Travelling north for Holi

The national holiday for Holi and the holiday for Good Friday gave me a unique opportunity to do some independent travelling in India over a slightly longer period of time. The other members of the group had decided to go to Goa, but with escalating prices I decided that I did not want to pay over the odds to go somewhere that I was not really that fussed about. So, with the reluctant acceptance of Joan at Sannam S4 who was concerned about my welfare, I travelled north on my own to McLeod Ganj, home of the Tibetan Government in exile, and Amritsar.

Leaving Delhi was, strangely enough, logistically the most difficult part of the trip. One of my work colleagues, Shilpi, very kindly offered to take me to her house which was near to the bus pick up point. From there her uncle took me to the bus stop on the back of a motorbike. When I found the bus I found that the service had changed so that I would take a bus to a bigger bus station where I would take another bus onto McLeod Ganj. I would have been a bit concerned about this, but as there were other passengers going to the same place it seemed to be ok. At the bigger bus station those of us going to McLeod Ganj were told to wait for about 10 minutes for the other bus to arrive. Inevitably as this is India it was actually closer to an hour. But the bus did come and, although I was not in the seat initially booked on, I was at last on my way to McLeod Ganj and my journey had begun.

I arrived in McLeod Ganj at 6am the following morning. I had got some sleep, but I was still quite tired. I was staying at the Hotel Mount View which was a short walk from the bus station and they generously allowed me to sleep in another room until my room was ready for check in at 12 noon. They were telling the truth about the view, with the mountains ascending behind the hotel and clearly visible from my room balcony.

McLeod Ganj is both a popular backpacker destination and the centre of a long and protracted political struggle. Those twin roles go hand in hand and that is what makes it such a fascinating destination. On the streets there are a number of stalls selling scarfs, flags and other memorabilia to western tourists. But at the heart there is a serious struggle for the freedom of the Tibetan people and the Dalai Lama is a political leader with objectives like any other, even if the means are different. Around the town I found posters and graffiti pledging support for the Tibetan cause, while there were monuments to those who had died in the freedom struggle.

If I’m honest the museum on the Tibetan freedom struggle was a slight disappointment. Half of it was closed for no apparent reason, while the rest of it seemed to be more propaganda than being in any way informative. It was filled with artefacts which were attempting to prove that Tibet should be free. There was a coin collection with a sign claiming that this proved that Tibet was an independent nation. But I think it is fair assumption that most visitors already agreed that Tibet should be free and would have been far more interested in artefacts from the freedom struggle itself. I understand that they are engaged in a propaganda war because other weapons are not available, but I just didn’t think it was helpful to their cause to present the museum in this way.

During the day I saw a little cinema showing English films and so decided to go in the evening to see Django Unchained. I was a bit concerned that they might not let me in with my bag as I’d been told this was common practice in India, so went back to put all my stuff in my hotel first.  I should not have been so worried. In reality it was just a guy with a room, a projector and a laptop on which he had downloaded films almost certainly illegally. It was virtually a private screening and there was only two Americans in there. But full marks for entrepreneurial spirit and it was good to see someone providing a useful service to tourists without trying to rip people off. I also don’t think Tarantino will lose too much sleep about pirated copies of his film being shown to a very small audience in Mcloed Ganj.

The next morning I got up to go on a hiking trek up the mountain. I’d booked it with a tour company the day before and so met my guide for the ascent at 8.30am. I had been struggling a bit with a cold since I left Delhi, but I decided to do it to try to make the most of my time away. Quite soon I realised that it would be a tough days walking. There was a dog that followed us part way up which was nice, but the ground under foot was very uneven and the 200 Rs shoes that I had bought in Old Delhi offered very little grip. The lack of exercise that I have done since arriving in Delhi did not help matters and I had to stop for a water break every 20 minutes. The scenery, however, was stunning. Dharamshala is home to the highest international cricket ground in the world, but even after an hours walk it looked tiny from how far up I was. The guide kept telling me that it was only 20 minutes longer, but, unsurprisingly given the general Indian lack of a concept of time, this was an overambitious estimation.

After 3 and a half hours I finally reached the top. From I could see snow which is something that I had not expected in India. It was very cold and I was glad of the chai which was being served a café at the top.  I had expected the downward journey to be easy in comparison. I could not have been more wrong. Within ten minutes of leaving the top the heavens opened with not rain, but hailstones. With the guide I tried to huddle under a tree, but it was pointless. I was soaked through and freezing very quickly. My shoes, which had been unhelpful going up, were now positively useless as I was trying not to slip over the wet ground. For every step there was a decision as to whether to take the pain of the sharp rocks or wade through the water that had now melted from the hailstones. The hailstones turned to rain and after a couple of hours stopped completely. But by the time I got to the bottom I was wet, cold and exhausted. Yes I was glad that I had done it, but it would have been so much more comfortable in better weather.

