Reflections of India

We've just returned from our 5 1/2 weeks annual holiday. This time, the destination was India. I can honestly tell you that it was the most fun trip of my life! Travelling through India is so easy and uncomplicated as compared to travelling in Europe or North America. I realized from day 1 that the trick to making things work efficiently in India is to outsource them - I'm serious! Pay someone to find someone else to do the job efficiently and you will be happier and it will cost you less than you doing it yourself. We rented a car with a driver, got an Indian travel agent and gave them enough leeway so that they could negotiate and provide us with the best of things in our budget. I am pleased to say that we were not at all disappointed.

I have travelled a fair bit around the world and my favorite place of travel has always been Canada (part of the reason why I moved here) - nowhere do you really find the beautiful vistas, good service, decent hospitality and value for money as you do in the Great North. However, I have to say, that travelling around India showed us that it is a pretty amazing country and the level of hospitality and quality of service you find for the dollar is unsurpassed. You expect to be pampered and they do not let you down.

We have seen the most amazing sights. Our breath was literally taken away when we first saw the Taj Mahal - all we could say was "Oh Wow"- you really cannot imagine how completely beautiful it is. We admired centuries old monuments and buildings built by the Mughals and Rajputs - The Agra Fort where "Akbar the Great" used to rule, Fatehpur Sikri -the beautiful city he built, Sikandara- where he was put to rest - all built in the 15th century and testament to the powerful force Akbar had made himself into. Continuing onwards to Delhi we saw Humayun's Tomb (built in late 14th century), the totally inspiring Qutub Minar which was built even before that with Quranic inscriptions all the way to the top of this 10 story tower, the Red Fort where Akbar's grandson Shah Jahan (the guy who built the Taj) created more amazing rooms and where the famous peacock throne (a throne built like a peacock full of emeralds and pervious stones) was placed. We saw the point at which Indian independence from British rule was declared. Onwards to the Himalyas and the Punjab where we visited the new city of Chandigarh with Asia's largest rose garden and the most interesting Nek Chand's Rock garden - at all these places we saw and appreciated the power of imagination and the beauty that can be created by all who really want to. Our tour continued to Amritsar and the Golden Temple. If there was a place where we felt at peace it was here, sitting by the pond looking at the magnificent temple that was built as a testament to faith. We even visited the India-Pakistan border at Wagah and joined the crowds there! History of several centuries surrounded us wherever we went and as India modernizes, we realized that Indians have developed a wonderful way to mix the old and the new to create their own unique blend of modernism in India.

Travelling with Baby M her safety and well being were our prime concern. Apart from a bad case of diaper rash because of the heat, she was fine. Food wise, Indians seemed to bend over back ways when they found out we had a baby. We were given the freshest stuff and when we visited the roadside stalls (dhabas) they would actually make things fresh for us so we wouldn't fall ill. At Delhi, we discovered the Indian Infant cereal called Cerelac - imagine our surprise when Baby M gulped down bowls of it. It tasted so much better than the cereal in Canada. At times I felt guilty about pre-judging India. We had automatically assumed that it would be difficult to find diapers etc there - somehow taking it for granted that the country had not modernized. Diapers were available at every street corner! My Indian friend in Delhi had told me that the Indian one were no good - I found they performed just the same as the imported ones. With Baby M - leaks always happen! I felt totally stupid when it dawned on me how naive I had been on India - here is a country of 1 billion people, from whom at least 25 million are infants under the age of 1 - how presumptuous for me to assume that there would be no facilities for 25 million citizens!

There is no doubt that we stayed in the best of hotels and lived a very luxurious life. But such luxuries are not that steep in India. In Delhi, our wonderful travel agent, got us a room at The Oberoi (one of India's best hotels) where we had our own personal butler. I would press a button and my smiling genie in a white uniform would appear and everything I needed would suddenly appear. When we ordered room service, instead of coming on a tray- they brought in a whole table totally laid out with silver settings. It was service fit for royalty. The price tag for this indulgence was $250/night. While that seems like a lot, we paid the same amount when we stayed at Blue Mountain in Ontario in January and certainly did not get a butler! That's also the same as 160 Euros and anyone who has recently been travelling to Europe will tell you how pathetically expensive Europe has become and how even if you pay 160 Euros you can just about get an IBIS in a major city. Top end service in India is unsurpassed!

The ONLY sensible way to go around India with a child is by renting a car. You would need to be totally suicidal to drive on these roads yourselves. You need specialist drivers who have developed nerves of steel through years of driving and who know where to take you and how to negotiate the various road blocks. Renting a car in India also means you no longer have to worry about the petrol, or tolls, or parking charges or directions (Indians are totally challenged when it comes to maps. I was proud to get a map in Delhi only to realize that it's utterly useless as the roads are not marked!) Having a driver is the way to do it. You wake up and your car is cleaned, ready and has a full tank of petrol. The chauffer knows exactly where to take you and how to get there and provides all sorts of interesting information on Indian life that you would not normally get. Our driver Mahavir, went out of his way to make sure we had a good trip. Apart from the excellent driving, he also got our clothes ironed at the street laundries (Indians DO NOT wear un-ironed clothes and I DO NOT iron on holiday), went into the "dhabas" and checked out their kitchens and terrorized the cooks so we could get fresh food, and would spend 2 hours in every town finding a good dairy to get fresh yoghurt for Baby M. Such service you could never find in the West!

In ending this blog, I have to say that at every step of our trip we were shown respect, friendship and kindness. Whether we were at my friend's place where Raju, Nitin, Kishore and Gita took care of us, or at my Mum's where Majid cooked us amazing biryani and samosas while Rekha and Farid took care of Baby M, or at a hotel - we were always welcomes and the red carpet was laid out for us in every way. I often wondered what happened to the stereotypical uncouth Indians who used to steal from foreigners and who would generally try to make your life difficult. I then realized, like anywhere else, we tried to fit in. My husband wore the Indian "Kurta Pajama" for most of our trip - a sight that won us immediate approval. Most of the time they just assumed he was from Kashmir and nodded to us. Unlike some of the foreigners or Indians returning from overseas, I never showed any skin (mind you, I don't really show much skin in Toronto as well). My Hindi is still fluent though it's now probably easy to see that I am not a local but I did use it as much as I could.

To really enjoy India, you need to go there not only with your body, but also open up your mind to explore and understand the various things that make this country such an incredible nation.
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Excellent Indian Travel Agent: Rupali Desai (+91-98210-79311) poly71@hotmail.com