NOW AND ZEN It’s 30 years later than planned, but PAUL OGDEN finally discovers inner peace amid the many wonders of India’s Golden Triangle
AS a student, it was my dream to backpack around India, taking one of those long, lazy university summer holidays to explore exotic places I’d only glimpsed in films.
I was going to spend weeks travelling on rickety trains, eating unpronounceable street food, wading through humanity in my sandals to tick off landmarks and, ultimately, find my inner zen, man.
It never happened and now, 30 years later, the rickety trains would do little for my back, I prefer fine dining to street food and believe private tour bus is really the only way to travel – but I still wear the same sandals.
And when at last I did make it to India, I found you don’t need weeks, just five days to see some of the country’s most impressive sights – and at the end of it all I really did find my inner zen.
But you need to do it right. Take some internal flights, make sure you stay in fantastic hotels so you are well rested on this assault course of the senses, and employ guides who can laser beam in on the ultimate India debut destination – the Golden Triangle.
Jet Airways’ new direct flight from Manchester Airport to Mumbai has joined the norths of England and India to provide a less timeconsuming route to the country.
From there you can experience the famed Golden Triangle cities of Delhi, Agra and Jaipur.
If you are lucky enough to be able to book a Premiere seat, you can kick back with a masala tea from their Sky Chai service, great food and a couple of Bollywood films to soak up the 10 or so hours’ flight, made that bit more relaxing with an electric massager in the lie-flat seat.
It is a couple of hours’ flight to Delhi from Mumbai, so it is well worth an overnight stop-off in India’s economic capital, the setting for Danny Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire.
Glass and steel skyscrapers thrust through a haze of tuk-tuk fumes from a seemingly endless patchwork of teeming streets.
Don’t miss the Gateway of India, an Asian take on London’s Marble Arch and a memorial to British colonial rule overlooking the ocean.
But much more Mumbai is Dhobi Ghat, supposedly the world’s biggest open-air laundry, where hundreds of workers slap and squeeze the city’s smog from countless clothes and rainbow rails of saris and sheets flap in the sea breeze.
To get the best out of a whistle stop visit, you need excellent guides. Ours, from Tamarind Global, spoke perfect English and, despite our tight timetable, found little points of interest over and above the must-sees that gave a real insight into Indian life, such as the ritual of dabbawalas turning up in the city at midday to distribute lunchtime tiffin boxes to the hundreds of thousands of office workers. It beats a Tesco meal deal!
If Mumbai is money, Delhi is democracy. The capital is the political centre of the country, and has been since at least Mughal times. You can see that legacy in some of the awesome architecture, from the atmospheric Red Fort, with doors large enough for royal elephants to lumber through, to the Qutab Minar, the tallest brick minaret in the world.
But just as visually stunning is a drive through Chandni Chowk, the market area of Old Delhi which is a glimpse back a few hundred years.