We had booked an overnight train from Varanasi back to Delhi that was scheduled to take about 12 hours. A quick check on the rather excellent India Rail website revealed that our train was running 18 hours late (and it hadn't even left its starting point in Calcutta at that point). This is rather dramatic in anyone's book - and it only runs three times a week at best. We had allowed two days slack to catch our flight back to the UK, but it was no longer clear if we would even make it. As a result, we ended up booking a last minute flight back to Delhi that took a mere 1½ hours. IndiGo may not be the top of everyone's list of airlines, but they got us to Delhi in one piece and in probably the newest aeroplane we have ever been in. A further bonus was that the taxi from Delhi airport to the hotel was one of the famous Hindustan Ambassadors; that fake Morris Oxford voted best taxi in the world by Top Gear. We didn't know if ours was a 1958 model or the 2014 version (there is precious little difference). In the end, the train we didn't take arrived in Delhi a mere 19 hours late, so we would have made the flight, but we felt it was money well spent.

We spent the last couple of days in Delhi hoovering up some souvenirs and taking in a couple of sights that we missed on the first visit. We also made a return visit to the Starbucks in Connaught Place just to get in the mood for returning home.

Northern India Round-up

As usual, at this point, we try and summarise the trip and lay out some of the conclusions and thoughts we have had about the whole experience. Interestingly, with previous trips, we have found that our attitudes to the places we have visited evolve over time, so we find it useful to refer back to this section ourselves. Also, we often find that, at the end of a trip, we are heartily sick of the place we have just visited and are only too glad to leave. For this reason, it can be hard to summarise objectively without being unduly rude about the people and places we have just seen. Here goes...

When we left South America in 2013, we had most certainly had enough of the place and the same was true in places like Russia and China way back in 2002. As a result, Steve in particular had reservations about the plan to spend three months in a single country (we have never done that before) and most definitely given that the country in question was to be India. Many people had provided sinister warnings about the place. However, to our great surprise, for the first time, we found ourselves talking about returning to the country before we had even left it. That's right, for all the noise and filth, the spitting and excrement, we have been seriously discussing returning to visit other parts of the country and, in particular, the south. It seems that, certainly for us, there is something intangible about the place that seems to justify another visit. After you have read the following, you might wonder exactly what that is. We have no idea either!

Throughout this blog, we made reference to "the man who hammers". It did rather seem that every single hotel we stayed in was plagued by banging and hammering, but this is actually an indicator of a deeper malaise. It seems that percussive maintenance is the order of the day. At virtually no time were we plagued by drilling noises or sawing sounds and this is simply an indication that drills and saws are either not available or considered superfluous. This, of course, is an indication that labour is considered cheap and that throwing man-hours at a problem is preferable to spending money. After all, why buy a drill and spend five minutes making a hole when you can employ a man to spend all day chiseling through that concrete wall?

Constant hammering in hotels is but one indicator that the owners completely fail to consider the needs of the paying customer. Despite being told repeatedly that "the guest is god", if we ever raised this ourselves, perhaps in connection with a constant hammering racket, we were countered with that other time-worn adage "this is India", which is always delivered with a wry grin. This is, of course, simply a lazy cop-out.

Steve has spent the last 25 years watching the software engineering industry be decimated by bean-counters. Principally this has involved off-shoring work to places like India and in all respects other than cost-saving, this has been an unmitigated failure. When one considers the completely alien culture and thought processes, this is unsurprising. Everyone has experienced the inflexible and unhelpful Indian call-centre workers. This is but one example of where cultural differences manifest themselves. It was never going to end well! Finally, we see companies realising that this race to the bottom is counter productive and there are many examples of on-shoring, i.e. bringing work back to the UK. This is not a criticism of India, rather of the UK's short-sighted naivety. Anyone who had spent any length of time on the sub-continent would have known it was never going to work.

It would take a longer tome than this to discuss the extensive cultural differences between India and the West, but some aspects are worthy of mention. It often seemed as though we were visiting a country that had no experience of the outside world. The number of people who would stare at us as if they had never seen a European before was amazing and completely unexpected. It was never a surreptitious glance either, but a full-on, eyes wide gawp. What was very strange was that this was most prevalent in youngsters. The girls would stare and giggle. The young men try very hard to cultivate a macho image, but it all falls to bits when they start giggling like the girls at any passing Westerner. How anyone thought these guys could engineer software applications fit for use by the West when they have so little cultural exposure is a mystery.

Throughout the trip, we were told by virtually everyone involved in the tourism industry that foreign visitors numbers are dramatically reduced. Figures of up to a 70% reduction were often quoted, but no one seemed to know why this might be. Likely it is due to a combination of factors: economic climate in Europe, media induced fear of terrorism, stay-cations, etc. No one ever speculated that the country might simply not be all that attractive to people any more. The state has dreamed up the amazingly inventive strap-line "Incredible India" that is used in adverts and tourism promotions, but this does nothing to ameliorate the drastic problems the country has and is unlikely to do much of a job in attracting new tourists.

