standing on the platform it had repeatedly slipped, and was now showing on the display as being nearly four hours behind schedule. We had struck up a conversation with the only two other foreigners on the platform, Jeremy and Andy—both Brits. After a while someone suggested sharing a taxi between the four of us, which we calculated should cost about 2300 Rupees, or 575 Rupees each (GBP 6.70 / USD 13.07), since the going rate is 10 Rupees per kilometre which includes the cost of the driver doing the return journey.

As if he had been evesdropping, a shifty little man sidled over to us. From his 'look at me, I'm just a regular passenger' demeanour, we immediately sussed him as a tout of some description, and we wondered what he was going to try to sell us. He started moaning about how the train is late every day, and it only ever gets later and later. Four hours is nothing—it will probably be five or six by the time it arrives. He told us we could take the bus if we were in a hurry, or even a taxi—but they're very expensive, probably well over 3500 Rupees. He wandered off.

And then he came back. He had gone to the trouble of enquiring about taxis for us! And the good news was, he could arrange a Tata Indica (a small hatchback similar to a Corsa with just enough room for four passengers, a driver and some luggage) for us for just 3000 Rupees. We said we would consider it and he left us again. Standing in a dark, smelly station all day with only the promise of sitting on a dark, smelly train at the end of it, was not something that was on our 'must do' list. So we agreed between the four of us that if we could get the price down to 2500 Rupees, and if the car looked reasonably roadworthy, and if the driver wasn't under the influence of any illegal substances, we would take the taxi. It would give us the chance to see more of rural India too.

We walked outside to begin the bargaining process. For once we held all the chips—so far we had invested nothing, but the tout army had called for a taxi and driver. Luckily we seemed to be the only tourists at the station that day, so they couldn't hold an auction either. Glenn said that we had considered the offer, but unfortunately 3000 was too much. We could only afford 2000, but we felt confident that that would give the driver and touts more than enough profit, since it is only around 200 kilometres to Jaipur. The head tout did an excellent job of looking first shocked, then deeply hurt. As expected, he refused outright, and as we had agreed with Jeremy and Andy, we shrugged, looked just disappointed enough, and then walked back inside the station.

The foot soldiers ran after us and called us back. The conversation continued like this:

Glenn: We really can only stretch to 2000.
Tout: Impossible.
Glenn: OK, we'll wait for the train.
Tout: OK, 2700!
Glenn: No.
Tout: OK, what you pay?

We went through the motions of trying to piece together some more funds.

Glenn: We will pay no more than 2300.
Tout: 2500 and we will take you.

Bingo!

Glenn: OK, 2500. We will pay at the end.
Tout: OK.

That is what bargaining should be about. Reach a mutually acceptable price and get on with the deal. Pleased, we tied Andy's suitcase to the roof rack, got in the taxi, and drove off. The Tata Indica is actually quite spacious inside and we had plenty of room. However we weren't quite sorted yet. After about 500 metres and one turn, we stopped outside the driver's office (a travel agency, surprise surprise). He said that he needed to go in and tell them where he was going.

We have learned that the secret to bargaining is to genuinely not care about the product or service you are procuring. If you are prepared to walk away if the price is not right, then they can't beat you. And we were all quite prepared to walk away—we were in no particular hurry.

A few minutes passed and then the tout army from the station turned up! A lot of heated discussions took place outside the taxi and then the head tout opened the door and promptly raised his price again to 2700. Presumably they thought that they now had some leverage as we were no longer at the station. So the negotiations had to be re-opened.

Tout: Sorry, but 2500 is not possible. It is 2700.
Glenn: No, we agreed 2500.
Tout: Not possible. We have to pay road tolls on the expressway.
Glenn: Road tolls are not our problem, we agreed 2500.
Tout: No.
Glenn: OK, we will take the train.

We all got out of the taxi and started to untie Andy's suitcase from the roofrack.

Tout: OK, OK, you stay. Get in. 2500 is OK. But we need 600 from you now so that we can buy petrol.
Glenn: Petrol is not our problem either. Do you want to take us to Jaipur or not?
Tout: You listen to me. We need to buy petrol so you must pay 600 now and 1900 at Jaipur.
Glenn: No, you listen to me. We will pay 2500 at Jaipur, as we agreed, or nothing at all.
Tout: OK. But you give us your train tickets so we can get a refund on them. This will be our commission.
Glenn: Absolutely not!
Tout: OK.

We beat them! The tout handed some cash to the driver, and after a brief stop at the nearest petrol station, where a lot less than 600 Rupees' worth of fuel was dispensed, we hit the highway.

The Last Known Location Guide to Cross-Country Driving in India

• In theory, keep to the left.
• When overtaking, there is no need to look ahead at whether anything is coming the other way. The car you are passing will expect you to push him onto the verge, so he will drive up it by himself to save you the bother.
• On a dual carriageway, you can drive on either carriageway—whichever looks like it will get you there faster.
• You can swap carriageways any time, crossing the dirt central reservation whenever it suits.
• You may come round a bend and find a line of rocks blocking your carriageway with no warning whatsoever. These are Indian traffic cones, and they mean that the road ahead is closed, either because there has been a horrific accident, or because it hasn't been built yet. Refer to the previous bullet point for the correct course of action.
• The bigger you are, the higher your priority. If you are lucky enough to be driving a truck, you have total domination over the road (unless you meet a bigger truck coming the other way). So, trucks trump buses trump 4x4s trump cars trump cattle trump motorbikes trump bicycles trump pedestrians. Rajasthani camels seem to take quite a high priority, especially if they are pulling large, heavy-framed carts. But we didn't have enough data to work out exactly where they fit in.

The consequences of failing to observe the guidance above can be catastrophic. In a journey of just 200 kilometres, we saw the wreckage of three serious accidents strewn across the middle of the road. We presume they had happened recently, as older wreckage tended to be pushed over to the verges. In one, a bus had met a truck head on and the bus was half its original length. In another, a tractor had been pulling an overloaded trailer and had literally disintegrated. In the third, another tractor had overturned, throwing bricks across the whole road. We briefly detoured into the jungle to pass at that point.

Our driver dropped us at Jaipur station about four and a half hours later and he didn't even demand any extra cash! (By the way, we didn't see any road tolls.) We parted company with Jeremy and Andy, but not before getting Jeremy's email address: he lives in Bangkok some of the time and we thought it would be good to meet him there for a beer (if we ever make it) and swap Indian war stories. We got a tuk-tuk to the Hotel Shahar Palace, and for once we couldn't be bothered to argue over the price.

Day 077
Agra to Jaipur

This map shows the route we took in this post. Click it to see larger maps of our whole route at flickr.

Maps are taken from the CIA World Factbook.

