India (extracts) Part 1

The first of a three-parter (for now!) detailing the start of an ill-fated trip to India back in 2002.

Like many twenty-somethings, twenty three years ago, Julia and I embarked on what was supposed to be eight months travelling around the world: the plan was to start off with three months in India — the one country I’d been desperate to go to since early childhood (after our ‘India Day’ at Colneis Junior where we’d worn bright saris, drawn paisley patterns and feasted on samosas we’d made ourselves). We’d travel from Delhi to Mumbai, spend Christmas in Goa, then fly down to Bali, explore Indonesia, travel up through Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Laos and Cambodia before heading back down to Singapore to fly to Tokyo; a couple of weeks there (expensive place!) then off to San Francisco – wearing flowers in our hair – then back to Blighty.

Julia had returned to our small town sixth form college from Sri Lanka having moved there for her dad’s job five years earlier. Our friendship had been forged during our ‘A’ levels but cemented one hedonistic summer between our first and second years of uni, delighting in innocent debauchery, as 19 year olds are wont to do, at the end of which, we decided, once uni was done, we would travel.

We’d been planning it for three years, saving up from working long night shifts at uni bars and any catering or washing-up job I could get in Leicester while studying (hell, I was even at Burger King for a month!) and even longer summers spent working for Di – a family run outside catering business where I’d come of age – hard work and fun. It was what we’d been dreaming of for the past three years, what I’d been wanting all my life: to escape the clutches of small towns and explore the big wide world. It was something to strive for. We booked our round-the-world tickets, spent the final summer working our catering jobs, and anticipated the experience of a lifetime.

By October 2002, I’d completed my PGCE, Jules had finished her four year uni course (having spent one of those in Japan) and we were primed, packed and ready.

As many of you know, it did not end well: four days into our trip in Delhi we were attacked, mugged and sexually assaulted and were home by the following Saturday, our dreams shattered; stuck in the same town we'd been desperate to escape from for a long and unforeseen winter. We were incredibly lucky not to have had anything worse happen to us, yet that is a story for another day.

What follows are the days leading up to the attack: some written twenty years ago and the rest pieced together from diary entries, fragments of memory, unsent letters I wrote to Joe (my then Netherlands dwelling boyfriend, now husband, who had previously spent a year in Bermuda cheffing) and with a little help from Google maps. Both Julia and I have looked, but neither of us have any photos of our trip — not that I can find, anyway. (Imagine if we'd gone now?)

I finally returned to India last New Year, to Kerala in the south, with husband and fifteen year old daughter, and it was a beautiful experience: welcoming, calm and full of all the positive experiences I’d hoped for the first time.

This is not the copy we took with us, but one a friend returned to me having used my original on his more successful travels to India.

October 2002

My dad had us over for a farewell meal — fish pie, my favourite; we had eaten, drunk copious amounts of red wine, and my brother had thoughtfully bought me a Swiss army knife for our travels: a beautiful contraption with dark red lacquer and silver writing with a complicated assortment of shiny miniature spears to choose from. Perhaps with common sense dulled by too much wine, I opened the various apertures of the knife, investigating its many uses, and stupidly tested the sharpness of one blade against my thumb. A painless slice of red traced the line where I’d tried out the knife’s edge; of course I’d cut myself – what an idiot. I watched in fascination as tiny beads of blood bloomed around the now stinging wound; my brother made some quip about hoping this wasn’t a bad omen. Hmm.

Saturday, 12th October 2002

We arrived at the airport about five hours too early; a friend of my mum’s was driving to Heathrow on the same date, so we’d caught a lift with a couple in their late fifties off on their hols to Florida.

Julia’s parents had dropped her off at my mum’s and we stood expectantly and awkwardly, checking off various items with our inventories (Julia, having travelled before, was highly organised and had made sure that we had everything in case of an emergency). The goodbyes were tearful but short-lived: it didn’t seem real that we were going – it merely felt as if we were masquerading as travellers, pretending we were something we were not. It reminded me of the games I used to play in childhood, adopting the roles of exciting occupations or people; camping out in my bedroom beneath sheets of bed linen pegged precariously to curtains or whatever else I could peg on to, pretending to be on some big adventure far away from the safety of home; rummaging through the dangerous and uncharted jungles in the park down the road, sailing the grand open seas on a rubber dinghy, only for it all to be torn down or dragged back to reality the same day. I felt as if we were wearing the costumes of impostors, my new flash rucksack, a prop. I also had the odd sensation, one that I’d had before and was to have many times again, that I was somehow outside of myself, looking on at what was happening. This feeling rendered me emotionless, detached: a still figure void of thought as others flapped around me. Checking we had photocopies of passports, visas, and serial numbers of travellers’ cheques, emergency phone numbers….I felt oblivious to it all, as if some elusive figure had placed a large clammy hand over my good ear (I am completely deaf in my left) causing all the voices to merge into one interminable haze of noise. I switched off. Perhaps it was a default reaction to nervousness or fear. Whatever it was, it was to last, intermittently, until the default could hold no longer and I finally cracked under the strain.

