Bleary eyed and tired we awoke on Monday, hoping to quickly adjust to the minor time difference between Beijing and Delhi. It’s not the time difference so much as the red eye flight that made it challenging.
For the duration of our time in India, we hired a car and driver which is something that Christine & Courtney did while they were in India in January and had a great experience with. India can be a dangerous place at times and it is nice to have the security of knowing someone will always be there waiting to drive you wherever you wish. It is also incredibly cheap to do this and costs not more than $50 per person for the driver, car and hotels. Our drivers name is Keram but he said we can call him Mr. Ram because westerners apparently have trouble with the “Ke” part of his name. He has been driving tourists around for 17 years, speaks moderate English and has three children and a wife that he supports. He is an extremely kind gentleman and we feel grateful to have such a great guide.
Our first full day in Delhi and we had no specific plans. Our driver picked us up at the appointed time and took us to a restaurant for lunch. I suspect he has a list of restaurants that are a bit cleaner and more western friendly. The food was delicious and thus began our pattern of ordering most of our meals consisting of different curries and naan bread. Most places seem to tone down the spice levels for us, but on occasion we get the full force of local fare. (Right - Hovan and delicious Indian food).
After lunch we enjoyed touring some of the major sites of the city. We entrusted Mr. Ram to take us around to what he thought were highlights, all the while driving and pointing out interesting things. We first visited the India Gate and government houses of India. The government buildings were built by the British and they seem to be fastidiously maintained. The whole area is bright, clean and quite beautiful. It is here that we started having local Indians asking if they and their families could have their pictures taken with us. It happens often enough for us to feel like we are minor celebrities. The children in particular giggle and love to run up and say "hello" and "bye-bye" to us. (Left - India Gate)
After India Gate we visited the Tomb of Hamuyan, which is similar to the Taj Mahal, except he built it for himself and family, not just his wife. The property is in the midst of restoration and looks quite pleasant with large gardens. It is also a quiet haven in the middle of a huge city. Following this we visited Qutab Minar, which is a site of both finished and incomplete mosques, towers and other buildings. The place was rife with monkeys and parrots running over the ruins. After returning to the hotel, we enjoyed another delicious Indian dinner and then wandered the street near our hotel where there is a huge street market every Monday. (Right - Ruins of Qutab Minar).
The next day we rose fairly early and started our trek to Agra, which is home to the Taj Mahal and Agra Fort. The distance is only about 220 Km. but it took us 6 hours to make that distance. The driver has to be very careful as he is in a new car with customers. The road systems are absolutely insane. We came across stretch that was technically 2 lanes, but 5 lanes of vehicles driving forward. In fact, 3 of them across at points were large delivery trucks, so it wasn’t as though it was 5 lanes of motorcycles & scooters (of which there are many). Everyone is constantly jockeying for position, maneuvering and swerving without regard for traffic rules. And the horns … They never stop using the horns, it’s like a chorus of constant obnoxious sounds all around. You know when there are signs that say "Please avoid driving on the wrong side of the road" and "Lane driving is safe driving" that the driving is a little crazy! There are countless bikes, horses, camels, cows, goats, pigs, dogs, people, oxen sharing the road as well so it's a constant game of passing the slow truck that is passing the motor bike with a family of 6 on it, which is passing the camel, which is passing the oxen cart, which is passing the bike cart stacked high with chairs, which is passing the guy carrying a chandelier on his head... you get the idea! (Left - Camel walking down the highway)
We arrived at the Taj Mahal and our driver gave us some tips on how to avoid getting robbed or ripped off and sent us on our way. On our walk to the site many rickshaw drivers and guides tried to get us to hire them. One driver negotiated himself down from 100 rupees to 50, 40, 20, then 10 each (still 20), 10, then finally he offered us the 1 km ride for 5 rupees. We didn’t even say a word through this entire negotiation, and still opted to stretch our legs and walk.