Agra-vation

Taj Mahal [Enlarge]

On a cool, foggy morning, and after some more of the customary haggling, we took a tuk-tuk to New Delhi station before dawn to catch our train to Agra, the 06:15 Bhopal Shatabdi Express. At this time of morning the tuk-tuk ride was hassle-free and only took a few minutes. 'Shatabdi Express' is the name given to some of the trains serving popular routes in the north of India: they are newer, faster and more comfortable than the majority of the subcontinent's trains, and breakfast is included in the price. We were looking forward to our short journey to Agra, the home of the Taj Mahal.

Shortly after we left New Delhi the steward handed out complimentary newspapers. We chose the English-language Times of India, and we settled down to catch up on the news from India and the rest of the world. Tucked away on page 10, there was an interesting article about the possible outsourcing of railway catering to the likes of McDonalds—apparently this will be an improvement. The article went on to describe the conditions inside the catering facilities on board India's trains, including the Shatabdis. You can read the full article here, but the relevant part is:

Citing instances, the PIL alleged that all prepared food stuffs instead of being kept in containers were directly placed on dirty floors of the kitchen, chapathis were rolled on the floor, the cooks never used gloves, nor was there any segregation of vegetarian and non-vegetarian food. What was more appalling was that body sweat from the cooks constantly spilled over the food material as there were no cooling facilities or exhaust fans in the kitchen, the petition alleged. According to the petitioners, while millions of passengers were taking the unhygienic food unwittingly, there were several other high society passengers travelling by the Rajdhani, Shatabdi, Jan-Shatabdi Express trains who were compelled to take the food as the fares are inclusive of the same.

We skipped breakfast.

Because of the fog, we got to Agra an hour late and took another tuk-tuk to our hotel, where we had a good shower and a bad breakfast. Hoping that the fog would lift later in the day, we decided to look round the Agra Fort first, then go to the Taj Mahal later. We walked across town to the fort, somewhat comically pursued by a stream of tuk-tuks and cycle rickshaws, whose drivers seemed incredulous that we didn't want to take a ride with them. During one of our bizarre walking-pace conversations with them, we did get a good gem of information, however: buy a combined ticket for the fort and the Taj and save 100 Rupees.

At Agra Fort we parted with 1500 Rupees (GBP 17.48 / USD 34.09) in return for two combined tickets to the fort and the Taj. This is surely one of the most extreme cases of two-tier pricing—if we had been Indian, we would have paid around 40 Rupees (GBP 0.47/ USD 0.91). Fair enough, it's their country. We spent a while looking round the fort, which is impressive, and similar to the Topkapı Sarayı in İstanbul. It's a shame that it is neglected by many tourists who only come to Agra for the Taj Mahal. Wild(ish) parrots were flying around overhead and nesting in the trees, and Glenn was very pleased with his photo of one of the tame striped squirrels in the grounds. It seemed that our trip was finally back on track after our bad experience of Delhi.

Striped squirrel at Agra Fort [Enlarge]

Sure enough the fog began to clear and so we crossed town again, parallel with the river to the Taj Mahal. This has to be one of the highlights of any trip to India. We approached the outer wall and walked through the south gate. A man asked us for our tickets and we duly produced our combined Agra Fort and Taj Mahal tickets bought a few hours previously. "This does not allow you to enter the Taj Mahal sir, you need to buy another ticket: 250 Rupees each." He pointed to a window back outside the gate. We argued with him for a while as to why a ticket marked "Visit Taj Mahal along with Agra Fort, Itimadud-Daula, Sikandra & Fatehpur Sikri" should not be valid for doing just that, but it was to no avail. He muttered something about our combined ticket being issued by the Agra Development Authority, and us needing to supplement it with one issued by the Taj Mahal Tourist Scam Corporation, or something similar. [Actually, it's in the small print: "Excluding A.S.I. ticket"—oh, that clears that one up then.] Isla suggested that we forget the whole thing and leave Agra, but we both knew that having come so far we were just going to have to stump up another 500 Rupees (GBP 5.83 / USD 11.36). So we went back to the window and allowed ourselves to be robbed legally, again. And back to the gate, armed with the correct tickets. Now we had to pass through security. As has become the norm for Isla in both the middle east and India, she was shepherded into a special curtained off 'ladies only' booth to be searched, lest any passing gentlemen be overcome by lust at the sight of her with her arms held out. She was carrying the small daybag, and its contents aroused great interest. Our mobile phone, camera and set of eight high-capacity rechargeable AA batteries were fine, but the GPS, mini tripod and wind-up torch were going to have to stay behind. Again arguing proved to be a futile exercise in the face of unfliching bureaucracy and unquestioning application of rules, and we were forced to deposit our illegal items in a dodgy-looking locker room in return for a slip of paper marked "3 items". Calling it a locker room is to overstate the situation, since the lockers didn't lock. We noted the opening times of the locker room: it closed at 5 pm, some two hours before the Taj itself closed. So that put paid to any thoughts we might have had of seeing the Taj at sunset.

Us at the Taj [Enlarge]

The Taj Mahal is truly stunning [see our photos]. We think it is best from a distance, as seeing the tiny people-shaped specks walking round the bottom shows you just how big it is. It is raised up on a huge platform so that it has a clean skyline behind it. We took the obligatory photos from the viewpoint at the end of the central watercourse—luckily we had come on a day when the fountains were turned off so as to leave the reflections of the Taj undisturbed.

We slowly ambled towards the Taj, taking in the view and the majestic atmosphere. When we got to the base, we randomly chose to turn right to walk around the side. We were accosted by a man who pulled us to the edge of the path and made us take another photo of the Taj, and then demanded money from us for his trouble. We continued round the back of the building and then climbed some steps to the large raised platform on which the actual mausoleum sits. As we came back round to the front of the building, we saw a sign saying "Please do not take off your shoes here". So we didn't, and we walked on towards the mausoleum entrance. As we did so, we gradually became aware that nobody else around us was wearing shoes. Hmmmm. We paused for a moment, and as we did so we were shouted at by a couple of zealous Australian backpackers: "Mate, no shoes!"

We were genuinely confused at this point, and we gestured helplessly at the sign that clearly instructed us not to remove our footwear. "Yeah—you should have already taken them off! Down there!" They pointed down to a huge crowd of people removing their shoes, which we had completely missed owing to our earlier, random, 50–50 decision to turn right instead of left. We tip-toed back downstairs and took our shoes off before returning. How it is possible for a society to have such strict rules and regulations and yet implement them so badly?

And so it was. Our experience of arguably the finest building in the world was tainted by a catalogue of frustrations punctuated by episodes of incredulity, with a bit of confusion on the side. This seems to be an emerging theme for our whole experience of India.

Tomorrow we will complete the bottom leg of the Golden Triangle, taking the train to Jaipur—the pink city, the ancient capital of Rajasthan.

Day 076
New Delhi to Agra

This map shows the route we took in this post. Click it to see larger maps of our whole route at flickr.

