The inevitable Indian Food post.

It’s no understatement to say that Indian food is world renowned. Travel writing about India always dotes dreamily on the delights of the roti, paratha, idli and dosa. Every Lonely Planet is filled with gratuitous shots of steaming chai cups. I’m not meaning to bash these foods; they’re fantastic, the cream of the crop. But you probably already know about them, so I thought it might be fun to give a little attention to some of the best foods of India that will never make it into an edition of Lonely Planet.

Haldirams Moong Dhal.
Haldirams is the King of packet snacks. If you’re looking for a salty hit, look no further than these golden little globs of deep fried lentil goodness. I can’t work out why, but every other brand of packet snack just tastes like farts. It’s also the only packet snack I’ve ever eaten where you get more in the packet than you expect. Compare with Indian crisps – you might think they are a bargain at Rs. 5, but you get exactly 5 crisps in a packet. Boo.

Omlette in a bun.
Can’t stand the thought of more deep-fried street food? Never fear, heavily oiled eggs will be your saviour!

Ingredients:
One sweet brioche bun, must be out of a packet, squashed and certainly not from a bakery.
3 eggs, of questionable freshness
Lots of green chillies.

Directions:
Create an omlette as per usual. Put at least 9 green chillies into it. Take half of the brioche bun and squash it into the runny top of the omlette as it’s cooking, so that the egg congeals into the spongey centre of the bun. Flip the omlette, then press on the other bun half, so you have a spicy omelette sandwich made from sweet brioche bread.

NB: don’t try to get clever and ask for the omelette with toast. Indians cannot make toast, so just don’t ask. It could be down to impatience in the kitchen or it could be thanks to an incapable first British toast eater, but either way the damage is done and the example is set. ‘Toast’ is universally served as soggy, lukewarm bread.

Mystery crispy snacks
Imagine the situation: You are at a train station, just about to run for your 3 day train. You know the food available on the train will be slightly dodgy, so you grab as many varieties of snacks as possible. Crispy peas, tapioca sticks, cassava slices, maize spirals, farfar stars, roasted chickpeas, potato crisps, the ubiquitous ‘bombay mix’, chickpea flour noodles, peanuts, unidentified reformed things. You think you’ve got an excellent range to keep your taste buds occupied for the long journey. You are wrong. They are all vehicles for exactly the same flavour. ‘Masala’of course. Enjoy three days of slightly burnt spice mix.

Western Banana Desserts
If you are anywhere remotely touristy you have three options for dessert, all of which involve bananas. Your options are banana crepes, ‘Hello to the Queen’ or Banoffee Pie. All of them will be wrong somehow; freezer burnt, limp, soggy, cold, whatever. But somehow they will all taste like heaven.

Indian Chocolate
Less cocoa, more milk solids and sugar. Always serve cold out of the fridge or melted. Your sweet tooth is about to get totally out of control. Special Mention for Perk Bar, whose advertising reads “super-charged with glucose for an instant energy hit!”

Boost
A dhabba favourite for when you are bored of chai. This is a strange and delicious mix of horlicks and cocoa. And it’s perfectly acceptable for grown men to drink before bed.

NB. Aforementioned grown men can also opt for the special Horlicks For Men if they so wish. Others can select from the dizzying range of Mother’s Horlicks, Women’s Horlicks, Horlicks Gold, Horlicks Pro Mind, Junior Horlicks, Lite Horlicks, Vanilla, Toffee, Cardamom, Chocolate, Honey or Kesar Badaam Horlicks. Accompany with Horlicks biscuits for extra malty dunking. I guess they’re really into it.

Rose Milk
It’s not milk and it’s not got any rose in it at all. It’s the consistency of ice cream in a glass (yes, you can stand a straw up in it) and is sickly lurid pink. The taste of chemicals that are probably banned in the UK will rocket through you, eliminating all brain cells that were used to worry about the safety of unrefrigerated dairy produce. Perfect on a hot sticky day in the city.

Stir fried Idly
Chinese food has very thoroughly permeated India, even down to the little street stalls. Some genius decided to combine sweet and sour sauce with miniature idlys (steamed cakes of fermented lentil batter.) This is the equivalent of stir fried bread. Fusion food at it’s best.

Pani Puri
The thrill of this street snack is twofold. The first thrill is being able to handle the spice (just). The second is the adrenalin rush you get by eating something you know is horribly unsafe. You’re weighing up the balance between taste/bragging rights/the ‘experience’ and spending the next three days clutching your stomach and running to the bathroom. Pani puri are crispy shells of deep fried batter filled with flavoured water. Said flavoured water is the finest Indian Street Water, kept in a plastic bucket or old paint tub and spiked with Bishops Weed and lots of chillies. The aim is to cram the golf-ball sized things in your mouth in one go before the liquid explodes all down your front. If the amount of chilli in a plateful of these doesn’t give you stomach cramps, the water definitely will. And it’s completely worth it, every single time.