The site is quite lovely and looks pretty much exactly as you see it in movies and pictures. The only really surprising thing is scale, as it turns out to be smaller than you would expect. The site is kept immaculately clean and you are required to put on booties or take your shoes off before going up to the actual structure. The visit was very pleasant and the only thing to mar the site is a river running along the backside that is littered with piles and piles of garbage. Following the Taj Mahal we visited the Agra Fort, which is where the local rulers sat, one of whom built the Taj as a burial site for his wife (the Taj Mahal is in sight of the fort). This site is built of red stone and is overrun with monkeys. It has a couple of wide buildings and intricate designs over the interior facades. (Right - Taj Mahal)
On our way back to Delhi the driver had to make an obligatory stop at a marble factory for us to look around. It is part of most tours in China and India to make these stops. We humoured him and visited the shop while the salesman tried to encourage us to buy engraved marble tables that were only $4,000-$10,000 as he put it. He must have assumed that a few thousand dollars to Canadians is change. We contemplated getting a 12 person table, but since we couldn’t decide if either of us had space in our bags for it and Christine refused to carry it, we passed. He did refer us on to his neighbour who owned the worlds largest Topaz that was not for sale. Apparently it was featured in the James Bond movie Octopussy and Roger Moore was actually in his store for the scene in the movie. It is incredible if you travel the world how often 007 comes up. (Left - Us and the worlds largest topaz not for sale).
The next day we got up early to strike out for Jim Corbett Park in northern India. The Park is only about 320 km from Delhi as our driver indicated, however it took over 9 hours to make the trek (a combination of traffic and at times bad roads). The ride was enjoyable as we got to see cities, villages and people as we passed along. Christine took some great everyday shots of the people doing regular activities. Along the way we noticed that the farmers took really good care of their properties, even when they abutted the highway. Typically we have found that almost everywhere there is lots of trash strewn about the ground, with the exception of around farms and in some of the biggest tourist attractions. It is interesting that the Indian people are well dressed, have clean clothes, shops and homes, but as soon as they are on the street garbage just gets tossed everywhere. (Right - Indian people riding in the back of a tractor)
When we arrived at Ramnagar also known as Corbett City, we checked into our hotel. The hotel is not exactly up to North American standards of cleanliness, service, etc., but we have both been in worse places. It was funny though, our driver, looking out for us, went in and checked out a couple of rooms and when we were looking at it he asked if it was okay. We were going to say it would be alright when he bumped my arm. I wasn’t sure if it was an accident or not, so I looked at Christine to see if she saw anything. He moved behind the hotel clerk and shook his head indicating we should say no, so we did. He smiled and then took us to another, “better” room. If there was a difference between the two rooms, we couldn’t really see it. Our driver was beaming though, as if he had discovered a hidden jewel. It was sweet that he was looking out for our interests, so we said the room was just great. (Left - Our hotel in Ramnagar).
The electricity in the city is spotty at best, as is it in many places all over India. Our little flashlights came in handy during these brownouts. At night the hotel had a generator they powered up so that we can have the lights on and use the hot water heater to heat water for the shower. Many people in the town have generators so it can get quite noisy at night with the generators running all down the street.
That night we met with a local tour company and made arrangements to visit the park. We arranged to go on a morning jeep ride with a guide and to take an afternoon Elephant trek in a different section of the park. The price was very reasonable and the service was very good. The only glitch was that in order to get a same day permit to visit the park, we would have to line up early in the morning as they are given out first come first serve. Also, we had to go in person as the park would not sell permits to locals (in case they would scalp them), so you had to show your documents that demonstrated you were an outside tourist. This meant an early morning for me, as we figured there was no point in two of us getting up early.
The next morning at 4:00am I got up and met the tour operator to go to the permit place. He had some of his staff reserving a spot for me all night, so there was someone standing at the very front of the line that swapped places with me right before the office opened. I am estimating that there was more than 20 tourists in line with all the guides standing off to the side. As soon as the doors opened we rushed forward, showed we were tourists, got our forms, had our guides fill them out and then got our permits. I counted that 9 permits were given out, so there must have been some unhappy people from the line. After everything was sorted out I came back to the hotel and picked up Christine to head off on our tour. We had a big jeep just for us, and it came with one driver and one tour guide. I wouldn’t exactly call Bobby a tour guide, he was a government employee that was required to be with us. Apparently if the driver doesn’t speak English and there are foreigners in the jeep, it is required that an English speaking government employee attend.