Maps are taken from the CIA World Factbook.

Popping down to the station to buy a ticket

Next morning, the driver from the travel agent turned up at 09:00. We sent him packing again. We spent the rest of the day taking advantage of the flat-rate internet in our room, looking at our options for tours of the north of India.

The following day, having failed to persuade the Indian Railways website to let us book our tickets online, we were ready to walk to the station and buy some tickets. Our first tour will be from Delhi to Agra to see the Taj Mahal, then to Jaipur for a couple of days, then back to Delhi. This is the famous 'Golden Triangle' route. As we walked past reception on the way out of the hotel, the guy behind the desk called us back. He then dialled a number on his phone and handed it to Glenn. It was Mr Big—he had obviously told the hotel to call him the moment we surfaced. Glenn informed him that with his constant pestering he had blown what little chance he had ever had of getting any money from us, and put the phone down. We went outside and started walking to the station.

The station is about 1500 metres from the hotel. We used to live about this far from our local station in the UK, and walking there, buying a ticket and walking back took a total of around 35 minutes. In Delhi it is not the same. You don't 'go for a walk' in Delhi, you run the gauntlet. You have to dodge excrement and touts at every turn. You cannot walk on the pavements because they are completely blocked by stalls, vehicles, and rotting rubbish. So you walk down the middle of the road, along with everybody else. Then you nearly get run over by motorbikes and rickshaws. The pedal-cycle rickshaws are the worst because you don't hear them coming, and being tricycles they are wider at the back than the front. When you suddenly become aware of a rickshaw driver alongside you, you have to remember that he has three wheels not two, and dive to the opposite side very quickly, or you will get a pooh-covered wheel over your ankle. However in the narrow streets of the old town, where our hotel is, ducking in any direction is often impossible.

The stench of rotting garbage is overpowering. Every so often the garbage smell is replaced by that of stale urine. The residents build fires in the street for cooking on, using whatever comes to hand for fuel, i.e. rubbish. So the third smell which we will remember Delhi by is the acrid fumes of burning plastic.

Getting a GPS lock in the narrow streets was impossible, and we didn't have a detailed map with us, so we basically just had to keep walking in as near a straight line as possible until we came to the edge of the crazy melee. Eventually we emerged into the wider streets of New Delhi, from where it was relatively easy to find the station. We needed to find the 'International Tourist Bureau', which is located on the first floor of the main building, from where we could book our tickets with English speaking staff away from the unbelievable crowds in the main part of the station.

We had read up on the process of buying train tickets at New Delhi station in the Lonely Planet. The following is what it says:

Train stations also attract rapacious tricksters who feed off the tourist traffic. At the New Delhi train station touts may try to stop you from booking tickets at the upstairs (1st-floor) International Tourist Bureau and divert you to one of the (overpriced and often unreliable) travel agencies over the road. Make the assumption that the office is never closed (outside official opening hours), isn't being renovated, and hasn't shifted. Other tricksters may insist your ticket needs to be stamped (for a hefty fee payable to them) before it's valid—another scam. Others may try to convince wait-listed passengers that there's a charge to check their reservation status—don't fall for it. Once out of the station, avoid overpriced conveyance by heading for the car park's prepaid autorickshaw booth.

We couldn't see a building with a first floor anywhere, but it looked like we were at the back of the station. The station has several large overbridges so we climbed the stairs to head over to the front. From the bridge, we still couldn't see a building with anything looking like a first floor. We continued for a short way and came to an airport-style security gate which we had to walk through. A lot of Indians were ignoring it and walking around the edge—there were just too many people streaming through for everyone to pass through the gate. The security man in his brown uniform at the gate didn't seem at all bothered, so we casually walked around the gate. We were carrying the camera, GPS etc, which always set off the beeper, and we didn't want the hassle of being searched. The security guard didn't flinch, but another guy, casually dressed, standing next to the gate pointed at us and called us over. "Tickets please." We explained that we didn't have a ticket because we were trying to get to the International Tourist Bureau to buy some. "Ah, no problem—come with me." He pointed out of a nearby window at a construction site underneath the bridge. "That's where the bureau used to be, but it is being rebuilt. It has moved outside the station. Don't worry, it's not far. Do you have a map?" We opened the Lonely Planet at the map page for New Delhi. He pointed out the location of the 'Delhi Tourism and Transport Development Corporation' on the map and told us that the bureau had moved in there. He pointed us back out the way we had come, past the security guard, and told us to make sure we weren't ripped off by a rickshaw driver. "Don't pay more than 10 Rupees, it's only a minute away." He then shook our hands and wished us well.

He nearly got away with it. Let's analyse what happened in detail.

• He was standing right next to a bona-fide security man, giving him an air of legitimacy.
• He stopped us on the pretense of asking to see our tickets, then offered help when we said we needed to buy some.
• There really was a building being constructed right below us.
• We couldn't see a building with a first floor, or any signs for the International Tourist Bureau anywhere.
• He directed us to an official government agency, even circling it on our map.
• He made no attempt to force us into a rickshaw of his choosing.

He, and his friend who was mingled in the crowd at the bottom of the stairs, blew it when the friend approached us as we emerged from the station. He said "Autorickshaw? Where are you going? Only 10 Rupees." We have taken enough autorickshaws to know that the starting price is rarely less than 100 Rupees. What a coincidence that we came across our first honest rickshaw driver just moments after being told that we needed a 10 Rupee rickshaw! We said no thanks, and stopped to have a think.

The uniformed security guard must be in on it. We guess he receives a small fee every time the tout manages to turn a tourist around. Presumably we would have been taken to a travel agent with a strangely similar name to that of the Delhi Tourism and Transport Development Corporation, from where we would have paid too much for train tickets that either were not valid, or were for a lower class seat or a slower train than the one we wanted. Either way we were stunned that we had nearly fallen for a scam that we were fully prepared for, and which happened exactly as described! We did an about turn and walked back over the bridge as we had originally planned. It still took us another ten minutes to find the International Tourist Bureau, despite the fact that it was occasionally signed. There really is no effort to make it visible. At the foot of the stairs to the first floor, in a dark corridor, we saw a sign containing essentially the same message as the quote from the Lonely Planet above. Why is this sign just outside the bureau, at a point which you can only reach by successfully getting past the tricksters, instead of being on a huge poster at the station entrance?! You have to wonder if the whole damn station is in on the scam.

The International Tourist Bureau is like a calm oasis. It has seats, it doesn't stink, it is quiet and you can have some personal space. We briefly thought about staying there for the rest of the day. It wasn't long before we had booked five train tickets: Delhi to Agra, Agra to Jaipur, Jaipur to Delhi, Delhi to Amritsar and Amritsar to Delhi. This would give us a week's tour in two hops from Delhi. We now had to re-enter the melee below us.

