Kashmiri Pandit
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For as long as I remember, I had been desperately keen to visit India but I’m not sure I can pinpoint the exact reason why.
Every time the country was mentioned I would picture a place with dusty streets that were crammed full of people, women dressed in colourful saris, markets filled with delicious-smelling spices and the majestic Taj Mahal . Oh, how I wanted to pose coyly outside that white marble mausoleum à la Princess Diana.
The fact that none of my friends also had an urge to go to India didn’t put me off in the slightest, so at the age of 24 I packed my rucksack and booked a return flight to Delhi.
And just to ease my mum’s mind – and due to the fact that I’m not very good at navigating my way around and not too keen on slumming it – I booked myself onto a two-week tour which took me around the “golden triangle”, the tourist circuit connecting the capital with Agra (the home of the Taj Mahal) and Jaipur.
Karen - back row, second right - with some of the friends she made in India
It meant that I got to see all of the places on my wishlist in relative comfort – our accommodation featured everything from mud huts to castles – and in an air-conditioned minibus with a group of like-minded people.
After travelling almost 5,000 miles on my own (via an unexpected night in Jordan thanks to an air strike, but that’s another story), I eventually landed in Delhi late at night.
As I left the airport, the hot air smacked me in the face and I couldn’t believe just how bustling those roads were. The taxi ride to my hotel remains one of the most scary ones I’ve taken as we dodged rickshaws, people, cars, vans, chickens and goats.
But it was stepping out into the bright Delhi sunlight the following day that I got to see a real glimpse of India for the first time. In Old Delhi, which dates back to the 1600s, the crowded markets and impressive mosques were a million miles away from what I was used to, but New Delhi was far more westernised.
In the desert
During the two weeks, I enjoyed something of a cultural whirl. In the travel diary I kept I noted that Jaipur – known as the Pink City due to the colour of the stone in its buildings – was “more chaotic than Delhi, with rickshaws, buses, bikes, cows, goats and camels all racing each other” while the Taj Mahal “looked even more beautiful in real life but was surprisingly small”.
Among my amazing experiences was an elephant ride to the Amber Fort where we discovered the Sheesh Mahal (Hall of Mirrors), stumbling across the filming of aBollywood movie, a camel ride through a desert where we slept in mud huts (I vividly remember sitting outside them and looking up at the stars), a night on a sleeper train to Varanasi (it was jam-packed and filthy and two of us had to share one bed – but what an adventure) and an early morning boat trip out onto the River Ganges where we witnessed a cremation taking place. One of the funniest moments was when a little rowing boat suddenly appeared from nowhere next to ours at around 5am with a man selling mini models of the Taj Mahal!
The downside to India is the constant begging and every time we walked through the streets we would find people – mainly children – following us as if we were the Pied Piper. We were told not to give money but to hand out items like pens instead.
But despite the poverty, there was a real positivity and I remember chatting to some teenagers all about growing up in India in the modern world and the way they were holding onto their traditional values.
During my fortnight there I only saw a tiny part of the country and its culture, but what I experienced will stay with me for ever.
Yes, some areas have overpopulated and polluted streets, but this is a country with heart and packing my rucksack and heading off there on my own was one of the best things I’ve ever done.