By the time we reached the designated section of the park it was 6:30 and the gates were just opening up. Jim Corbett Park is a national park that was designated so that it could protect the Tiger population in the area. People come from all over in hopes of seeing this king of the jungle, but they are very elusive and not often seen. The park is very large and only about 1/3 is open to the public and we were told there are only 130 tigers in the whole thing.
As we started driving through the park Bobby and the driver began pointing out things of interest. We spotted several groups of deer, the tigers food source. There were lots of tiger tracks and even the clear tracks of a very large python. Bobby had a true trackers eye and he had the driver follow tracks at two separate locations he knew that the tiger was in the bush area, but by law we were not allowed out of the jeep. There was one spot we circled back to 3 times and we knew Bobby had a fix on the area of a tiger, but it wasn’t visible from the road. It was easy to see lots of bird specimens, predator birds, black storks, peacocks and so on. After about an hour and a half the sun was well up and we stopped at a little camp and cafeteria in the park for a bite to eat. There were lots of people around and nobody had spotted a tiger that morning. As we were eating there were lots of monkeys around trying to steal things from the vehicles. Thankfully Bobby had us take everything with us. At one point I pointed out a monkey to Christine who was sneaking up on all the tables. With incredible speed he darted between a few people, leaped over another and tried to snatch a plateful of French toast. Food went flying in all directions from everyone and the people were all looking around to see what happened. In the confusion the monkey grabbed someone’s dropped sandwich and made for the trees. (Left - Spotted dove)
After the break we got back on the trail, but you could tell that the likelihood of seeing a tiger was small because they had bedded down for the day. We drove around for another hour and a half seeing more minor sites and enjoying the beauty and peace of the park. As we were making our way out Bobby told us that it was an average day in the park and you could tell he was sorry we didn’t see anything spectacular. Then we came across a parked car and two men staring into the bush. We stopped and could hear a heard of wild elephants munching just behind the trees. At points we could see a elephant trunk snatch more branches or the top of a head, but nothing more. Then more and more jeeps stopped and the elephants shied back from the noise of people talking. When most of the jeeps had left, Bobby had our driver take an illegal road to a watering hole, hoping the elephants would show up. When they didn’t we returned to the road and waited patiently for a bit. By this point it was only us and the car, everyone else had gone. Suddenly a large elephant emerged on the road and stopped no more than 15 feet from Christine and I. We could see at least 2 others waiting to come out, but the first was checking to see if it was safe. He stared at the two of us for about a minute or a minute and a half before a noise scared him back into the bush. Then, after about 5 more minutes it began. The whole herd began to slowly cross the road. There were 7 full sized adults, one that looked like a teenager and a baby. The baby was well sheltered under moms legs and was incredibly cute. They marched across the road in single file, just like in the Disney cartoon, The Jungle Book. The whole experience lasted about 15 minutes and was pure joy. On our way out of the park Bobby told us it was not an average day in the park. We may not have seen the tiger, but the park was beautiful and the wild elephants made the whole journey worthwhile.
Below - Elephant Parade
For the duration of our time in India, we hired a car and driver which is something that Christine & Courtney did while they were in India in January and had a great experience with. India can be a dangerous place at times and it is nice to have the security of knowing someone will always be there waiting to drive you wherever you wish. It is also incredibly cheap to do this and costs not more than $50 per person for the driver, car and hotels. Our drivers name is Keram but he said we can call him Mr. Ram because westerners apparently have trouble with the “Ke” part of his name. He has been driving tourists around for 17 years, speaks moderate English and has three children and a wife that he supports. He is an extremely kind gentleman and we feel grateful to have such a great guide.