For some inexplicable reason, we decided to walk back to the hotel. We much prefer walking over taking a cab usually, but in Delhi, 'usually' does not apply. We had spent every Rupee on the train tickets so we needed an ATM, and we had passed (and GPS-marked) one on the way to the station. We used this to justify walking all the way back. On the way, it started to rain. We normally don't mind a little rain, but this was no ordinary rain, it was black rain. Our shirts were soon stippled with black spots. The pooh in the street was now in fully liquid form, and passing vehicles were splashing it onto our trousers. When we eventually got back to the room after spending a long time walking in circles unable to find it, we washed all our clothes and decided to hole up in the room until the morning, when we will be getting the hell out of this place.

In all, that 35 minute stroll to the station to buy a couple of tickets had taken us nearly four hours.

SpiceJet to Delhi

SpiceJet winglet [Enlarge]

We walked into the village at around 09:00 and booked a taxi to the airport for 11:30, picking us up from the hotel. We had been tentatively gauging what the correct fare should be for the past week, whenever we had seen a taxi driver, and we never got quoted less than 450 Rupees (GBP 5.23 / USD 10.20) for the journey of around 30 kilometres. So when our driver started at 500, we quickly got him to come down to 450, especially when we told him we had very little luggage. He wouldn't go further though. We imagine that the true price should be around 300 to 350 (the going rate for taxis should be no more than 10 Rupees per kilometre), but it was too nice a day to have a big argument—and the problem with taxis to the airport is, they know you don't have many bargaining chips because you absolutely have to get there.

At around 11:20 we were sitting in the garden with our stuff and Glenn walked up to the main gate just in case our taxi was early. There was a taxi there, but it wasn't our driver. "Taxi?" the driver shouted in to Glenn. "Yes, but I booked with another driver, he should be along any minute." "No, he sends me instead. Where you wanna go?" "Well you should know that, given that he sent you." "Airport?" "Yes." "500 Rupees." "No, I agreed 450 with the driver. You should also know that. I don't believe that you are our driver." "I am, you spoke to Devesh in the village this morning, and he sent me." With this, Glenn walked back to the restaurant to wait and see if another taxi turned up.

We are very suspicious of taxi drivers these days, but in this case it seems he was indeed our driver because the one we had made the deal with didn't show up. Glenn apologised for doubting the replacement driver and we walked to his taxi. When we got there the door was locked and the driver told us to wait while he phoned his boss. When he had finished he said "450 is not possible, it is 500." We said that as far as we were concerned we had a deal, and it was 450 or nothing. "Not possible." After a little arguing, and having used our new patented technique of walking off, he agreed to 450—if we would look round a craft emporium on the way! We were annoyed now. We knew there were lots of taxis in the village, but we didn't know whether they would suddenly close ranks if we got too stroppy. Nevertheless we hate being ripped off and we hate people who go back on a deal. We told him we no longer wanted to go in his taxi and we walked off, in the direction of the centre of the village. He left us for a minute to see if we were serious, and then having decided that we were, he drove alongside us and said "OK, 450, no shops. Get in." We told him where he could put his taxi and carried on walking, and he sped off towards his friends at the taxi rank. We were a bit worried about whether we had just blown it completely, when serendipity came to our rescue once again. Another taxi approached from behind us, and the guy pulled over and asked us if we required his services. Glenn, still stubbornly determined to get his 450 Rupee deal, said "Are you willing to take us to the airport for 450?" The driver paused for the briefest moment before saying "Yes", as if sensing that we were in no mood for games. We got in and enjoyed immensely waving at our original driver as we drove past him. The look on his face as he came to terms with the fact that his greed had got the better of him is something we will treasure for a long time.

After we had paused for the driver to get out and put his uniform on over his shirt (he would get fined if he didn't, apparently), the journey to the airport did not take long and we rued the fact that in spite of our victory, we had still overpaid. We needed a ticket to get past the security guards at the airport entrance, but as we had booked on the internet we only had a confirmation number. SpiceJet are obviously used to this problem, since they have a window from their office which opens onto the outside of the airport, from where we were able to turn our confirmation number into a printout. Once inside the terminal we found a chair, bought a wireless internet access card and waited until check-in opened.

At check-in, we read the 'prohibited articles in hand baggage notices', as we always do, and checked in one of the bags, into which we had packed the sterile needles, scissors etc. We still had a while to wait but we decided to wander over to security just to gauge the length of the queue. At the entrance to the security area there was a sheet of paper with a notice printed on it saying "No liquids, gels or pastes are to be carried in hand luggage." Our hand luggage contained toothpaste, hand cleanser gel, shampoo, insect repellant, and a bottle of water. The SpiceJet notice had said nothing about liquids.

We queued up again at the check-in desk and told them about the notice at security. The agent said "Oh yes, you cannot take liquids on board with you!" and she was unable to see why it would be a good idea for the notice at check-in to match the one at security. We were not about to check in our other bag, containing the laptop, malaria tablets and other expensive items. Isla had a sense of humour failure at this point and asked the lady if she would mind very much retrieving our checked-in bag so that we could rearrange our luggage. That's not quite how she put it, but use your imagination. After a while we got the bag back and repacked all our luggage on the floor in front of the check-in desk, before checking one bag back in.

The rest of our time at the airport and on the flight to Delhi was uneventful. But we were not done with scams and tricks for the day.

We had booked our hotel, the Hotel Tara Palace, on Hostelworld, and as usual, paid a 10% deposit, the balance being payable directly to the hotel. One of the benefits of this hotel was "free airport transfers", so we had called them and arranged a pick-up from the airport. When we arrived we found our man, holding a sign with our names on, and we got into his car. He is a student from Kashmir, and during the holidays he works for the Hotel Tara Palace—he has been working there for six years. We got a bit of a free tour of Delhi (or "Dally", in his thick Kashmiri accent) on the way into town, and our man pointed out the landmarks and made general conversation. And then out of nowhere, he launched into his spiel: "There is something I need to tell you. We need to stop off somewhere before we get to the hotel. It's a travel agent, and they handle payments on the hotel's behalf. Nothing to worry about, but you will need to pay them in full before we go to the hotel, otherwise they will not check you in. While you are there, the agent will be able to help you with your onward travel arrangements, or any tours of the city that you want. I can give you a tour tomorrow for 400 Rupees—if you go with a taxi driver in the street it will cost at least 800. By the way, do not take any taxis or rickshaws in Delhi as they will rip you off. Call me and I will take you wherever you want to go. Be very careful in Delhi, and do not set foot outside your hotel on your own. The touts are terrible and you will lose all your money."

In other words: Welcome to Delhi.

We have learned to go along with things when we sense that we are being scammed, at the same time being totally non-committal. It gives us time to work out what the hell is going on: what's the scam, how does it work, who is working with whom and what do they all get out of it, and finally what is our best strategy for getting away with our wallet intact while still getting what we want out of the deal. So, we agreed to go to the travel agent, so that we could see what they would try to do. When we got there, we insisted on getting the bags out of the boot and taking them in with us, despite the driver's protestations that they would be just fine where they were.

