M
Y wife, Lynne, and I love to travel. We’re both 57 but are really teenagers at heart. We recently did a four-month backpacking trip and ended it off with five weeks in India.
We travel cheaply and see countries from a different perspective to most travellers of our age. There is so much to see and we decided that if we wanted time to relax or get a bit more insight into the places we visit, we would need to spend at least a few days in each. So we decided to visit fewer places but spend a longer time in the ones we enjoy.
We arrived in India in May and started off in Trivandrum in the south. May is the hottest time of year and we thought we’d be able to handle it, but the combination of heat and humidity was just too intense. It was like being in a steam bath. So we decided to go north to the foothills of the Himalayas, where it’s cooler.
After a few days of interesting and hairy travel, we arrived in Himachal Pradesh province, which was amazingly cool and clean — many places have signs warning of fines for spitting, littering and smoking in public. Shimla is a beautiful city built on the slopes and crests of hills, with interesting markets strung out along its streets and alleys. There are surprisingly few European tourists. The streets in the centre are for pedestrians only and it’s wonderful to walk around without the constant noise of hooters. We’d travelled to Shimla by overnight train from New Delhi, but train travel in India is another story.
From Shimla we took a scenic bus trip and spent some time in Manali. The old town has a lovely, hippy feel and there are lots of young backpackers around. There are plenty of good, cheap restaurants and beautiful walks on mountain paths. We hired a scooter and saw some of the countryside as well as the first part of the Rohtang Pass, which was unfortunately closed.
Rohtang is one of the great drives of the world. However, the area experiences many avalanches and rock falls and is open only for a few months of the year. Judging by what we saw of it, the three-day motorcycle ride from Manali to Leh in Kashmir would be an unforgettable life experience. One day …
From Manali we took the hairiest 19-hour bus ride of our lives to Srinagar in Kashmir. It felt like one long mountain-pass roller-coaster ride. The city of Srinagar is built around the Dal Lake and has hundreds of anchored houseboats and incredible views of the surrounding mountains. Kashmiri food is a little different — but also delicious.
From Srinagar we travelled by bus to Sonamarg, further north in the Kashmir Himalayas. It was like going back in time; it’s a place where people still harvest grain by hand. The village is surrounded by snow- capped peaks and there are a couple of glaciers just outside the town. There had been an avalanche a few weeks earlier which destroyed a hotel and some houses. The scenery was breathtaking but with Kashmir being a conflict zone, local government has all but collapsed and litter is becoming a problem.
The food everywhere in India is cheap and good. We eat a vegetarian diet while travelling there and have never had the dreaded “Delhi belly”. A vegetable thali is always a good choice and usually consists of two different curries, a naan bread, some pickles and sometimes a dessert, all served on what I knew as a “varkpan” in the army.
Bus and train transport are also cheap and you can usually negotiate a good price for a room, even in decent hotels. India is amazing. I can sit for hours being entertained by what’s going on around me, especially in places like Varanasi and New Delhi. It’s no wonder they advertise it as “Incredible India”. — © Graham Nelson
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