Our first full day in Delhi and we had no specific plans. Our driver picked us up at the appointed time and took us to a restaurant for lunch. I suspect he has a list of restaurants that are a bit cleaner and more western friendly. The food was delicious and thus began our pattern of ordering most of our meals consisting of different curries and naan bread. Most places seem to tone down the spice levels for us, but on occasion we get the full force of local fare. (Right - Hovan and delicious Indian food).
After lunch we enjoyed touring some of the major sites of the city. We entrusted Mr. Ram to take us around to what he thought were highlights, all the while driving and pointing out interesting things. We first visited the India Gate and government houses of India. The government buildings were built by the British and they seem to be fastidiously maintained. The whole area is bright, clean and quite beautiful. It is here that we started having local Indians asking if they and their families could have their pictures taken with us. It happens often enough for us to feel like we are minor celebrities. The children in particular giggle and love to run up and say "hello" and "bye-bye" to us. (Left - India Gate)
After India Gate we visited the Tomb of Hamuyan, which is similar to the Taj Mahal, except he built it for himself and family, not just his wife. The property is in the midst of restoration and looks quite pleasant with large gardens. It is also a quiet haven in the middle of a huge city. Following this we visited Qutab Minar, which is a site of both finished and incomplete mosques, towers and other buildings. The place was rife with monkeys and parrots running over the ruins. After returning to the hotel, we enjoyed another delicious Indian dinner and then wandered the street near our hotel where there is a huge street market every Monday. (Right - Ruins of Qutab Minar).
The next day we rose fairly early and started our trek to Agra, which is home to the Taj Mahal and Agra Fort. The distance is only about 220 Km. but it took us 6 hours to make that distance. The driver has to be very careful as he is in a new car with customers. The road systems are absolutely insane. We came across stretch that was technically 2 lanes, but 5 lanes of vehicles driving forward. In fact, 3 of them across at points were large delivery trucks, so it wasn’t as though it was 5 lanes of motorcycles & scooters (of which there are many). Everyone is constantly jockeying for position, maneuvering and swerving without regard for traffic rules. And the horns … They never stop using the horns, it’s like a chorus of constant obnoxious sounds all around. You know when there are signs that say "Please avoid driving on the wrong side of the road" and "Lane driving is safe driving" that the driving is a little crazy! There are countless bikes, horses, camels, cows, goats, pigs, dogs, people, oxen sharing the road as well so it's a constant game of passing the slow truck that is passing the motor bike with a family of 6 on it, which is passing the camel, which is passing the oxen cart, which is passing the bike cart stacked high with chairs, which is passing the guy carrying a chandelier on his head... you get the idea! (Left - Camel walking down the highway)We arrived at the Taj Mahal and our driver gave us some tips on how to avoid getting robbed or ripped off and sent us on our way. On our walk to the site many rickshaw drivers and guides tried to get us to hire them. One driver negotiated himself down from 100 rupees to 50, 40, 20, then 10 each (still 20), 10, then finally he offered us the 1 km ride for 5 rupees. We didn’t even say a word through this entire negotiation, and still opted to stretch our legs and walk.
The site is quite lovely and looks pretty much exactly as you see it in movies and pictures. The only really surprising thing is scale, as it turns out to be smaller than you would expect. The site is kept immaculately clean and you are required to put on booties or take your shoes off before going up to the actual structure. The visit was very pleasant and the only thing to mar the site is a river running along the backside that is littered with piles and piles of garbage. Following the Taj Mahal we visited the Agra Fort, which is where the local rulers sat, one of whom built the Taj as a burial site for his wife (the Taj Mahal is in sight of the fort). This site is built of red stone and is overrun with monkeys. It has a couple of wide buildings and intricate designs over the interior facades. (Right - Taj Mahal)
On our way back to Delhi the driver had to make an obligatory stop at a marble factory for us to look around. It is part of most tours in China and India to make these stops. We humoured him and visited the shop while the salesman tried to encourage us to buy engraved marble tables that were only $4,000-$10,000 as he put it. He must have assumed that a few thousand dollars to Canadians is change. We contemplated getting a 12 person table, but since we couldn’t decide if either of us had space in our bags for it and Christine refused to carry it, we passed. He did refer us on to his neighbour who owned the worlds largest Topaz that was not for sale. Apparently it was featured in the James Bond movie Octopussy and Roger Moore was actually in his store for the scene in the movie. It is incredible if you travel the world how often 007 comes up. (Left - Us and the worlds largest topaz not for sale).