The incessant noise pollution is a case in point. Honda could improve the country no end simply by not fitting horns to its moped range. The arms race amongst road users has resulted in everyone blowing their horns constantly and absolutely no one taking any notice. The problem is compounded by the macho males all seeming to think it is a sign of weakness to give way to anybody. Another example is the need to blow the train horns all day and night simply because people can't wait until the train has passed before crossing the tracks. All night, every night, these air horns can be heard wailing like banshees.

In common with many countries we have visited, little value is placed on life. Health and Safety might be anathema to us, but a little of it could go a long way in this country. However, some responsibility for personal safety must lie with the individual but you only have to observe people driving to realise nobody feels this way. Again, in common with many countries where religion plays an important role, there is an abdication of responsibility in deference to an higher power and a fatalism that borders on the suicidal. This does not benefit the tourist!

This lack of personal responsibility permeates all aspects of life and seems to explain why the country is such a mess. Everyone feels that they are entitled to throw rubbish out of windows, dump excrement in the street and spit everywhere. Presumably the class and caste system means that it is always someone else's job to clean up. This sense of entitlement was illustrated to us many times by hotel owners who told us they refused to take Indian guests and would only accommodate foreigners. This was because the Indian guest was very rude and demanding and left the place in a terrible state. Foreign guests were regarded as a pleasure to deal with.

Regarding safety, it is worth considering the Indian railway system that we used so extensively and rather successfully. It is 108,000km long, it employs 1.4M people and each day it transports 13M passengers. It is the second largest railway system in the world and the most dangerous. Each year there are 400-500 crashes that result in 700-800 deaths. However, this is dramatically safer than the bus network which, in 2010 alone, managed to kill 135,000 people! All it would take is for bus drivers to take responsibility for safety rather than placing their faith in a higher power. That and not overtaking on blind corners...in the fog...whilst blowing the horn.

Since independence in 1947, the British legacy has been allowed to degrade and rot into oblivion. There is little sign of any wish to maintain or improve anything. Even the cultural heritage is abused, neglected and defaced. Indian [male] youths seem only to be interested in carving their name on the nearest monument and then taking a selfie to upload to Facebook. It was only here that we realised "urine" rhymes with "shrine"! This is the only country we have visited where power cuts are a daily occurrence. In some places, it was common for the power to be off nearly 50% of the time. When we inquired what was wrong, we got the "this is India" line. No one seemed to think there was anything wrong with this state of affairs or that it was possible to do anything about it.

On the plus side, it has to be said that the Hindu population is extremely friendly and, on the whole seem to be a cheerful bunch. This, taken with the fact that some degree of English is spoken by most people, is probably what endeared us to the place more than anything else. Generally speaking, the population does not seem to drink and this can only be a good thing otherwise the country really would be chaotic! Everybody wanted to talk to us and have their photo taken with us. This is generally OK, although it can be a bit wearing.

Again on the plus side, even though we always felt we were being conned by the locals and had to bargain hard for virtually everything, there never seemed to be any malice in the process and it was generally good humoured. Often people would ask for tips from us when they had provided a service that we considered woefully under par but even then, when we refused, there was never any malice.

We bought an Indian SIM card and used the local mobile network extensively. It has to be said that coverage and performance put the UK to shame. It is amazing how many people have mobile phones. Everyone who is anyone has a smart phone and the rest have normal mobiles. Even the kids herding the camels had phones. It is surprising to see someone who barely even has clothes (and certainly no shoes) pull out a mobile phone. This has to be a good thing.

One other thing we learned is that, in a country with so much filth and with so much of the food eaten with the hands, that well-known practice of reserving the left hand for "unclean" activities is actually very useful and something we embraced. This practice nowadays seems to be more prevalent amongst the lower classes and the older people. More well to do Indians seem to rather ostentatiously eat with both hands presumably indicating that they live in a cleaner world (which of course they don't).

In summary then, and reducing everything we saw in three months to just one sentence, we can say that the country (or certainly the bits we saw) would be great if it weren't for the noise, the filth and the overwhelming stench of urine. As to why we are seriously considering returning, that remains a bit of a mystery and it might turn out to be a mistake too! Of course, we only visited a small part of India and other parts may be very different. Most Indians we asked told us that the south of the country was cleaner and more relaxed. We think that it probably has fewer forts and palaces and more in the way of scenery, which is something we did miss on this trip. Hopefully we can bring you something more on that in the future if we ever return.

Finally, after all that criticism, here is an assortment of images from the trip that did not make it into the previous postings.