Hitchhitching in India

I realise this post is a little incongruous with the others, more ‘real’ travel blog or whatever that might mean. It’s because when we were trying to pick up some tips on Indian hitching we found a dearth of information. When I’ve hitched around Europe I’ve sometimes relied on great online resources like hitchwiki but this information is kind of lacking for India.
On the off chance that some poor soul googles “hitching in India”, here’s a few tips for you.

First thing’s first. Don’t bother hitching long distance. I know, I know, you want an adventure, travel like a local blahblahblah. No person who has ever successfully hitched likes being told hitching is a bad idea. However, India is really not the country for it. You probably already know about the huge prevalence of drink driving and the shitty roads, but hitching doesn’t always work in India because most people just have no idea what you want from them.

This is kind of hard to understand, seeing as little lifts are so common in India; people jump in your rickshaw or jeep all the time. Apparently the rules are not the same for foreigners. In fact, I’ve had multiple lifts stop for me only to insist that they will only drop me as far as a bus stop or train station. Every lift that stops insists that it is too dangerous and only crazy people would pick me up (the irony in this obviously eludes them). Nonetheless, I can see their point. Buses and trains can be so cheap that there really is no point hitching in India.

But if you really insist (we did, after all) then here’s a few pointers:

1. Hitching isn’t free. You’ll be expected to give a bit of cash (and don’t be surprised if you get a disdainful look and told you should give more, no matter the amount)

2. Often the people who will pick you up will be truck drivers. And the trucks are slow on crap roads. Especially if you account for all the chai stops. Many of the main roads connecting big cities can have only two lanes, so don’t expect to travel fast.

3. Be sure to make small talk. Indian culture can be very inquisitive, so if you’re sitting silently you’re seen as standoffish.
4. Don’t say “are you going to X?” instead ask “where are you going?”. If you ask a yes/no question, you’re likely to just get an indeterminate head waggle as a reply. And keep an eye on the roadsigns.

5. If you’re trying to cross state lines, remember that not all trucks have an All India Permit; many commercial vehicles only have permits to be in certain states.

6. National Highways or NH road often have a lovely big dirt-track on each side that is perfect for pulling lifts over. Failing this, try next to a dhabba or chai-stop.

7. India was made for short lifts. If you’re going a few km or to the next village then hitching is perfect. Nothing like watching the sunset from the back of a pickup.

8. You are really going to have to put your big girl shoes on and buckle up for the weird looks and millions of questions you’re going to get. It can be quite overwhelming at times.

9. All the normal safety things are super important in India. Be really careful with the traffic, don’t hitch at night and NEVER get a lift with someone you have a bad vibe about. Personally, I wouldn’t hitch alone as a girl in India, but I know people who have.

Good luck and happy hitching!

Buying Stuff

Take a walk down Kahjurhao’s main Bazaar and just see how long you last. The shopkeeper’s hover vulture-like along the wide and dusty roadside, eyes peeled for tourists, somehow materializing at your side every time you try and creep past. You usually hear a bellowed ‘Hey friend!’ followed by an exhaustive menu of what’s in their shop. It’s the same in every shop, of course. You don’t stop and they don’t either: from far behind you you’ll still hear ‘VERY NICE NECKLACE CARPET SHAWL VERY NICE VERY CHEAP,’ except their cries are usually lost in the sound of a fresh vendor trying it on. You have to steel yourself, fixing your gaze forward and not deviating it, putting your entire will into walking forward no matter what in order to get just about anything done. It didn’t help that our hotel was on the edge of the small town, which meant that even nipping out for a cup of tea in the centre necessitated ‘running the gauntlet’, as it came to be affectionately known. It made it impossible to take a leisurely stroll or stop and chat to a friend in the street; It was exhausting.

The king of Kahjurhao’s tourist shops was undoubtedly one ‘Super Mario’, a Kashmiri man who took his name from his uncanny resemblance to everyone’s favourite Italian plumber. He sold only Kashmiri handmade goods, and exactly why he’d chosen to do this over a thousand miles south of Kashmir is anyone’s guess. Super Mario’s shop was a roaring success, and it was no surprise: he was an absolute pro at roping tourists in, sizing them up, working out their weak spots and playing around these. He’d stand proudly in front of his shop, arms behind his back and moustache freshly bushed, stopping passing tourists calmly and politely and asking how they were. After he’d established rapport he’d invite them into his shop, ostensibly just for tea. He’d shut the front door, and from then on make it all about you. We were lucky enough to have already decided at the onset of the day that no matter what we weren’t going to buy anything, which meant that we could be just spectators to Mario’s brilliant playing upon our American friend.

(As a side-note, I was walking down a quieter backstreet one day when a guy stopped me and I felt patient enough to at least humour him. He was small and sad, feeble in his insistence that I come into his dim and grubby shop. He told me he was Super Mario’s brother. ‘Luigi?’ I asked. Looking at me blankly, his eyes sad: ‘No’. ‘Oh’, I said, and that was that.)

