2 Weeks in India

(For Turkish Daily News http://www.turkishdailynews.com.tr/article.php?enewsid=96121 )

The Taj Mahal, elephant rides, monkeys in the streets, cows, poverty and 'Delhi belly:' India was everything I expected.

Last month I travelled to India with an English friendwho also lives in Istanbul.

We flew to Mumbai, via Sharjah, where we had arranged to meet another friend, who flew in from London.

My English friends then went to east India for a week to attend their English-Indian friend's wedding.

I bought a cheap train ticket to New Delhi. The journey took 24 hours and the train was very crowded.

The only other foreigner I met was from Nigeria.

Delhi was much colder than Mumbai, but equally crowded. I spent the week there waiting for my friends. Each day I walked in the cool but sunny weather and visited the famous sites, such as the Red Fort in Old Delhi where the last Mughal emperor lived. It is surrounded by a 2.5km wall, between 16 and 33m high.

When my friends arrived, we travelled to Agra to see the Taj Mahal. Nothing could prepare us for the visual impact of this huge, white marble structure, set against an empty blue sky.

Agra is also where I had my first experience of 'Delhi belly.' In fact, I had no problems in Delhi! But something I ate or drank in Agra gave me stomach problems which continued for the rest of the trip.

Our train to Rajasthan in west India at 6am the next day was six hours late. But we did not wait for it.Instead we hired a car for the five hour journey, which cost us 3500 rupees (about 100 ytl).

Jaipur, the Rajasthan capital, is famous for its markets. We saw many animals in the streets, including monkeys, buffalo, oxen and an elephant.

The first night there we went to Choki Dhani, a'virtual village' where children and tourists like us can experience a traditional Indian meal, ride elephants and camels and watch entertainment such as tribal dancing.

The food was wonderful but did not help my stomach.The elephant ride was strange because you are put into a seat from where you cannot really see the elephant.You just feel it walking along beneath you.

We hired a car to a real village next day, Pushkar. This was the best part of the holiday for me. We hired bicycles and rode them around the town and the lake, then climbed high into the hills to visit the temples and look at the scenery.

From Jaipur we returned to Mumbai by plane and had a night out at the bars and a hotel night club. Our friend returned to London next day, and we spent the warm afternoon at beautiful Chowpatty Beach, before flying back to Sharjah in the evening.

I had spent most of my two weeks in India among the crowds, pollution and chaos of very big cities. There were smiling faces everywhere, but also many tourist traps. There was also a lot of poverty, with endless slums, people living on the streets, beggars, and women and children with no shoes doing hard, dangerous jobs.

Sharjah was very different aftet this, with its tall office blocks, clean, wide streets, and big, empty parks. During our stop we took a taxi to Dubai, only a few kilometres away, and saw the world's tallest building.

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