The boss man was expecting us. He asked for full payment and Glenn asked him why we couldn't pay the hotel directly. He replied that he handles their marketing for them, and there was really nothing to worry about. And would we like a tour tomorrow? What time should his driver pick us up? Glenn replied that: (1) No money would be moving from our wallets to his hands until we could at least see the hotel room and speak to them; (2) We didn't know what our plans were in Delhi yet, and so we were not ready to book any tours; (3) We were tired and could we please go to the hotel right now.

It was now clear that the hotel had no idea that we were coming, or that Hostelworld even exists. This guy promotes the hotel on the site, and who knows how many other hotels, suckers guests into thinking that they are phoning the hotel to arrange a pickup, and then takes their money before presumably passing some of it on to the hotel. The hotel asks no questions and gets a steady trickle of guests coming their way. We checked later, and the mobile number that we had been given by Hostelworld was the same as the number on the agent's card. He agreed to let us see the hotel but that we must come straight back to his office to pay.

We set out again and started driving slowly and doing lots of U-turns. Our driver had no idea where the hotel was, despite telling us earlier that he had worked there for six years (he hadn't, he was employed by the travel agent). After three stops to ask for directions, he found it. It was clean and spacious, and staffed by very friendly people. Something told us that they were afraid of the boss man though. We agreed with reception to pay them directly on check-out, and sent the driver back to his office to tell Mr Big the bad news that we wouldn't be coming back to see him. But the driver wasn't quite finished. Before leaving, he said "I'll see you at 09:00 tomorrow for your tour then?" We replied that we would be sure to call him in the morning if we wanted a tour.

Day 073
Benaulim to New Delhi

This map shows the route we took in this post. Click it to see larger maps of our whole route at flickr.

Maps are taken from the CIA World Factbook.

Saying our goodbyes

The legendary Stanly [Enlarge]
 
Frankie and Archie [Enlarge]

It's time to leave Goa and head back to the real India. An old Portuguese colony, Goa has been host to European incomers for centuries, and the culture, architecture and even gene pool of the place are a strange mixture of India and southern Europe.

We've said goodbye to some of the local characters that we have met during our brief stay. Firstly there is the living legend himself, Stanly. He brings his unique brand of live music to the Palm Garden Restaurant every Friday night, playing and singing his perfectly blended repertoire of European pop songs from the 60s, 70s and 80s (and even a few classics from Take That), and traditional Goan music. All of it played on a Yamaha synthesizer. He even takes requests, as long as they are within his normal repertoire! It seems that every week, there is someone in the audience who was there the previous week and is able to request a song that they know he can do. We were honoured to continue the tradition on the second and third Fridays that we saw him perform. We requested Hello by Lionel Richie, and Karma Chameleon by Culture Club, because they were the only songs that we could remember him playing the previous week.

Then there were the waiters at Palm Gardens, Archie, Frankie and the other one whose name we never found out. Archie is the most outgoing of the three, and has an amusing or tragic anecdote for every occasion. The highlight had to be his tale of how he dated a pretty girl from Kerala for four years who turned out to be a boy called John.

One night Glenn decided he had to try some of the local Goan firewater, Feni. It comes in two types: Caju Feni (from the juice of the cashew apple) and Palm Feni (from the sap of the coconut palm). Glenn decided to try the Palm Feni, as he had no idea what the differences were, and he had to pick one. Archie recommended taking it with a mixer such as lime soda, since it is quite harsh neat. The drink arrived. It tasted similar to how we imagine petrol would taste, only with more of a kick. It was the first drink that Glenn has ever been unable to finish. Afterwards Archie gleefully informed Glenn that it was a good job he didn't try the Caju Feni, because it's a man's drink whereas the Palm stuff is for girls!

Finally we have said our farewells to local fisherman Sebby, who in between tending his nets every afternoon, sells trips out to see the dolphins. He is a true gentleman and even after he had relieved us of our money (without ripping us off, too) he made a point of coming over for a chat if he saw us on the beach. A great guy.

Tomorrow we fly out of Goa's Dabolim airport to India's capital, New Delhi. We hope that Delhi is cleaner than Mumbai, but from what we've read and heard, we fear we might be in for a rude awakening. It is way up in the north of the country too, so the climate will not be as friendly as the one we have become used to in Benaulim.

Three weeks in the sun

Goa sunset [Enlarge]

We've had a great three weeks of doing nothing much in Goa. Apart from spending a morning going out on a boat to see the local dolphins, we've hardly done anything. We've spent most days swimming in the warm sea, lazing around in the hotel over a long breakfast and the morning paper, wandering around Benaulim, sitting on the balcony reading second-hand paperbacks which we found on a stall in the village, making incredibly cheap phone calls home, sampling the delicious Goan cuisine, drinking cocktails or local beer, and thinking about various ideas for the future.

Life has been tough. Living in palatial accommodation and eating good food, our total expenditure has been about GBP 25 (USD 49) a day. We could have easily done it for half that and still been very comfortable.

Benaulim is a spread-out village less than a kilometre inland from the beach. It still just about qualifies as 'unspoilt', but sadly the rate of new construction going on points to it becoming just another tourist metropolis in a few years. We feel lucky to have seen the place at a time when the village still has farmers who take their cows down to the sea on Sunday for a salty bath, while there are still traditional fishing boats on the beach and while the fishermen's wives still gut the fish at the roadside, before packing up the ones for eating or selling, and laying out the remainder to dry in the sun so that they can be preserved for the monsoon season when the boats cannot go out.

Please OK Horn [Enlarge]

Of course there are touts here, who move in from the provinces at the beginning of the season and make it their life's aim to rip off the tourists for as much and as long as possible. We are becoming very good at knowing the true value of things and bargaining, but it is tiresome to not be able to do a simple job like take a taxi to the next village without having to go through a protracted ritual of arguing over the price, walking away, being followed and continuing the discussion at walking pace before finally getting to somewhere near the correct price. Or just walk past a street stall without the "Yes please! Madam sir, come have a look today? Very good price, free to look." They know that their initial overinflated prices are still cheap to us, and they know that westerners hate bargaining, especially when they are trying to have a relaxing break. No wonder inflation in India is so high, when tourism makes up such a large proportion of India's GDP. But we feel that we owe it to ourselves and future tourists not to just accept being ripped off every day, and consistently paying five or ten times the true price for things. Surely the question of whether we can afford to be ripped off is irrelevant?