The next day we got up early to strike out for Jim Corbett Park in northern India. The Park is only about 320 km from Delhi as our driver indicated, however it took over 9 hours to make the trek (a combination of traffic and at times bad roads). The ride was enjoyable as we got to see cities, villages and people as we passed along. Christine took some great everyday shots of the people doing regular activities. Along the way we noticed that the farmers took really good care of their properties, even when they abutted the highway. Typically we have found that almost everywhere there is lots of trash strewn about the ground, with the exception of around farms and in some of the biggest tourist attractions. It is interesting that the Indian people are well dressed, have clean clothes, shops and homes, but as soon as they are on the street garbage just gets tossed everywhere. (Right - Indian people riding in the back of a tractor)
When we arrived at Ramnagar also known as Corbett City, we checked into our hotel. The hotel is not exactly up to North American standards of cleanliness, service, etc., but we have both been in worse places. It was funny though, our driver, looking out for us, went in and checked out a couple of rooms and when we were looking at it he asked if it was okay. We were going to say it would be alright when he bumped my arm. I wasn’t sure if it was an accident or not, so I looked at Christine to see if she saw anything. He moved behind the hotel clerk and shook his head indicating we should say no, so we did. He smiled and then took us to another, “better” room. If there was a difference between the two rooms, we couldn’t really see it. Our driver was beaming though, as if he had discovered a hidden jewel. It was sweet that he was looking out for our interests, so we said the room was just great. (Left - Our hotel in Ramnagar).The electricity in the city is spotty at best, as is it in many places all over India. Our little flashlights came in handy during these brownouts. At night the hotel had a generator they powered up so that we can have the lights on and use the hot water heater to heat water for the shower. Many people in the town have generators so it can get quite noisy at night with the generators running all down the street.
That night we met with a local tour company and made arrangements to visit the park. We arranged to go on a morning jeep ride with a guide and to take an afternoon Elephant trek in a different section of the park. The price was very reasonable and the service was very good. The only glitch was that in order to get a same day permit to visit the park, we would have to line up early in the morning as they are given out first come first serve. Also, we had to go in person as the park would not sell permits to locals (in case they would scalp them), so you had to show your documents that demonstrated you were an outside tourist. This meant an early morning for me, as we figured there was no point in two of us getting up early.
The next morning at 4:00am I got up and met the tour operator to go to the permit place. He had some of his staff reserving a spot for me all night, so there was someone standing at the very front of the line that swapped places with me right before the office opened. I am estimating that there was more than 20 tourists in line with all the guides standing off to the side. As soon as the doors opened we rushed forward, showed we were tourists, got our forms, had our guides fill them out and then got our permits. I counted that 9 permits were given out, so there must have been some unhappy people from the line. After everything was sorted out I came back to the hotel and picked up Christine to head off on our tour. We had a big jeep just for us, and it came with one driver and one tour guide. I wouldn’t exactly call Bobby a tour guide, he was a government employee that was required to be with us. Apparently if the driver doesn’t speak English and there are foreigners in the jeep, it is required that an English speaking government employee attend.
By the time we reached the designated section of the park it was 6:30 and the gates were just opening up. Jim Corbett Park is a national park that was designated so that it could protect the Tiger population in the area. People come from all over in hopes of seeing this king of the jungle, but they are very elusive and not often seen. The park is very large and only about 1/3 is open to the public and we were told there are only 130 tigers in the whole thing.
