|
|
| Itty Bitty India |
Travel Feature |
Naomi Lee
For more Itty Bitty India Image visit our image gallery
India is big on colour, big on noise, big on traffic jams and huge on spirituality. With over one billion people, India boasts the globe’s second largest population, and the Taj Mahal must surely be the world’s largest monument to love. Those hailing from Varanasi maintain their holy city has celebrated the most birthdays – being the oldest inhabited city on earth. India is the largest producer of tea and lays claim to cricket’s most fervent fans. Anyone whose stomach has survived a fiery Goan curry can confirm India’s colossal love affair with spice.
Yet, soon after landing, India revealed itself as one big country made up of teeny-tiny things. Desperate for sleep after 15 hours in the air and a futile hour spent in search of lost baggage, we patiently sat as our taxi inched its way along a city arterial. This was the first of many reminders of the number one rule of travelling in India – assume every journey will transpire at the pace of tiny snail and can take twice as long as expected.
As dawn broke across Delhi, and just as my bladder was about to burst, we finally reached our hotel. We were rapt to discover our room had a window, unlike most guests who were waking to a sliver of light blinking through a tiny slit in the wall. Lesson two – unless you’re travelling India in five-star luxury, don’t assume your room has a window. In fact, don’t assume you’ve got your own toilet. Don’t assume anything at all about your room.
Once in our room, that window morphed from blessing to curse as a cacophony of noise passed through the thin glass to greet us. Even though our accommodation fronted a residential side street, it seemed every passing motorist felt the need to toot-toot the horn. The auto rickshaws answered with a beep-beep and the cyclists joined in with a tring-tring. The chai man drummed up business at the top of his voice, backed by a tinny trumpet heralding the 6 am start of a Hindu wedding. Lesson three – noise is an everyday part of living and travelling in India. It’s generated by the smallest of things, but the accumulative effect is improbably large and must be countered with the tiniest of travel accessories – earplugs.
With plugs in place, my lanky travel companion flopped onto our king sized bed only to bounce back yelping as his ankle cracked against the wooden foot of the bed. This bed was wide, but the diminutive Indian who built it didn’t see the need to make it long. This was no one-off experience. My love spent the ensuing weeks slumbering with his body at a sharp angle, banging his head against squat doorways and getting to the airport early enough to beg for an exit row seat to avoid squashing his six foot three frame into the tiniest economy seats imaginable. Lesson four – Indians are small in stature and make their furniture, houses and travelling space to suit their size.
Our ability to appreciate the large and small of India improved remarkably after a few good sleeps. We set off to tour the three towns of India’s golden triangle – Delhi, Jaipur and Agra – all famous for their lavish palaces, forts and mausoleums. Each monument was huge in scale, yet meticulously decorated in tiny detail. The abandoned palaces of the lost city of Fatehpur Sikri featured intricate, hand-carved stone columns and the faint remnants of fresco. We battled throngs of bumbling tourists at the Taj Mahal to cop a close up look at the tiny chips of precious stone inlaid into the marble walls. While visiting the Amber Fort we fought to suppress a disco moment in the victory hall sheathed entirely in tiny mirror mosaics.
However, the sights we saw travelling between these towns soon convinced us that few Indians enjoy such extravagance and it was easy to believe that around 20 per cent of the population subsist on minute amounts of money, at or below the poverty line. We saw children defecating on the street, men whose modes of transport were camels or horse drawn carts, and women cooking on fires fueled with dried cow dung. Lesson five – you may struggle to enjoy a sumptuous meal served in the plush comfort of your hotel knowing people are living without basic amenities in a filthy tent city just down the road.
The flipside of this for a wealthy westerner (if you can afford a plane ticket, consider yourself wealthy) is the ability to spend, spend, spend. The shock of the third world wore off after a couple of weeks and I found myself drawn to the sari emporiums where salesmen fell over each other to unspool reams of glossy silk before me. I admired how whisper-fine threads of gold and silk were expertly woven into extravagant designs and bought metres of jewel-coloured brocades. Slippers twinkling with tiny beads and hand blocked fabric soon joined my shopping stash. Lesson six – tiny prices result in a large stockpile of loot and you may need an extra suitcase to lug it all home.
With the urge to splurge sated it was time to feed the soul with a visit to Varanasi. We joined the swarm of pilgrims in town to celebrate the Shivaratri festival weaving through slim alleyways to the banks of the Ganges. Here we witnessed Hindus setting tiny candles adrift as puja (prayer offering) before dipping into the holy water to wash away their sins. Knowing the river was septic we didn’t participate, choosing instead to generously tip the driver of our elaborately painted rickshaw to improve our karma.
At this point it became apparent the one tiny thing I expected to return home with from India wasn’t to be. Instead of a teeny weeny waist whittled by walking and a dose of Delhi belly, my stomach remained bug-free and looked a lot like a stuffed paratha. Each evening we dined on Thali trays of little bowls filled with a delicious array of curries, rice and dhal served with buttery roti and washed down with Kingfisher beer. Costing a tiny 50–80 rupees (AU$2 to AU$3) it was hard to resist. Lesson seven – India may be a large country made up of tiny things, but those small things can make a big person of you!
For more Itty Bitty India Image visit our image gallery
|
Tags: Travel
|