Back in Mario’s shop, Super Mario himself is in conversation with our friend. She’s interested in a handmade rug that (apparently) costs about one hundred and sixty quid. I can see him working her out: figuring out her budget, her weak spots, her limits and how flexible they might be. Once he’s identified these he works around them, pushing for the best possible price whilst acting like he’s doing her a huge favour by letting it go at one hundred and twenty. It’s interesting that nothing in Mario’s shop has a price tag, and when Nina – the budding investigative journalist that she is – asks one of his staff the price of something, he refers her back to head honcho Mario. It’s clear that they’ve been trained to do this.

Super Mario’s real edge over his competitors is that he understands the western sense of politeness and social obligation (what we call ‘common decency’ back home I suppose) felt towards shopkeepers, and knows very well how to take advantage of and play upon this.

Before we go on, it’s worth noting that this particular social dynamic doesn’t really exist in India in the world of buying and selling. Everyone is extremely respectful and courteous towards their families and towards holy men, but in a world where the price of pretty much everything is negotiable it’s quite common to enter shouting matches with the guy you’re trying to buy water from, even if he’s only overcharging you ten pence or so. It’s not just me being rash: it really is normal out here. It’s also worth mentioning that shopping for anything isn’t quite so simple as going to the supermarket. They have, instead… markets. This means that if you want eggs, you go to the town egg man. If you want a beer, you go to the ‘English wine shop’ (all off-licenses are called this, and I’ve still not got to the bottom of it.). If you want milk, you go to the milk guy. You get the idea. All of these shops are small, windowless concrete cubes or just stalls on the street. If you took the average Indian bloke and placed him in the middle of a 24-hour Asda he’d have a panic attack.

Mario’s genius is that he knows how to build up his customer’s sense of obligation towards him by serving them tea supposedly grown by his family back home and asking them about their travels, listening with incredible patience to their anecdotes and basically making them feel comfortable and good about themselves. He makes a big show of treating his customer’s extra specially, implying that they’re the exception, yet it’s obvious from the smooth running of the whole ceremony that this is how he does business: everyone get’s this ‘special’ treatment, rendering it thoroughly un-special (although, admittedly, quite nice).

His other tactic worth noting – often employed out here but nowhere near as effectively as Super Mario – was to be very forward and borderline self-congratulatory about how honest and friendly and considerate he’s being yet doing so in order to create a smokescreen for the fact he’s doing the total opposite: cunningly trying to get what he wants from you. This particular rhetorical tactic is something that politicians have been doing for years in the west (and it’s something that the more self-absorbed or solipsistic amongst us often do to friends or loved ones without realizing it). I’m sure it’s something shopkeepers would do back home too if we didn’t have a fixed-price culture that didn’t allow the room for it. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think Mario was a bad guy at all: he was hospitable and friendly and made great tea. He was just a very good merchant who did what we had to do in order to be good at what he did. At the end of the day, his customers left the shop feeling treated and pleased, and he was obviously happy at having secured a good deal.

Another constant arena of deal-making is rickshaw rides. Once you get a handle of how much you should realistically be paying, it’s astounding how much you can haggle the cost down from the original price. Yet despite this, you still know you’re paying probably double the amount the locals are. The ‘actual’ cost of more or less everything is just one wide grey area that we non-Indians can only ever really flail about in. Pretty much the only thing we can do is argue and try our luck, experimenting with lower and lower prices in each transaction. One of the big changes I’ve undergone out here is a gradual de-anglicisation: out here, you realize just how thoroughly English your politeness is, and that it’s not entirely appropriate everywhere you go in the world. The common stereotype of young people who make the pilgrimage over to India tends to involve a yoga-dabbling, long-haired, Birkenstock-wearing kind of guy (I am, I confess, all of these things) who is, above all, calm, polite, and perhaps even considerate. These last three characteristics, I fear, are rapidly leaving me. In the first week, you stop adding ‘if that’s alright with you’ at the end of every request. In the second, the ‘pleases’ go. In my first few days I actually got told off by a friend for saying thank you too much to him, as it implied that we weren’t very close. By the third week you’re up in the face of a rickshaw driver engaged in a shouting match and screaming ‘CHOR!’ (‘cheat’) at him over the sake of 50p. I’ve actually had to stop sometimes and question whether or not this country is making me a monster. But that’s just the way things are done out here. It’s entirely normal to have a cheery, friendly conversation with a guy you’ve just screamed in the face of and accused of being a liar – although only after the deal is settled, of course. You quickly understand that this country’s all about front. The rickshaw drivers see that you’re a tourist and try and get one over on you, and in turn you see that they’re a cheat and try and get them to be fairer. In the end you arrive at a happy medium: once this initial facade is down, amicable, honest relations are allowed to arise, and, marvelously, arise they do.