As we started driving through the park Bobby and the driver began pointing out things of interest. We spotted several groups of deer, the tigers food source. There were lots of tiger tracks and even the clear tracks of a very large python. Bobby had a true trackers eye and he had the driver follow tracks at two separate locations he knew that the tiger was in the bush area, but by law we were not allowed out of the jeep. There was one spot we circled back to 3 times and we knew Bobby had a fix on the area of a tiger, but it wasn’t visible from the road. It was easy to see lots of bird specimens, predator birds, black storks, peacocks and so on. After about an hour and a half the sun was well up and we stopped at a little camp and cafeteria in the park for a bite to eat. There were lots of people around and nobody had spotted a tiger that morning. As we were eating there were lots of monkeys around trying to steal things from the vehicles. Thankfully Bobby had us take everything with us. At one point I pointed out a monkey to Christine who was sneaking up on all the tables. With incredible speed he darted between a few people, leaped over another and tried to snatch a plateful of French toast. Food went flying in all directions from everyone and the people were all looking around to see what happened. In the confusion the monkey grabbed someone’s dropped sandwich and made for the trees. (Left - Spotted dove)After the break we got back on the trail, but you could tell that the likelihood of seeing a tiger was small because they had bedded down for the day. We drove around for another hour and a half seeing more minor sites and enjoying the beauty and peace of the park. As we were making our way out Bobby told us that it was an average day in the park and you could tell he was sorry we didn’t see anything spectacular. Then we came across a parked car and two men staring into the bush. We stopped and could hear a heard of wild elephants munching just behind the trees. At points we could see a elephant trunk snatch more branches or the top of a head, but nothing more. Then more and more jeeps stopped and the elephants shied back from the noise of people talking. When most of the jeeps had left, Bobby had our driver take an illegal road to a watering hole, hoping the elephants would show up. When they didn’t we returned to the road and waited patiently for a bit. By this point it was only us and the car, everyone else had gone. Suddenly a large elephant emerged on the road and stopped no more than 15 feet from Christine and I. We could see at least 2 others waiting to come out, but the first was checking to see if it was safe. He stared at the two of us for about a minute or a minute and a half before a noise scared him back into the bush. Then, after about 5 more minutes it began. The whole herd began to slowly cross the road. There were 7 full sized adults, one that looked like a teenager and a baby. The baby was well sheltered under moms legs and was incredibly cute. They marched across the road in single file, just like in the Disney cartoon, The Jungle Book. The whole experience lasted about 15 minutes and was pure joy. On our way out of the park Bobby told us it was not an average day in the park. We may not have seen the tiger, but the park was beautiful and the wild elephants made the whole journey worthwhile.
Below - Elephant Parade
In the afternoon Christine and I went on an elephant safari ride. With an elephant you can't cover nearly the same ground as a Jeep, but the experience is quite fun. The only part we didn't enjoy was when the driver would hit the elephant on the head with his metal rod or jab him to get the elephant going. They are such gentle giants and we felt sorry on the occasions that it happened. (Left - Hovan and the elephant we rode)We spent about 2 hours on the elephant and wandered through the bush pretty much wherever we wanted to go. The elephant bowls over any small trees, shrubs and branches in its way. It kept grabbing grass and leaves as it walked and ate pretty much the whole time we were riding it.
While we were wandering through the forest we continued to come across more monkeys and a different type of deer. The new things we saw were the largest, freakiest looking spiders I have ever laid eyes on (too many of them) and also a pair of jackels that were on the hunt as the sun was going down.
In the end we didn't manage to see a tiger in the park, but we had a great time all the same. The Jeep ride was lots of fun and the elephant ride was a nice loping pace that allowed us a more intimate experience with the forest.
Soon it will be back to Delhi and then a very early morning plane ride to Kathmadu, where we will start our trek through the Himalaya's. Christine has been waiting for this moment for many years, so we're excited about this next leg. We will be trekking for about 2 1/2 weeks, and obviously there is no internet up in the mountains. We may squeeze in one more blog, but if not, you will all just have to wait with bated breath for the next addition.
Cheers to all,
Christine and Hovan
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Oliphaunts!
ReplyDeleteHehe great description of the traffic with everything passing everything!! Reminded me of song about the old woman who swallowed a fly.
ReplyDelete