Into the Mountains - Part I

In early June, Dani and I had our first opportunity to travel in India together and to take a well-earned holiday. We had been invited to the wedding of one of my colleagues in Ladakh, a region in Jammu and Kashmir, and had also to leave the country in order to apply for new tourist visas. For this reason we made arrangements to spend a week in Kathmandu after leaving Ladakh.

Our journey to the small town of Leh, 10,000 ft up in the Himalayas and where the wedding was being held, involved a stop in Delhi. Having done the train trip from Ahmedabad to Delhi several times we had thought we could relax about it. But on the day we were due to leave, someone shook me out of my smugness at having arranged everything so perfectly by declaring that there was no way we would get through. To my disbelief I had failed to make a connection between our intended journey, which would take us through Rajasthan, with mass disturbances taking place in that state. An Other Backward Caste group (a designation near the bottom of the caste ‘heap’), the Gujjars, were agitating for their caste status to be downgraded. They were demanding to be recognised as Scheduled Caste (otherwise known as Dalits or untouchables) and to receive the reservation of jobs and privileges that go with such recognition. More importantly though, they were sitting on railway tracks in large numbers. Twenty-seven trains through Rajasthan were cancelled. Although I expected the worst, our luck held: our train, the Ashram Express, was running until Jaipur, from where we could hire a car to get us to Delhi.

Having boarded the train in Ahmedabad, we were in for another change of plan. We were fully prepared to get down at Jaipur and catch a taxi, but while we waited with bleary eyes in the darkness early in the morning, the train slowly drawing into the station, we by chance heard that this was not the last stop; that the train would go on to Delhi. There are no announcements on Indian trains but a steward had mentioned this piece of rather important news to someone who spoke English, who then told us. After calling the poor taxi driver to cancel, we crept back onto our bunks and tried to fall back into sleep, pleased at avoiding the extra expense of the car.

Several hours later we woke to views from the train’s tinted windows of Delhi’s crowded and ramshackle suburbs, multi-coloured litter liberally spilling down the railway cut at intervals. We got down at Old Delhi station feeling disheveled and stopped at Comesum restaurant for a quick and over-priced breakfast before taking a pre-paid auto to Pahaganj. This area behind New Delhi station was to be our base for a day, as the flight to Leh was early the next morning.

Pahaganj is, in a word, seedy. But also quintessentially Backpacker India. Its narrow streets teem with hawkers, hotel touts and package tour charmers. Autos and cycle rickshaws squeeze through the lanes, nudging past placid cows and baggy-clothed hippies. Restaurants and hotels vie for the attention of the strolling Europeans, Israelis and Japanese, whose cloth shoulder bags and dreadlocks swing as they move through the crowds, sunglasses firmly in place. The lanes feel close; signs jutting into the space above head-height, electricity wires strung in confused profusion across and between the buildings.

We largely ignored the trinket shops after a doze and shower in our room at Vivek Hotel and instead walked to the nearest Metro stop, R.K Marg. This was my first experience of the Dehli Metro and I was very impressed. The stations are justifiably spacious, allowing for crowds, and the trains are a pleasure to ride in for anyone familiar with the Tube. In only a few minutes we arrived at Rajiv Chowk station beneath Connaught Place. I had stayed briefly in CP on my way home after trekking in the Himalayas in 1999. This time I stared at the white-painted circular arcades, the shadowed shop fronts and Raj-era architecture to try to conjure up clearer memories than I immediately could. But to no avail. I wasn’t able to place where my group of trekkers had stayed or the restaurants we had eaten in. I was disappointed at not being able to find a corner or shop front I recognised and so reach back across the nine years that separated me from my 17-year-old self. Looking around me I had a feeling akin to deja vue: something told me I knew the place, that the surroundings were familiar, but on closer inspection nothing around me was familiar and I might just as well have been there for the first time.