Where is all of this is going? Well, pretty much nowhere, but it’s interesting to look at how different the relationship between people and capital is over here. It’s fluid and unclear and always changing. It’s certainly different to the west, where the fixed prices of everything in the clean, well-lit shops make capital seem like something unqestionable, unbudging, monolithic in its stature. It’s not to be negotiated, making it basically impersonal. You pick up your thing from Asda or Boots or Primark or wherever and you take it to the counter, where you stand in line and avoid eye contact until it’s your turn to hand it over to the guy behind the desk who’s understandably bored and wants to be out of there. The price is what it is, and if you don’t like that then don’t buy it: simple as that. What this does is take the control out of the shopkeeper’s hands, so they end up with no say over the value of the goods that they’re hired to sell. The value is decided somewhere else, based upon buying habits and customer profiles and trend predictions and stuff like that.

Over here, where the prices are decided by the shopkeeper and fought by the customer, it’s at least way more personal: Value is dictated by an active, intent and focused human interaction rather than by a price-tag scanned by a dead-eyed tillkeeper. This kind of de-abstracts capital in a way, putting value judgements back into the hands of the merchant and customer. It’s certainly refreshing. On the other hand, it frees up space for people to be royally screwed over, yet that’s not entirely the shopkeeper’s fault: they struggle to make ends meet, and if they see naïveté or vulnerability then of course they’ll pounce. Business is business and it’s always a game, but at least out here you can look your opponent in the eye. It really is good fun.

J

Solang Valley and the weirdness of Indian tourism

We took a short break from Jibhi to see Manali and the surrounding areas. Manali was a western hippie hangout in the sixties and has since been transformed into an overly busy town selling Om necklaces and rainbow coloured ponchos. The neighbouring village, Vashisht, hosts a natural hot spring that brings Indian visitors from the south. As such, much of the tourism industry in Manali now caters for Indian travellers rather than foreign backpackers. Those who come to see the holy hot springs are, in general, wealthy families coming from Mumbai or Delhi. I’ve been told that Indian families have only recently had the means or the desire to have ‘western’ style holidays, so Indian tourism is a fledgling idea.

Solang valley is a short distance from Manali and reputedly had some of the most magnificent views of the whole Himalaya. Posters around town advertise treks and adventure sports. The reality of Solang is quite different. It is accessed entirely by road, a quick 30 minute drive, so there is no need to hike. Once you reach the top you encounter row upon row of shabby stalls selling hotdogs, terrible coffee, candyfloss, fried snacks and ‘hit the coconut’ games. Depressed looking donkeys stand in huddles waiting to take tourists for a short promenade. Solang itself is now a dustbowl nestled between some mountains with basically nothing there. You can go ‘skiing’; where one man will push you across the flat mud for a nominal fee. You can ride the (wonky) ski lift, which leads to absolutely no skiing. Paragliding and zorbing are also available. The excitable wealthy Indians walk around in hired ski suits as they have never seen snow before, even though the temperature is quite mild. They do all the things that we laugh at ‘tourists’ for – pose for selfies infront of shrines, wear nerdy bumbags and buy tatty souvenirs. It is, to all extents and purposes, an English beach front in the Himalayas.

You might think that I would advise travellers to stay away from Manali and Solang, or that those seeking the ‘Authentic Indian Experience’ should go elsewhere, but quite the contrary. I loved Solang. It was quite honestly, one of the weirdest places I have seen in my whole life. And in many ways it really is the Authentic Indian Experience; a strange collision of cultures that results in something you’d never expect. East meets West and every other direction all at once.

Himalayan Road Signs

India loves wordplay, especially rhyme.
We first met this is Delhi, when we would frequently be talked to in some form of rhyming limerick or couplet (“Don’t worry, Chicken Curry, we are in no hurry!”) The theme only continues as you go north. Most of the roads throughout the Himalaya region are really quite dangerous: narrow dirt tracks that lurch blindly around steep, sheer mountain sides. Now, pair this with the famously reckless, and speedy, Indian driving and you have a recipe for disaster. So the BRO’s of India have kindly put up road signs for the locals (all in looping English calligraphy, I’d like to add) as reminders to be careful. Here are some of my favourites:

Control Your Nerves on Curves!

Speed Thrills But Kills

Peep Peep Don’t Sleep

He Who Touches Ninety Flies To Die Nineteen

Drive On Horse Power, Not On Rum Power

Heaven Or Hell Or Mother Earth, Your Choice

Do Not Dare, Drive With Care

Love Thy Neighbour, But Not While Driving

Be Mr Late Better Than Late Mr

After Drinking Whiskey Driving Is Risky

Darling, Do Not Nag Me, As I Am Driving,
Instead Turn Your Head and
Enjoy The Nature Charming

No Race No Rally Enjoy The Beauty of The Valley

Be Gentle On My Curves

Safety On Road Is Safe Tea At Home

and possibly my favourite, the rather enigmatic:

Thanks

Oh, India. Only you could have signs for those travelling at speed that are lengthy, complicated, written in a foreign language and in calligraphy. Just fantastic.