The following morning, after buying an emergency jumper and putting my wet clothes in plastic bags at the bottom of my rucksack, I set off for Amiritsar. This involved taking a rickshaw to Dharamshala and then a local bus to the regional transport hub of Pathankot, where I could get another local bus to Amritsar. Local buses are very different to the private tourist bus that I used to get to Mcleod Ganj. They are much more basic and crowded, with people getting on and off on a regular basis. I was sitting near the door on the first one I was on and there was a leak from the door so that every time someone opened it to get on I would get wet. But overall, despite being warned about them, the local buses were not too bad. The views between Dharamshala and Pathankot were amazing and it was good that I had taken the journey in the day. I had not felt like doing much that day after my exertions the day before so it was good to sit and watch the environment change around me. By the time I got to Amritsar it was too late to go to see the Waga border changing of the guards. But I’ve since been told that it can be an uncomfortable experience as they are very hot on security so I am not too disappointed to have missed it.

Arriving in Amritsar I took a cycle rickshaw to my hotel. Unlike in Delhi these are uncovered and so I felt a lot more exposed on what is essentially the back of a bike going against the traffic.

From my hotel I visited the Golden Temple. This Sikh Temple is one of the most popular and sacred sites in India. Before entering I had to remove my shoes and covered my head. The temple is surrounded by water, with the gold reflecting in the water which is particularly beautiful at sunset. Around me there were thousands of people engrossed in their own deeply personal and religious activities. In a way I felt that as a tourist I was interrupting simply by being there. Like I could not be a fly on the wall and just observe, because by entering this very spiritual place I was contaminating it with my cynicism. That is not to say that I felt unwelcome, but just a little uncomfortable sharing something that was clearly so important to so many, but for me was, in effect, just another tourist site to take pictures of and move on.

The following morning I visited the site of the Jallianwala Bagh massacre. The massacre was the darkest day in Anglo-Indian relations as, at the height of the independence struggle, the British General Reginald Dyer ordered soldiers to shoot at a crowd of peaceful protesters. It has now been turned into a garden in memory of the protesters who died that day. There are few times when I am embarrassed to be British. This was one. I considered whether it would be worth feigning an American accent if anyone tried to speak to me. I quickly rejected this idea because I can’t do accents and this would have only made things worse. As it was the people around me were not unfriendly and most just wanted pictures with me. I was not really in the mood for pictures, but hardly felt I could refuse in the circumstances of where I was.

Overall it had been a good trip and I had seen a lot. I got back on Saturday night completely exhausted and was glad I had a day to recover for going to work on Monday. I’m a bit behind in terms of updating my blog and have done a lot since returning from Amritsar. But until my next entry please check out the blog of my fellow intern, Sam, if you want to get another perspective on life in India.

Test Match Special

Hockey is officially the national sport of India. This is clearly complete nonsense. In reality cricket is treated like a quasi-religion by the Indian people. Anyone from a kid on the street or a rickshaw driver to the richest businessman in Mumbai will have something to say on the subject. If cricket is treated like a religion, then Sachin Tendulkar is the religion’s deity. In what is likely to be his last year as a professional cricketer I was lucky enough to see him bat in front of a packed Delhi crowd last Sunday.

Getting to that point, almost inevitably, was not quite so easy. Tickets to the test match between India and Australia were advertised at Rs.100. However, what was not advertised was where to get them from. So on Saturday I went to the stadium hoping to get a ticket on the door. I asked a policeman where the ticket office was and he directed me three hundred metres down the road. I think that was very much an Indian three hundred metres, because it ended up being closer to 2km away. The ticket office was actually in a bank and there was a massive queue outside. Fortunately I met some Australian fans and they told me there was a policy of pushing foreigners to the front of the queue. After having to pay significantly more at the Taj Mahal and other places as a foreigner it was nice to see the discrimination work in my favour for once.