Fish drying in the sun [Enlarge]

After two weeks or so of walking past the same street vendors every day, learning many of their names in the process, they finally gave up trying to sell us things and we had a peaceful final week here. We feel refreshed and ready to start the next part of our trip. We originally wanted to tour the whole of India by train, but we have now realised just what a huge country this is. The lack of reliable infrastructure magnifies the already large distances between places. And the bureaucracy involved with carrying out tasks that are simple in our own country (like catching a train) makes it worse still. Our plan was to take trains through the south of India, working northwards in an anticlockwise loop over a couple of weeks and seeing places like Hampi, Bangalore, Hyderabad and Khajuraho before reaching the capital New Delhi. We spent several hours with a travel agent in Benaulim stringing together an itinerary which looked plausible. Then when she checked the availability of the trains, several were full, so we had to change the plan. Then, finally, the agent bizarrely decided to announce that she couldn't book train tickets for us anyway, since her runner was on his day off! (Despite the fact that the agents all have internet connections, and it is possible to book trains on the internet in India, the agents still employ runners at the station in Madgaon, whom they phone with details of the required tickets—the runners then queue up at the window and buy them). We puzzled over why she had wasted half a day of her time and our time when she knew she would have no chance of getting any commission from us.

Walk on Benaulim beach [Enlarge]

We considered going to Madgaon station ourselves and taking the pain of trying to book a long string of tickets from the widow there. But then, as if in revelation, we decided to simply abandon the whole idea and fly to New Delhi instead. We found that budget carrier SpiceJet had availability, and we booked it on the internet with no help at all from agents. Suddenly life seems a lot easier now. In any case it will be better to focus on a smaller part of the country so that we have a chance of getting to Hong Kong before our antimalarials run out on 18th March. We will make New Delhi our base for the next few weeks and travel out to places like Agra, Jaipur, Amritsar and Nainintal from there, on several shorter trips. We also want to head over to the north-east of the country to see Darjeeling and hopefully take day trips into Bhutan and maybe Nepal. Whether we'll fly across from Delhi or try to go by train remains to be seen.

All our photos from Goa are here.

Going to Goa

Second class AC sleeper [Enlarge]

Train travel: romantic, luxurious, the best way to see a country. Well, we know from our time in Eastern Europe that this is not always true. However, no trip to India can be complete without travelling on the country's extensive and much-used rail network. There are two trains per day direct from Mumbai (Bombay) to Goa, one overnight and one during the day. We wanted to see the countryside as we passed it so we chose the day train, which was scheduled to leave Mumbai at 06:55 and arrive at Madgaon (Margao) station in Goa at 18:30.

Mumbai is the end of the line so the overnight train from Goa turns around here and becomes the day train back again. The night train was well over an hour late coming in to Mumbai. Although the staff on board do the cleaning up before the train reaches its destination so that the turnaround time can be minimised, the train still sat on the platform for ages while locomotives were shunted around and the final preparations were made.

There were five classes available on this train: 1AC (1st class, air conditioned), 2AC, 3AC, Sleeper class and 2nd Class unreserved, in order of decreasing luxury and increasing filth and overcrowding. On Indian trains the AC carriages are of course fully sealed, while the non-AC ones have barred windows with no glass—great for the view, but not so good for mosquitoes and dust. Most carriages are sleeper carriages, but the bunks can be converted to chairs during the day time. It gives the traveller the choice of lying flat or sitting, as long as one's travel companions can agree to do the same. We had chosen 2AC class.

If any trainspotters are reading this, you will surely already know about the amazingly comprehensive guide to the world's railways, including photos of the insides of the carriages, written by The Man in Seat 61. His page about India's railway is here.

An unofficial porter took it upon himself to show us to our seats, a job which we could have easily done for ourselves given that the carriages and seats are clearly numbered, and every carriage has a printout at the door which shows all the passengers' names and assigned seats. He then did that standing-still-and-refusing-to-leave thing until we gave him a 10 rupee tip, which he rejected—his price was 20. Eventually the engine at the front of the train took the strain and we were on our way to Goa, clanking and creaking slowly through the Mumbai suburbs. Madgaon is about 450 kilometres south of Mumbai, but as Mumbai is on an island, and the only train access to the mainland is at the island's north end, we spent the first hour travelling 180 degrees away from our destination. It was clearly going to be a long day.

The only disadvantage of travelling in one of the AC classes is that the windows are small, heavily tinted, and dirty. You travel in cool, tranquil comfort, but you can hardly see a thing outside. The carriage staff handed out sheets, blankets and pillows, and most other people in the carriage converted their chairs to bunks and lay down. We decided to do the same. Now only Glenn, in the lower bunk, could see out of the window, but Isla briefly fell asleep so it didn't matter.

After a while we got fed up with lying down so we re-built our seats and spent the time reading the paper, or trying to peer outside at Maharashtra state's scenery. We couldn't help noticing how many staff Indian trains have. British InterCity trains generally have around four staff covering the whole eight-carriage train: driver, conductor (sorry, 'train manager' in Newspeak), buffet car person and first-class steward. Some also have a chef. In India, it seems that every carriage has this many staff. All day long food sellers, drink sellers, blanket distributors, pillow distributors, troubleshooters, question answerers, ticket checkers, under-ticket checkers, deputy-under-ticket checkers and their mates scuttled up and down the train. Indian Railways is the world's largest employer, with over a million and a half employees!

We at last reached the small state of Goa, and holidaymakers began to get off at the stations in the north of the state. The staff were very good at coming to find people to tell them when they needed to get off—vital, because none of the stations had lit name signs and seeing anything at all through the tinted windows after dark was impossible. Madgaon is in South Goa, and the train made its last stop there two and a half hours late at about 21:00. Travel-tired after fourteen hours on the train, we were pounced upon by several taxi drivers and rickshaw-wallahs before we had even reached the top of the ramp up to the overbridge. We opened negotiations with one, but he refused to lower his outrageous price at all. We walked to the stands at the front of the station with him following us and trying to persuade us that we had no chance whatsoever of bettering his price, whereupon we quickly agreed a more reasonable fare with a less aggressive driver. In India it seems that there are always far, far more vehicles than potential customers, and bargaining for a fare is not hard. Driving at incredible speed, our rickshaw bounced over most of the bumps and potholes and we had soon covered the last six kilometres of our journey, to the coastal village of Benaulim. This will be our home for the foreseeable future.

Palm Gardens Restaurant [Enlarge]

Having helped the driver to find our hotel (shouldn't it work the other way round?) we pulled up at the impressive gate of Palm Grove Cottages, which was complete with a saluting security guard. The friendly owner showed us to our room, which is spacious, spotlessly clean, and has a balcony and air conditioning. Having had a shower we walked through the gardens to the restaurant for dinner. We started with a couple of cocktails at 75 rupees (GBP 0.87 / USD 1.70) each to celebrate the start of a much needed few weeks of complete rest, and as we had dinner under the stars and palm trees, we were very glad to have left Mumbai far behind. We think we're going to like it here.