Thoughts on Indian bathrooms

Žižek considers toilets a wonderful encapsulation of cultural ideology. His thoughts on French, German and English toilets always makes me laugh and strikes me as wryly true. Coming from the West to India, learning how to handle a Hindustani bathroom is a bit of a minefield.

The basic Indian bathroom is simple: the whole room is a sloping wet room with a ceramic squat (sometimes just a hole) for a toilet, a sink and, if you’re lucky, a shower. So far so good. What is perplexing is the baffling array of accessories each bathroom commands.
Most noticeable is the vast selection of taps and knobs: 2 on the sink, 4 (!) on the shower, 2 more by the piping, 2 for the boiler, 1 for a bidet. And often some mysterious extras for good measure. These taps are apparently all supposed to be coordinated in some way, which I still can’t understand. I’m quite sure aligning the cosmic taps in order to receive hot water requires the knowledge of master safe crackers.

The mirror in any upscale establishment is covered in swirling designs of peeling glitter glue, always in clashing colours. Floors are a cobbled mix of marble, tile and concrete. Wall tiles are either mismatched or absent. Any self respecting bathroom needs at least 2 buckets and 2 mixing jugs, always in the same garish pastel plastic. The meaning of one pair is semi-clear: in order to wash yourself. Even when a toilet has a bidet tap attached, you are supposed to wash yourself by navigating liquid like a game of Where’s The Water, from a tap into a bucket into a mixing jug into your hand then onto yourself. The meaning of the other buckets? Who knows. Spares?

Then comes the ubiquitous Bucket Shower. As most bathrooms have no shower (and certainly no bath) comes the learning experience of a Bucket Shower. Now, although it’s not difficult to wash oneself when you have a supply of water, and a place in which to wash, I am curious as to how I’m supposed to do it. Do I stand? Is it a faux-pas to use the toilet mixing jug-bucket combo? Is there a way to shave my legs without feeling like I’m about to do the splits? How on earth do I wash my hair? I’ve taken to squatting on the floor, then turning my head upside into a bucket and shaking like a dog. I’m sure there must be more elegant ways of doing this.

In fact, I’m lacking mostly all of the etiquette expected of me. For instance, I had no idea that it’s actually a question of machoness, of male bravado, not to use a toilet. Instead, you should do your business with a scenic verdant view. Extra points for going in a group. Wanting some privacy is seen as girly and whimpish, despite the fact that privacy is like gold-dust and you’d get a real glare if your bare bottom was ever on display.
And just to throw even more confusion into the mix, there is an ancient Aryan guideline on toilet usage which gives a long list of very strict drills required before you can use the toilet, including which way you can face and what mantras you should chant. Having said this, India is always a place of contradictions. You would think ancient manuals on toilet usage would promote a culture of lively toilet-based discussion. Yet you can’t even expressly say you’re going for a wee. You instead do what I call the ‘Wee Mudra’. You hold hand with your palm facing towards you with all the fingers folded down, bar the little finger. If you’re on a bus or in a taxi, the driver will share a knowing little nod with you, having received the surreptitious signal, and you can now stop hopping and crossing your legs.

I wonder what Žižek would have to say about these bathrooms and toilets. An Indian concept of beauty governed by embellishment over simplicity? A desire for complete cleanliness, but with a slap-dash attitude? A love of openness and honesty, but only when tempered by head-to-toe modesty? Bathrooms and bathroom etiquette yet again remind me that India is constructed of a huge web of contradictions, all woven together with strings of history and culture that are just out of sight. We might think that Indian bathrooms are a world away from Western ones, but rather they seem to be a parallel to our avocado bath suites and knitted toilet roll cosies.

Jibhi

It’s been a while since we arrived in Jibhi, a small village in the foothills of the Himalayas, Himachal Pradesh. Jibhi is split over the river rushing through the bottom of the valley, with small houses and other villages nestling against the mountains on either side. The whole place runs on a completely different climate- the nights are cold and wet but the daytime is searingly hot. The days are already short in September, the hilltops swallowing the sunset by 6.30. As Autumn begins to approach, the summits are shrouded in little scraps of mist. The altitude means that the surrounding forest is a jumble of mostly cedar pine with a few oaks, when even just twenty minutes drive to a lower elevation gives banana trees. Apples are a huge crop in Himachal. All the families here also grow corn, which right now they are drying on their slate rooftops. The orange-on-grey patches pepper the entire valley. The other bumper crop of this part of Himachal is wild cannabis, which self-sows and grows naturally into 17 ft bushels. Much of the local income seems to be made by the selling of hand-rubbed charras, although I feel that the majority is kept by the locals, who dispense it freely upon a first meeting. Another source of precious income is from the black market of trees. The whole valley is protected woodland, yet the locals need the wood to burn in the winter. Tree thefts seem fairly common. We snuck out in the middle of the night to go visit a neighbour who had planned such a tree snatch. I expected a few little pines to be taken, but what we found was five men with torches and a handsaw, huddled around the bottom of a 70 foot tree. After a few minutes of concerted hacking, the men’s voices changed from hushed prison-tones, to a sudden frantic burble and then silence as the whole trunk splintered and wrenched and creaked over. The pine seemed suspended for a moment as it fell before being swallowed by the dark maw of the valley below. Watching a tree that size fall creates a sense of vertigo- everything seems upside down, looking at a tree sideways crushing its way into a black abyss. The men turned to us, and with a whiff of Mafiosa, they said only one word: Challo. Now you go. They hurriedly covered the raw trunk with dirt and leaves to cover the evidence. They could all get jail time if found out.

