I wanted to do an insightful blog post about India but I almost don’t know what to say! I’m now off on the Everest Base Camp Trek so wanted to write something before Nepal gets too into my veins and India is just a dream…

India was… Exactly as I expected and nothing like what I had been told. I think that juxtapositions will follow me around on this trip. Beauty born out of the dust. Garishness neighbouring the simple.

To put it simply… The roads were crazy aka. different, but we didn’t have any problems. It worked, it flowed, better than it does at home. Tuk tuks are awesome. As Sue Perkins was told, as described in her book East Of Croydon: “Oh, my God, India! The colours, Sue! The colours! The colours are incredible.” The colours are incredible. On my second night in Jaipur I walked past a spice stall and in a giant Hessian sack was a powder (chilli?) so red, literally the reddest red I have ever seen in my life. I had to do a double take to check I was actually seeing what I was seeing. It was… Very, very deep red.

It took me a day to take to Jaipur. When we got there, we had just arrived from lovely, green, peaceful Pushkar, and Jaipur was a loud, dusty, unrelenting monstrosity 😂 (It’s not actually that bad). I was taken aback to find beautiful, stunning fabrics and sweets and delicious chai on those dusty streets – how could such simply perfect things be created in this amber jungle? (I now know that Jaipur is around the 14th most polluted city in the world, something our guide failed to mention!).

Also in Jaipur we visited the World’s Largest Sundial. Who knew! It is precise to two seconds and was built about 300 years ago. Magnificent!

Love India? People who have been to India say they love India. I didn’t love it. I didn’t hate it. I probably wouldn’t go back to anywhere we went, except maybe Agra. Maybe it was too much of a whirlwind to take in. It was basically cities and travel days – I wasn’t bowled over by it. India is the second most populous country in the world (after China). Poverty percentages vary article to article, but basically they have a large number of people living in poverty or “extreme” poverty. How can you love that? Litter, although not in massive quantities, lines every street. Pollution is generally very bad. Sewage is pumped directly into rivers (hello river Ganges). I didn’t find any of that very endearing.

However, if you want to see perseverance personified, go to India. Women toiling in the hot sun in the fields, no shade, no water, in the middle of nowhere (as seen from the train window), day after day (the men I personally saw in the fields all managed to find a tree to sit under 🤔). Herding goats from one place to another, in the hot sun with limited shade and no water. Pushing a heavy, rickety old cart through the streets of town, navigating through motorbikes, cars, tuk tuks, cows and dogs. Us Westerners don’t know we’re born! It was fascinating and inspiring to watch, though I imagine it is through necessity rather than choice that people struggle on, persevere.

I posted something on Instagram saying that the people here are “anti-racist”, saying hello to us white Westerners and asking for photos with us. Everyone wanted to know where we were from (no one wanted to know our names, unlike what I was led to believe). We were told that we were “celebrities”! I guess we went to tourist places that other Indian tourists went to, so maybe they weren’t used to seeing white people? Most of them were very polite and friendly about it. I probably had selfies with around 20 groups of people in India in a week, with about 50 photos with various members of the families! 📸

Opinions… There were some odd things I heard that I couldn’t really get on board with. For example, at the cremation points in Varanasi (we did see a body wrapped going down to the river), apparently you are not allowed to cry. This means that women are not allowed down to the cremation point as “they have a softer heart” and will cry… (Sue Perkins’ book East Of Croydon said there were people crying). I was told that my water filter wouldn’t work on “Indian water” (it did). In Delhi in the evening I asked why there were no women on the streets, was there some rule that they were not allowed unaccompanied or something? I was told no, they can walk wherever they want, but a woman walking alone, even in a pair, at night…? … “Oh! Yeah…” I said, knowingly. And it made me angry. It’s not the women who would be being careless. It is not the night that is dangerous. The unspoken implication was that a woman would risk being attacked by a man, at night or perhaps any time of day. When can women take back the freedom of their own neighborhood streets?? This is the same sentiment for over 3.5 billion women worldwide for whom their gender restricts them from walking in certain places at certain times and I think it’s time we complete the sentence “Don’t walk there at night… Because a man might attack you.” Instead of just taking it as a given that yeah, that’s just something blokes do so should probs keep out of their way.

So! Basically, India was just like any other country, the cities were cities, their own little way of working, their own sights to see, rich and poor, friendly people. It seemed much more of an “open” community where people actually talk to one another unlike us British. And no, it didn’t smell, not anywhere, it just smelt like nothing or dust!

I’m definitely glad I went and would recommend people to go and experience it, and not just to take people’s words at face value! There were 18 of us on our trip and I’m sure there were 18 different experiences and opinions of the same trip. Explore!