Day 052
Mumbai to Benaulim

This map shows the route we took in this post. Click it to see larger maps of our whole route at flickr.

Maps are taken from the CIA World Factbook.

Mumbai madness

Mumbai dobi-wallah [Enlarge]

Because we didn't know the local geography of Mumbai (Bombay) at all, we booked (from Amman) a hotel close to the airport for maximum convenience when we arrived. We soon discovered that we were a very long way from the centre of town: at least thirty minutes by taxi. Therefore on the first day in India's most cosmopolitan city we got an extended lesson in Mumbai traffic as we took a taxi into the downtown area. We needed to go to the main train station to book our ticket to Margao in Goa, leaving on Monday (this was Saturday) on the 06:55 service.

Lorries; buses; brand new BMWs; Japanese MPVs; Indian hatchbacks; weird 1950s black and yellow taxi cabs; autorickshaws; motorbikes; scooters; bicycles; pedestrians; and oxen. All of it flowing slowly through the streets in one enormous turbulent, noisy, stinking mass. On a road with three marked lanes there are usually seven or more vehicles side by side. Horns are accepted in place of mirrors and signals. Many vehicles even have painted on the back "Horn OK Please!", which translates as the following: "I will not be using my indicators today. I will not be using hand signals either. I will not be looking in my mirrors at all, in fact I have almost certainly folded them flat against the body of my vehicle because they just get knocked off if I extend them. I will not have a clue that you are behind me so when I cut you up and nearly kill you, please do not take it personally. I would be grateful if you could sound your horn, loudly please, to let me know that you are there." Despite, or because of the craziness, we saw some spectacularly good driving from our taxi driver as he weaved in and out of the flow, taking full advantage of the tiniest of gaps. He needed six senses but he seemed to have seven or eight.

The twelve kilometre journey into town took us across the Mahim Creek. A creek is like a river, but is actually just a long inlet from the sea. In other words, it doesn't flow anywhere. Imagine what a body of stagnant water in the middle of a tropical city of sixteen million people smells like. As we crossed the bridge over the creek some traffic lights far ahead presumably went to red because the traffic stopped dead. Immediately the taxi was besieged by children at both of our windows. Spot the rich white people! We were in one of the 1950s black and yellow cabs, which unsurprisingly are not air conditioned, so our windows were down. Small hands came in through the window bearing cellophane wrapped paperback books. When we said no thank you they took the books back out, then just asked us for some money anyway. We went from saying no to ignoring them, but they didn't give up on us until the lights changed back to green, one of them even then continuing to cling to the side of the taxi as it moved off. We had come as mentally prepared as it is possible to be, but we still felt like Bad People.

Everyone has a different view on handling begging and the advice we've read just says that you need to make up your own mind. If you give money to the one or two who are pestering you, you will not be changing the world, and you will be surrounded by countless more people wanting some of the action. If you don't, you will have to live with your conscience. Apparently most of these children have adult 'employers' who take the money from them anyway. However, it is a fact that even the most tight-budgeted backpackers are unimaginably rich compared to these children. Their patter of "no mummy, no daddy" may be designed to tug at the heart-strings of the most hardened cynic, but that doesn't change the fact that they have absolutely no choices in life and no way out.

In future, we want to do more for proper charities aimed at really helping these people and countless others around the world, rather than just passing a few coins out of a taxi window—in our view, that merely keeps them prisoner, trudging up and down their patch of hot, smelly Mumbai highway.

We made it to CST station and we were accosted by a tout before we reached the pavement. He told us that he was a taxi driver, but a tour guide first and foremost. He offered to take us to a travel agent who would for a small fee go and queue up and buy our train tickets for us. This is common practice in India, where the ticket queues are long and the processes of buying a ticket and making a seat reservation are highly confusing and complicated. It would also mean that we didn't have to take 'tourist quota' tickets or show money exchange vouchers to prove that we had changed enough hard currency into Rupees to cover the cost of the tickets. We asked him how much the 'small fee' would be and it was reasonable so we agreed.

Having discovered how far out of town we were staying the taxi-driver/tour-guide then persuaded us to switch hotels to one within easy walking distance of CST. Glenn said in principle this was no problem as long as we could inspect the room, and then asked him how much commission he was on. He insisted that he wasn't on any commission, but that he does have an arrangement whereby the hotel sends tour business his way in return for him sending potential guests their way. Whatever. While the travel agent's runner went to the station to queue up for the ticket our new friend took us to check out the hotel. It looked okay, had air conditioning and was a lot cheaper than the Airlines International. But most importantly we would be only a five minute walk from the station to catch our early morning train. We agreed to take the room for Sunday night.

Back at the travel agent's office, his runner still wasn't back from the station. We were clearly getting good value for money given the length of time he was taking (or maybe he was just round the corner having a smoke to make it seem good value). Anyway, our enterprising taxi-driver/tour-guide friend then went for his hat trick and offered us a full-on city tour for INR 2000 (GBP 23.09 / USD 45.41) on Sunday. Yes, that was vastly overpriced, but the guy spoke excellent English and had already given us an idea of the sort of tour we would be getting on the way to the hotel. We decided that it would be better to just go for it rather than wasting precious time shopping around for cheaper deals in the midday heat. We arranged that he would pick us up from the Airlines International the next morning, drop us at our new hotel to check in and leave our bags, then take us on a tour of the city.

With that all sorted and the train ticket bought we went off for a wander and to find something to eat before embarking on the long, smelly drive back to our hotel.

Sunday came and it was actually our guide's brother who came to collect us from Hotel Airlines International. He was early and we'd overslept so he was kept waiting a while. The traffic was lighter than it had been before so we made good time into the heart of Mumbai. We dropped our bags off quickly at our new hotel, the Hotel Imperial Executive. Do not be fooled by the name, it's a flea pit. The room we'd been given was not the one we'd inspected the previous day and wasn't as clean. We realised we had not checked for hot water during our inspection, and of course there was none. However it did have air conditioning, albeit a unit which was leaking into a bucket in the middle of the room. And anyway it was only for one night with a very early escape the next morning.

Back outside again and we were ready to start our grand tour. The brother of our tour guide said not to worry, the main man would be along any minute, and indeed he was. He had an English couple, regular fare-paying passengers, in the back of his taxi as he pulled up in front of us and he proceeded to turf them out of his taxi and into his brother's one! Not sure what they must have thought.

The tour was as fast and furious as you would expect from a city like this. It certainly wasn't worth 2000 Rupees, but at least we got to see the sights that we would have missed otherwise. We were hopping in and out of the guide's taxi every few minutes. The most interesting things were the Jain Temple, the house that Gandhi stayed in (now an excellent museum, with his bedroom/study preserved exactly as it was when he lived in it), and the dobi-wallahs, the people who wash thousands of items of laundry from Mumbai's hotels and hospitals in huge stone troughs. But the images that will stay with us for longest were the ones of Mumbai's slums.