The area around Jibhi is mostly agricultural, with steep terraces carved into the lower reaches of the mountainsides. Women stoop through the trails with great bundles of dried grass tied to their backs. From behind, only a large bushel of grass with legs is visible. Men run huge flocks of goats through the main village road. Right now, in this last week of September, we are awaiting Dusshera in Kullu, so the local gods are being paraded and taken for puja on their way to the festival. Every day the valley echoes with drums and trumpets while men walk along roads wearing rosettes. Children dressed like rag-tag pantomime horses and singing songs of Rama ask for sweets.
Every part of the valley is stuck in a limbo between ancient and modern life. Everyone has a mobile phone, yet the food still bears the hallmarks of harsh winters of old. Pickled fern is a favourite, as are sidhu, dense dumplings stuffed with vegetables and dipped in ghee. Other culinary delights have been guna ras, sugarcane juice, made by running lengths of fibrous sugarcane through a spluttering and smoky kerosene macerater, and it tastes somewhere between pineapple juice and sugar water. Pani puri, or ‘bread water’, are another strange, divisive item. It’s probably one of the unsafest street food items you can find. Puri, hollow spheres of crispy batter have a hole poked in the top by the sellers thumb, who then shovels in a couple of crispy chickpeas, before dunking the whole thing into a standing vat of water which has had chillis floating in it. Naturally, the water is totally unsafe and contained within a filthy bucket. The resulting item is a batter shell filled with chilli water, like a more bready, more watery liqueur chocolate. The fiery little things explode in your mouth, releasing the strange concoction of cooling water which gives off chilli heat. Jake hated them, but I personally couldn’t get enough of them.

Giving kitchen assistance has been a little difficult. Even items as simple as scrambled egg are totally different. (Just by the way, Indian scrambled egg involves scalding milk in a frying pan then cracking whole eggs in, then beating like hell over the highest heat until it’s turned into dry yellow breadcrumbs). I’ve tried a few times to make chappati, only to find the reaction ranges from snorting laughter to the dough being taken away from me, and finding myself relegated to a separate kitchen task. I guess the knack comes with a lot of practise. After regular meals of rice and dhal, the occasional treat of western food comes as a real shock. We found a packet of digestive biscuits and were suddenly and stupefyingly reminded of home.
The people here are kind and generous. Sometimes, in fact too generous. We’ve been invited for dinner, only to end up staying the night and returning the next afternoon. The vivacious and all-inclusive attitude of the locals makes it hard to feel alienated. The real alienation comes from the wildlife. The locals are afraid to walk the roads at night for fear of leopards and bears. Huge, poisonous praying mantis’ attack my passing feet as I walk to work over the river. Little bronze lizards scurry away, and their larger, iguana-like cousins only raise a lazy, mocking eyebrow as we blunder past. Giant cicadas headbutt the lamps at night, and little scorpions hide underneath the mattress. The worst has to be the spiders, which in their junior form are as big as your palm and sit malevolently on the wall. The adult spiders are not far removed from tarantulas.

Our Hindi is progressing achingly slowly, and as always with travel, we pick up the strangest of phrases first. Expecting to learn the standard “hello, thankyou, please, how are you, goodnight, two beers please” ,we’ve instead learnt how to say No Spitting! (Tokne Ne!) to chastise the local children, and other such useful things.
The air is clean, the water is clean. The mountains are green and abundant. The year runs according to weather and crop cycles, not to the monthly calendar. Our days are filled with farm work- the highlight of which has been carrying wicker baskets of fresh cow dung up the steep mountainside- and socialising, leaving surprisingly little alone time in a place of such peace. A quick trip to Kullu reminded us of the mania of India on the outside, with the familiar tooting horns and dust and dirt. Here seems to be a little enclave, a calm Alpine oasis in the sunsoaked country. Many seem to call it the ‘Real’ India.

