Autorickshaw, symbol of India

If there is one thing that unites Indians, it is their entrepreneurial spirit. It is not until I reach Indian soil for the first time that I begin to realise just what this means. Barely are we off the plane, sleepy from a long flight, than the scammers begin their assault on our wallets. We have decided to head for some budget hotels near the railway station – with the aim of leaving Delhi after one night. On the way to the official taxi stand, we are unofficially ambushed by a pair of rather courteous Indian gentlemen who take our bags, welcome us to their country and pile us into their taxi. On the way and after polite conversation regarding English cricket and England, the ‘passenger’ allows himself to make a suggestion: it’s too far to walk from the station to the hotel – why not go to the government tourist office and make a reservation from there? Too naive to kick up a fuss, we get driven to some back street dive proposing to be a government tourist office. Here we are presented with selling opportunity #1 and we don’t see it coming.
The taxi waits outside and two men inside continue the illusion that we might be close to finding a hotel. They dial our chosen hotel numbers then pass the phone over so I can make a reservation. I speak to a long list of different “hotel owners” who all have no room tonight. Surprising? They tell us there is a conference in Delhi now and it is very busy. Later it becomes obvious that the receptionist was sitting in the next door room pretending. As if conference go-ers would stay in budget hotels!
The real motive for them soon becomes clear. They want to sell us an all expenses paid tour of Rajasthan – leaving tonight – with a car and a driver. This will cost us £135 and the thought of having one of their slimy number with us at all times for two weeks doesn’t appeal. We have come to explore India on our own – no poxy car tour is going to do. When they see we will not agree, they get frustrated and angry. The best they can do – and this is after an hour of wrangling and scheming – is to try selling opportunity #2. That is: take us to a £5 per night hotel and charge us £20 for it. We give in and are driven there, exhausted and knowing we are paying about four times too much. One of their minions waits to collect the commission from the hotelier and it is all mightily depressing. ‘Doing’ India appears to involve a lot more hassle than I expected.
The trouble is, it is now about 2pm and the scam is not finished. We go outside (with no idea of where we are – suspecting we are a long way from the city centre) and try to arrange an autorickshaw to the Railway Station to buy tickets to get out of this hellhole. Arranging one is no problem – we have to practically beat them off – but getting one to go to the railway station turns out to be near impossible. When the lucky driver realises we want to buy tickets, he takes us immediately to another mimic “government” tourist office – there appear to be hundreds where presumably he gets commission. The new guys want to sell us a car tour too. Even when we refuse quite forcibly – not wishing to go through the whole rigmarole again – and request to be taken to the railway station, another rickshaw driver escorts us to the sidings and “shows” us that we can’t buy tickets here. Another tourist office man “calls” the railway station to see if there are any tickets available – no, not for the next week. But would we like a car tour?
We eventually find a reservation office that no one will let us use. The foreigners ticket office is “shut down”, we are told. “But you come to my brother’s shop, he sells tickets” is a typical response. Every story we were told today later proved to be untrue. We both lose our rag several times. It is more mentally exhausting than imaginable. With hindsight, getting a hotel room and a railway ticket seem ridiculously simple tasks. But when every person you speak to has an ulterior motive and thus lies to you, you tend to make bad decisions. Eventually by asking a couple of French girls and by walking a couple of kilometres in the heat we find the railway station. By now it is 4.45pm and the reservation office really is shut.
Bitterly disappointed, our frustration is too much – we find Pizza Express, fall into the air conditioned paradise and eat comfort food. The only good thing about the hotel – which is so far out of town our rickshaw wallah gets lost on the way – is that it has a cold tap and a bucket.
Lest this tale of woe makes us out to be naive and stupid travellers, our second day in Delhi is thankfully much more of a success. Having moved to a second hotel by booking ourselves in at the “normal” price of £7, still miles from anywhere, we obtain some tickets to Shimla from the railway station and have a wander, relatively undisturbed, around the Red Fort. We end up speaking German to a Rajasthan chef who has worked in Frankfurt for 15 years.

Country of dreams, mystery and intrigue; country of romance and peaceful coexistence; country of chaos: India, the world’s largest democracy. Love it or hate it, you just can’t ignore India and you’ll never forget it. The conclusion to my diary reads:

In our long taxi-ride to the airport across rush hour Mumbai, I see an advert which simply says “Rule #1: There are no rules”. It’s a jeans advert, hand painted by Indians, but for me it succinctly captures, better than any other phrase, the real India I have experienced. There are certainly no rules to the road and the only good thing about rush hour in Bombay is that none of the crazed Indian drivers can reach top speed…

But the sun setting over the dusty streets of this huge mother city (set to become the second largest city in the world in the new millennium) is beautifully alluring despite the painfully memorable ghetto sights we are constantly bombarded with. Our own “paradise” back home, so far away, is regularly brought into sickening contrast. But there is no room in the traveller’s emotional toolbox for guilt at how differently we live. For one thing, the Indians enjoy their lives too much for any of that to matter. For another thing, Indian life throws so many beautiful and awe-inspiring sights at you in such a short space of time, that you can only wonder at how unlucky anyone who has never been there really is.

On the complications of visiting India, the Lonely Planet reads: “Even the most experienced of travellers will find themselves at the end of their temper at some point in India”. Sounds like a laugh? Liz and I thought so. But it also says “India is what you make of it and what you want it to be… it’s a total experience, an assault on the senses, a place you’ll never forget”. So, clutching our soon-to-be-dog-eared guidebooks, a copy of “Are you experienced?” – a novel about a couple splitting up disastrously in the middle of a trip remarkably similar to ours – and two rucksacks filled with other inconsequential items, we set off in search of ourselves and to experience a new sub-continent along the way…