Mumbai is a city of contrasts. The billion-dollar Bollywood film industry is based here and Chowpatty Beach is a popular hang-out for rich, trendy starlets and wannabes. And two minutes down the road is Asia's largest slum. We only saw the edges of it: makeshift shelters, constructed from bits of wood, tarpaulin and corrugated iron; open onto streets of bare earth and rubbish. The air is full of that sickly smell that you get at rubbish dumps. The gutters are overflowing with a putrid soup. Babies and toddlers in grubby t-shirts and nothing else (nappies are an unimaginable luxury) play in the street, unless they are being used by their mothers as begging props. While stopped in traffic we were approached by one of the infamous 'baby milk beggars'. To try to prove that they are genuine, these mothers will convince you to buy some baby milk powder for their child, rather than giving them the money directly. Conveniently there is a stand selling milk powder nearby, and when you are gone the mother and the stand owner split the cash, and put the tin of powder back on the shelf so that the process can be repeated. Glenn didn't manage to wind his window up in time and the mother allowed her baby's fingers to cling to the top of the glass to stop him fully closing it.

When we returned to the Hotel Imperial Executive it didn't seem nearly so bad.

At 06:00 this morning we walked down the street to CST to catch our train. The pavements were dotted with human figures, sleeping where they lay. The better-off ones had a rug or mat to sleep on. These were the people who didn't even have a home in the slums. As we took our seats in the second-class air conditioned sleeper carriage (there are no fewer than seven classes to choose from) on the slightly delayed express train to Goa, we were not sorry to be leaving Mumbai.

We can't agree on what to write for the final paragraph, so we have each written one.

Isla says: Mumbai was certainly a culture shock. Maybe I missed something, but I just found it depressing to see so many people in such poverty. In a way it's worse to have the squalor juxtaposed against the affluence of some of the city's districts. If this is India's most cosmopolitan city I'm not sure I want to visit Kolkata (Calcutta) or Chennai (Madras). I can't pass judgement on the entire country until I've seen much more of it, but I now see that India has a very long way to go to compete economically with the rest of the world. I hope its problems can be fixed.

Glenn says: I have mixed feelings. Mumbai is without doubt the filthiest, poorest city we have ever been to, but there is honestly something compelling about it that I can't quite pin down. The warm air is always full of smells—sweet and spicy more often than foul and decaying—and around every corner it seems there is something new to surprise the visitor. They take their tea with milk and every patch of open ground has a cricket match going on. There is an energy about town, an enthusiasm and a feeling that India's time is coming. I believe its problems can be fixed.

Let's talk parasites

Now seems like a good time to talk about malaria.

• There are several strains of Plasmodium (the bacterium which causes malaria), which exist in different parts of the world. Different antimalarials are better at dealing with different strains, because the bacterium gradually develops a resistance to each drug that is brought out.
• We are planning to travel to all the infected areas of the world.
• Some antimalarials can have nasty side effects, especially if used for a long time.
• It is advisable to stick to one antimalarial for your whole journey, so that you minimise the chances of developing a resistance to more than one drug—this is because if you do catch the disease, you will be treated with one of the other drugs.

OK, so taking all of this into account, we needed an antimalarial with good protection against all the strains, but as few side effects as possible. On the advice of our doctor at home, we bought the relatively new, very low side-effect, highly effective but ohmygod expensive Malarone. In the UK it is only licensed for four weeks' use but studies have shown it is safe and effective for three months, and probably much longer. By taking a private prescription we were able to get just over ten weeks' supply (at a cost of something like GBP 370 / USD 726!).

We cannot replace our stocks of Malarone until we get to a developed country because the high cost and lack of licensing arrangements with local manufacturers means it is not available in places like India, South East Asia and most of Africa. Also, we will need to take it for a full week after we leave a malaria-infected area. So once we start taking it, we will have exactly nine weeks to be out of the infected area, and then we've got to travel to somewhere like Japan that will sell us some more before we can re-enter a malarial area.

OK, so what's the malaria advice for India? It is not clear-cut and the different sources disagree. In theory, malaria exists all year across the whole country. In practice, you're far more likely to catch it in the wet season, away from the coast, at low altitudes, in rural areas. Our research in Dubai told us that both Mumbai and Goa count as 'low risk', particularly at this time of year. We need to start taking Malarone a day or two before entering an infected area, but having agonised for a while we decided not to start taking it until we saw what the mosquito situation was like in Mumbai.

So, our situation in the hotel room was this: we had air conditioning; we had closed, screened windows; we had a plug-in repellent thingy supplied by the hotel; our skin was covered in DEET; and we were in a low risk area at a low risk time of year.

And in the morning Glenn found a mosquito bite on his finger. Oh bugger.

We started our Malarone course there and then. We are almost certainly being paranoid, but we bought the Malarone to use it, not to carry it around in the box. We took a double dose on the first day in the vague hope that it would make up for not starting the previous day.

So now our future plans have been significantly narrowed down: we need to be out of India and well to the north by 18th March.

Dubai to Mumbai

Dubai to Mumbai [Enlarge]

We got to the airport very early for our Emirates flight from Dubai to Mumbai (Bombay), to allow for the taxi ride taking as long as it had the day we arrived, and because for all we knew Dubai airport's check-in process would be as crazy as Amman's. We were wrong on both counts, so we ended up with a lot of time to kill at the airport. Apart from Isla buying some different ear plugs that she hoped would be more comfortable than her existing ones, we couldn't find anything worth spending our last few Dirhams on. We did however discover that the terminal has a free wireless network, so we got the laptop out and joined it. We even found a socket to power the laptop. We managed to get a large batch of photos uploaded to flickr before the final gate call.

The in-flight facilities were even better than on the last flight from Amman to Dubai. Isla watched The Queen, a movie for girls which Glenn had refused to go and see at the cinema, while Glenn chose Cars, a movie for boys which Isla had refused to go to. Apart from waiting in a holding pattern for a while for a landing slot, and a slightly bumpy landing it was an uneventful flight. As easily as that, we had taken out a further seventeen degrees of longitude.

The heat hit us the moment the plane door was opened. It was like a furnace, but not humid and therefore not unpleasant. Mumbai airport was easy enough and our free hotel pick-up was waiting for us with one of those boards with our names on it (first time we've had that). By the time we got outside it was nearly dark and as we headed towards the hotel through the North Mumbai traffic we wondered what our first time in India was going to be like.

In our room in the clean but slightly strange Hotel Airlines International we had a room service meal (room service is the only way you can eat in the hotel—we said it was a bit strange). When we had finished, we applied our mosquito repellent, switched on the air conditioning and went to bed.

Day 049
Dubai to Mumbai

This map shows the route we took in this post. Click it to see larger maps of our whole route at flickr.

Maps are taken from the CIA World Factbook.