Onwards to Shimla

The push of Delhi got to us before too long. By day four, we had completely had enough. Jake came down with a case of Delhi Belly, which might sound like the sexy bump belly-dancers have after too many jilabi, but seems something more akin to your insides turning into an explosive cement mixer. After a harried respite, we were clawing like rabid dogs to get out of the city, so despite Jacob’s cold sweat and delirium we got a night train to Kalka. Delhi Old Train Station was less train station more mass dormitory, with people stretched out on the floor in every direction. We finally made it through to discover our train would be late. No surprises there. When the train arrived later, we discovered our carriage did not even exist. The train system in India is, no doubt, fantastic but navigating it properly is altogether a different issue. We bribed our way onto the train and a few hours later arrived in the sleepy town of Kalka, where we too decided to stretch out and nap on the floor of the station. From there we took the wonderful toy train to Shimla, a 6 hour train ride on a narrow gauge railway. The train is not the fastest way to get to Shimla, but is the most beautiful and as a result most passengers were Indian tourists, mostly honeymooning couples. Excited as we all were, the atmosphere on the train seemed like one of a large and boisterous school trip. 40 year old men would whoop and scream as we passed through tunnels, we all hurried to look out the windows when we passed a gully and everyone would make a game of running for the leaving train after we made a quick chai stop. When a seller would hop on the train with a plastic bucket of lentils, the carriage would descend into school dinner-hall madness, only falling silent once everyone was happily munching their snack from circles of newspaper. The journey itself was beautiful, no surprise it’s a UNESCO site. The train climbs to 6,500 feet, and we watched the vegetation change from palms trees into pine until right at the very top no trees were visible, only an endless sea of opaque fog obscuring the sheer drops below. As is to be expected, all health and safety was out the window, so we swung and sat our legs out of the open doors as the train went over huge valleys, with barely a centimetre between the drop and the train tracks.
When we arrived in Shimla, already the atmosphere was one of calm and healing. The whole town is shrouded in heavy shreds of fog that descend from the top of the mountain and the rain comes down in fat droplets. The place is spotless and the food from the streets is clean and nourishing. The people are polite and relaxed. The streets are all tiny alleyways clinging to the side of the mountain, with little shops tucked into every crevice, mostly consisting of huge stacks of cloth with a man peering at you from the top of the 7 foot pile. If you so wish you can also buy singular shoes or collections of human teeth in little boxes.

The main attraction of Shimla is Jakku, a temple to Hanuman accompanied by a red colossos of the god right at the top of the mountain, reaching into the cloud level. The walk up is steep and gruelling but fills your lungs with good clean air. Reaching the top, you enter into a little shrine to receive puja, but I’m pretty sure I botched it as much as is possible, not knowing where to kneel or in what order to do things. At least I took my shoes off first. It is not all idyllic though- on your way up you need a large stick and a pocketful of stones to ward off the monkeys that run riot over the temple. Being western, we find these furry creatures endearing; that was, until they stole a roll of toilet paper, neatly opened the plastic packaging and proceeded to deftly shred the entire roll over a crowd of people. Indians, as I’m sure many know, consider toilet paper very dirty indeed and prefer to wash themselves with water, so you can imagine the pandemonium that ensued when toilet paper rained from the sky. Monkey thefts are probably the most dramatic thing to happen in Shimla as the whole town has an air of sleepy conservatism that is both soothing and invigorating.

A strange few days in Delhi

Probably the last thing anybody wants to do after nearly 24 hours of travel is arrive in Delhi. The noise and rush and hubbub of the great roaring city rises to greet you as you enter in. Anyone who has travelled or backpacked could easily be duped into the arrogance of assuming you’ll be able to manage basic navigation, finding your hostel or crossing a language barrier. However, the utter lunacy of Delhi will put you back in your place as a very small fish in a very very big pond. The sheer mass of people makes it impossible to anchor yourself- what was earlier a quiet back street is a crammed bazaar after dusk. Every single sense is assailed at once; the smell of diesel, jasmine flowers, puja, deep fried puri, dogs, piss, more diesel and cigarette smoke leak from every pore of the city. In every direction, plump women sparkle in jewel-coloured saris, yellow and green rickshaws laden with flower garlands toot, shop fronts display their wares. Each event on the street, even if just a dropped bag, is observed by at least 50 other people, all jostling to get the best view of the drama. For the jetlagged or faint of heart, Delhi is a full scale assault.
Our day began in the Arrivals terminal, being picked up by a very charming but rather overenthusiastic cabbie called Raj (what else?), who cheered loudly and gave two thumbs up every time we pronounced a Hindi word correctly. After a quick stop off and a shower, we ventured our way out in the middle of Pahar Ganj, which by day sells mostly fruit and broken plastic tubs, but by night turns into a highway for cheap clothes, chillums and cigarettes. And a word about about Indian roads, which can only be compared to some kind of strange ecosystem rather than any sort of order. The darting rickshaws weave around buses like a bizarre facsimile of teeth-cleaning fish on giant whale sharks. There seems to be more people walking in the road than there are cars, who are all playing a permanent game of Frogger, walking straight across the road before pulling up a practised ten centimetres short of the oncoming traffic. 6 year olds ride horses bareback with a switch right across 16 lane crossroads. Or, not really ‘lanes’, as they are merely painted, mostly absent, meaningless lines on the road. Rather, the traffic (which consists of push-bicycles with 6 wooden tables strapped to the back, elephants, scooters with 3-6 people loaded on of whom at least two are on their phones, and rickshaws with at least one whole family inside and a stoned driver) swarms to fill any available gap in the road. The noise of car horns is deafening, as each driver is obliged to toot at least 9 times in any one small street. The toots are not the obnoxious “you just did something wrong” of English drivers, but a cheerful beep that means ‘I’m here, hello, I’m here, don’t drive into me’ or ‘I’m about to cut you up, no hard feelings, thank you kindly’.  Rickshaw rides are not only dangerous, but also a complete exercise in scamming too:
“This is Connaught place, my friend”
“Erm, I don’t think it is.”
“It is, it is. Very nice shopping, two floors.”
“We don’t want to shop, can we go to Connaught place please?”
“This is Connaught place, very nice bazaar, I show you”
“No, it isn’t Connaught place. Where are we?”
“Ohhhh, Connaught place no today, all police blocked. All blocked.”
Needless to say, Connaught place was most certainly open. We were also ushered into THE Official Government Tourist Information Centre of Tourism India at least five times, in four different locations. A few rides later, just when you think you’re getting the hang of haggling with rickshaws drivers, you will find yourself back to square one: “Nonononono, the agreed price was each.”