So I got my ticket and took a cycle rickshaw back to the stadium. There I found that I could not get in 

because I had my bag and my camera. I can almost understand that bags might be a security threat; even if they do have scanners at every metro station so could have them outside the stadium. But the rules against cameras are self-defeating and seem utterly ridiculous. If you are trying to market the experience of going to the cricket, and this should be the aim because test match crowds are starting to dwindle in India, surely it is a good idea to let people take pictures of them enjoying themselves so they can show their friends. These days when most people have a camera on their phone anyway it is completely unenforceable if the aim is to stop people taking pictures. I understand that there are rights issues involved, but surely taking a picture or video from the stand does not really compare with the pictures from the TV broadcast.

I gave the ticket away to a kid on the street. It certainly seemed to make his day. Perhaps naively I hope that the kid will be inspired by his day at the cricket and be inspired to train hard and one day play for India. Probably more realistically, if a little less romantic, he then sold the ticket at a highly inflated price on the street. But I will assume the former because I’m unlikely to be proven otherwise.

With the other guys I then returned to the stadium on Sunday. However, after making our way to the ticket office we found that as it was in a bank and it was a Sunday it was closed. So we had the almost unbelievable situation of not being able to buy a ticket because the ticket office was closed on the day of the match. There were Australian fans walking round the stadium trying to work out how to buy tickets. Really the BCCI need to sort their ticketing system out because it not fair for fans to travel all the way from Australia for a match and not be able to get tickets because they do not seem to be available anywhere.

So instead we were forced to get a touted ticket. In order to do this there was the rather amusing experience of trying to negotiate a price. We were on an auto rickshaw and so was the seller, so that we were negotiating a price while travelling side by side down the road. We agreed on a price of Rs.500 each which wasn’t too bad, but clearly considerably more expensive than the original price. I would not normally ever get a touted ticket, but if they do not provide you with the opportunity to buy one legally, what choice do you have?

So we eventually arrived at the stadium at lunch with Australia struggling at 90-5 in their second innings. Very quickly after lunch things got worse for our Australian friends. The ball was turning square on a bowler friendly wicket. Steve Smith was bowled and out came Mitchell Johnson. Sadly the Barmy Army were not there to give him a rousing welcome. Next ball he was also out bowled through the gate and Jadeja was on a hattrick. As it happened Peter Siddle kept it out well and played a terrific little attacking innings to get Australia up to beyond 150 which on a turning wicket might have been just about competitive. Australia lost their final five wickets in just over an hour. I had to explain to Harry, who had not been to a Test match before, that test cricket was not always like this.

India’s openers came out with attacking intent and raced along at more than 6 an over for the first 10 overs. In a test match that was remarkable and it knocked the stuffing out of the Australians. It has been a very long tour for them and they were looking a little weary in the field. Vijay was bowled, but it made very little difference as Pujara took the attack to the Australians. It got to the stage where it was clear that India were going to win and the crowd wanted to see Sachin bat. Kohli was dropped and the Indian crowd were visibly disappointed that their own batsman was still in. They started chanting ‘We want Sachin!’. I actually felt sorry for Kohli and it almost felt as if he gave his wicket away in the end to give the crowd what they wanted. But on the other hand I was in agreement with the rest of the Indian supporters. We were all really there to see the great man bat.

Out Tendulkar walked to the biggest cheer I’ve ever heard at a cricket ground. Getting towards the end of his career he might be tempted to retire, but that kind of ovation would make anyone want to carry on. He scored his first run edging the ball down the leg side. It was Sachin, so we can only assume it was deliberate. But Tendulkar is not a God, even if he is considered that way by the Indian people. He is human, and age is catching up with him like the rest of us. His centuries have dried up in the last couple of years and bowlers do not fear him as they once did. When he got out for 1 silence filled the stadium. I remember when I was in Ghana I was told that a member of the crowd at a football game had died because they were so shocked that the opposition had died. I did not believe that story, but the deathly silence when Tendulkar was given out made it seem almost plausible had I heard something similar had happened in this stadium.

Despite a little wobble India won pretty comfortably in the end. A 4-0 win has come as a massive relief to a cricket loving nation stung by the recent defeat to England. Whilst England and Australia have had contrasting results against India I would be careful not to read too much into it as we approach the Ashes this year. Australia’s troubles against spin will not be as much of a problem in English conditions. Indeed, the Aussie quicks (with the exception of Mitchell Johnson who was as awful as ever) looked pretty good in Indian conditions and will be a real threat under England’s cloudy skies.

This will not be my last experience watching cricket in India. I’ve booked tickets to the IPL match on Saturday between Delhi Daredevils and Rajasthan Royals which should be an interesting experience, if utterly different to the test match. My next blog will be on my trip during Holi. I got back on Sunday, but have only just got round to writing this one so don’t expect another entry too quickly.