22 May 2015
Postcard from Delhi
November 2012
Our last evening in Nagarhole includes a night-time bug
safari, even if we spend much of the time talking about elephants, the guide's
real passion. Still, we see the largest wasps' nest imaginable, being about the
size of a wine barrel, many impressive spiders, crabs, a large but sadly not
vocal bullfrog and, to our guide's surprise as they are so rare, an Indian
Civet cat, about the size of a domestic cat. She scampers across the path in
front of us, with the swagger of a cocky ferret.
Back with our driver the next morning (who is still
spending nights in the car!), we agree that the Orange County resort in
Nagarhole is the best place so far in terms of facilities and overall comfort,
as we head for Bangalore airport to take our flight to Delhi.
Pamela, George, the BBC and others have prepared me for
what I perceive to be the squalor of Delhi. This is reinforced as we approach
urban Bangalore, with its increasing grime and unbelievable amount of litter
(which seems to be everywhere in India, insanely more so in towns). In the
future, perhaps things will be plastic- rather than carbon-dated, as each layer
of human detritus and waste increasingly builds on the previous one.
If I'm honest, Delhi is the bit of the trip I'm least
looking forward to. It's not just countryside to city, hotter climate, more
Hindi, more Muslim, more traffic jams, in fact just more people in general that
I'm expecting, but more visible poverty, more human distress, more
disfigurement and the like. Less white teethy, put it that way, which is really
what makes Southern India so charming.
Absolutely nothing could be further from the truth. We
land in an autumn mist, cool and pleasant, with temperatures more temperate
than sweaty. The drive to Delhi is along open roads, leafy boulevards,
beggar-free and slum-free. This is more Europe than Asia, more Beijing than
Shanghai, more Kensington than Calcutta. No one cleans our windscreen at the
traffic lights, or offers us a cloned book, or shows off their disability (ok,
there was one, but just one). There are no cows wandering the streets, just the
usual stray dogs.
We arrive at the hotel to find extreme security, with the
contents of the taxi searched before we're allowed through the gates and
scanners at the front door. Since the attack by Pakistani extremists a few
months back, everyone is super-cautious.
We spend our day in Delhi in the classic tourist
historical monuments, with strong Mongol and Persian influences, including the
Mughal-built Red Fort, India's largest mosque, a Hindu temple (a bit of a
highlight as we see the rawness, spontaneity and passion of the ritual of daily
worship), the enormous tomb of one of the Mughal emperors, and more recent
history with Gandhi's tomb and the Bahai Temple, shaped like a lotus flower.
Our guide is not a fan of Muslims. He talks about the
occupation of parts of Kashmir by Pakistan, that the birthrate of the muslim
minority has allegedly increased despite a recent Indian campaign to encourage
smaller families (the Indian population has grown by 200 million in the last 12
years), the increasingly intolerant attitude to dress code at the Indian
mosques and general Islamic intolerance demonstrated by the destruction of the
Buddhist cliff temples in Afghanistan, which reminds him of the history of
Delhi over the centuries. Somewhat obliquely, he contrasts the openness portrayed
in the Kama Sutra with the extreme concealment of a Burqa (we didn't quite get
the analogy, either).
We're on our way to Kathmandu, the capital of Nepal
today. About the only thing I know about it is that it is the only country in
the world with a 15 minute time zone difference.
# posted by DavidF @ 16:51 
