23rd November
The hotel we stayed in in Agra was gigantic – divided into so many wings. I felt as though I needed a GPS to get to my room. I have never been in Dubai but I felt last night as if I was there.
We visited the Red Fort in Agra. You might think: another Fort, if you’ve seen one you’ve seen them all. But no! They are all so different. This one was made of red sandstone surrounded by not one, but two moats. The British army were stationed here. The amount of gems embedded in the marble here is called Pietra Dura = marble inlay, the same art as used in the Taj Mahal. If I have understood correctly, the Koh-I-Nor diamond was kept here (before moving to England and is now on display in the Tower of London together with the Crown Jewels), though don’t hold me to that.
After the Red Fort we visited a marble inlay place where we saw this Pietra Dura in action. There were artists sitting on the floor cutting and polishing the gems, and embedding them into hollowed out marble. This is a precision art carried out by artists (this art is handed down from father to son). It was pointed out that these men lose their fingerprints after so many years carrying out this art.
We travelled on good roads to Delhi, and stopped at a lovely motorway services – the first one that I had seen. I sat outside drinking Costa coffee – very civilised. Will Delhi be different to what I have seen so far?
Delhi is known as the ‘Green City’. Although I was told that it was green (read: trees and grass) as well as being environmentally friendly, I don’t quite understand this, as when we approached Delhi we were greeted with smog and pollution. In Delhi it was much worse. Entering Delhi we saw high-rise buildings which our guide told us were housed by an abundance of call centres. Factories are banned in Delhi because of the smog.
Unlike what I have so far seen in India, the traffic rules are strict. Commercial vehicles cannot drive in Delhi before 10 p.m. Busses have to drive on the left-hand side of the road. It looks to me like any modern capital city. If you thought the traffic in London is bad, you should see it in Delhi. It is more than 10 times worse than Hyde Park Corner on the busiest day. No wonder Delhi is highly polluted.
We visited the Judah Haim Shul. It is a lovely small Shul – it reminded me of the small community in Groningen. Mr. Ezekiel, who works as a lawyer but keeps the Shul going, told us that he did a lot of interfaith work including officiating at interfaith weddings. After leaving the Shul travelling to the hotel, the bus was crawling – actually it was more stationary than moving. Whether this was normal, or because there was a protest because of demonetision I am not so sure. We couldn’t go to India Gate because of this. My great disappointment today was that we did not get to Rajghat, the site of Mahatma Gandhi’s cremation and memorial. I would have thought that this was the reason for visiting Delhi.
There are approx 14 million people and 7 million cars in Delhi. I think that I have seen all of them.
I don’t think that I had mentioned but every time we book into a hotel we are greeted with a garland necklace.
Thursday 24th November
We were in heavy traffic to the airport which is just a few km away from the hotel, but it took us an hour to get there. The flight to Cochin took 3 hours which gave me time to read my book “India with Sanjeev Bhaskar” by Sanjeev Bhaskar, a British-Indian comedian and actor. It is a very easy and amusing read. The book is about a trip that he made to India to see where his father lived before emigrating to the U.K. He writes about things that I have seen on this trip or what our amazing guide has told us. He writes about the innovation that exists in the villages (something the guide didn’t mention). Two examples:
- a contraption of a bicycle connected to a metal box which, when one pedals the chair activates the drum of a washing machine, and
- saline added to cow dung can generate energy to old, used batteries.
Talk about green energy!
Arrived in Cochin. Just enough time to get to the hotel. The only thing that I have learned today about Cochin is that Hindi is not spoken there, but a language called Malayalam which uses very different characters.