After an exhausting morning, we decided to at least try and do one ‘thing’, so we made our way to the Red Fort, an enormous barricade with the most beautiful architecture, now covered with rain marks and smears and rubbish. We joined a queue evidently constructed by the general public which folded back on itself, snaking around the courtyard before neatly looping around a tree. Any pushers-in were stared at by angry Indian matrons until they skulked to the back of the line. Feeling glad of our rightful queue spot, proceeding as was proper, I couldn’t help shake the feeling we too were receiving the glare of the angry mothers. Looking back on the queue, I found 1,000 pairs of eyes all staring at me. “Do I have something on my face?” I asked Jake. “Nope.” So we shuffled along a bit more…and a bit more…still more stares. I tried my best stoic face until we got in the compound (which was achingly beautiful, but my attention was soon diverted elsewhere) when we were bombarded by a sea of small children, whose parents all wanted our photograph with them. Unnerved, but unable to decline, we sat for their request. As we progressed around the courtyard, more and more people wanted our picture taken with them. Parents were pressing babies into my arms to photograph. Jake and I tried to slink off as much as we could and began making our way to the exit, but more and more people were crowding us for pictures. They were even trying to slyly snap us without our noticing from across the walkway. We asked several of them why this was so, but received no answer. Other (as in, two) foreign couples seemed to be undisturbed. Who knows? But we must have had our picture taken with at least 40 or 50 people. We tried to disappear as soon as we could.

The next few days we mostly spent hanging around with some local boys who lived up the alleyway from our hotel. They were nice enough, but were city boys through and through. We immediately received a bollocking about our clothing; even though I was wearing full length trousers and a long sleeved top, apparently I revealed too much shoulder. Clothes that are too ‘inside to outside’, or rather, see-through are totally offensive. When wearing light tshirts to combat the thick Delhi heat, this is quite difficult. We were told, in no short terms, that it was absolutely essential we wear more Indian clothes. We assumed a scam was in the making, but after Jacob got a kurta and I wore a salwar we received many less stares in the street. A couple of days later, seeing two western girls walking down the road in strappy tops we realised how much it really made them stick out. So from now on we are wearing a strange mix of western/indian clothes, but it seems to be standing us in good stead. Our new indian clothes soon got covered head to toe in bright pink powder paint, as we were dragged into the Ganesha festival passing by our street, where somehow found ourselves in a rickshaw crowded with people and handed small foil plates of sweet almonds. The festival was everything you might imagine an Indian street festival to be- fireworks being set off in the middle of the traffic, ornamented portable shrines blocking the entire road, people dancing to loud music being played from the back of a van. Anything that could be done to make the loudest and most nuisance possible, all with smiling and dancing and singing. As we walked back, faces and bodies a smudge of colour, people laughed and clapped our hands in the street, finding it very funny we’d been taken into the festival and been the targets of more paint than anyone else.

The local boys we made friends with, Pilota and his gang (and a fat black street dog called Kallu, which the boys affectionately sprayed window cleaner into the ears of)  adopted us for a few days. We mostly sat in their shop drinking chai from plastic cups, or beer on the rooftop. Sitting on the rooftops of Delhi is by far the best way to see the city. Looking out at the dilapidated buildings, we were lead to wonder if most of the buildings were derelict or merely never finished. The buildings are stacked like jutting boxes with smears of black grime down the side and covered in red spit from chewing tobacco (which looks unnervingly like blood, making it look like someone has been stabbed in every corner). Up on the rooftops at night, a full moon illuminated the city, and we could spy on the life below- people napped on their rooftops, tuktuks kept beeping in the road below for the whole night, cats slink around the maze of balconies. The roof terraces are a welcome oasis from the harried nuthouse that is the world below. This city is pushy, unnerving, dirty, sticky and smelly, but it really is a most fascinating place.