The first ten minutes of the car journey – Julia and I in the back, old couple in the front – used up all of our small talk: where we were going, where they were going, what we hoped to do, how exciting it all was. Even before we’d reached Ipswich – a mere ten minutes from our starting point – the conversation had subdued, Julia and I each coiled in our own introspective thoughts, too buzzing to concentrate on anything but ourselves. I stared, lacklustre, out of the window, numbly watching the passing of the A12: the grey blur of the road mirroring that of the dull October sky; cows whizzed past as if on an experimental treadmill of grass that they were hopelessly falling off – like some bad parody of an OK Go video; houses melted into each other and I eventually lost concentration, my jaw set rigid in a state of excitement, apprehension and fear. We turned occasionally to each other, to the front (the dashboard, grey like the road, the sky, the couples’ hair) for an exaggerated grin or an attempt at polite small-talk; our minds fixed only on escaping the insipid lull of the journey, of the country.

Eventually, we arrived at Heathrow (more grey) amongst the deafening roar of planes taking off and taxi engines ticking over. We said our goodbyes and beamed prematurely at the prospect of finally beginning our travels properly – it was silently acknowledged that our journey began here, at the airport: a place of expectation – else we may as well be going to London for the day.

Being five hours early, our glee was short lived. We sat around with our rucksacks, too clean to look like proper travellers, sipping the occasional beer, smoking the odd cigarette, mulling over the guidebooks and deciding where to spend our first night in Delhi. We short-listed three establishments based on locality, price and recommendation from the guidebook. We began scribbling notes, highlighting pages; starting the process of thumbing our shiny books, and decided on the cheapest: a converted mosque in the Main Bazaar of Old Delhi. It reminded me, from the picture, of the dwellings described of the protagonist’s father in Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children. I could imagine his lodgings in Delhi during the nineteen forties, now a husk of its former glory amongst the bustle of modern day Old Delhi, crumbling and poetic – like an Indian version of Elysian Fields.

Having sat in the bar for an hour excitedly talking about where we were going to go, the daydreams began to turn sour and the minutes ticked by slowly, endlessly. We both began to get agitated. There is only so long you can spend in Heathrow airport before you start to grow claustrophobic. Julia needed the loo, so for a change of scenery, we relocated to a blank wall by the toilets. I sat as she went off. Alone, I began to dwell on all I was leaving behind: Joe, friends, family, security. Although I had an image in my head of what the trip was going to be like, I couldn’t quite see it as reality; I couldn’t see beyond the dull blank walls and harsh lighting of Heathrow.

Julia returned after ten minutes, having been throwing up in the toilets. She looked pale and shaky: the panic had set in. She’d had a terrifying premonition that something awful was going to happen to us. (Later, upon our untimely return, after stopping off at every roadside toilet on the journey back from Heathrow to Felixstowe with my stomach in the firm grip of Delhi belly, my mum would tell me she’d had the same feeling.)

We reminded each other why we were here: sure it was scary but it was something we’d been dreaming of for years: we’d look out for each other, we'd stick together. I extinguished my final cigarette before we arrived in Delhi and we headed back inside. Jules phoned John, her then boyfriend whom she’d met at one such hedonistic festival, while I phoned my mum. Listening to her voice suddenly hit home what Julia had been talking about. I put the phone down and began to panic. Having placated Julia, I suddenly realised that I wasn’t going to talk to anyone I knew (apart from Julia) for eight months. I suddenly became irrationally afraid of the unknown and from some innate childish habit from hearing a familiar voice, began to cry. It was a revelation of sorts though, as I realised, or rather decided, that once back in the UK and Joe was back from Amsterdam, neither of us would leave the country without the other. It was going to be okay.

The plane journey was uncomfortable, long and sleepless with only relentless re-runs of Sex and the City and Black Books to stare at; I couldn‘t concentrate on my book and anyway, I wanted to save it for a sunny day. We tried to alleviate the boredom and restless anticipation by half excitedly, half fearfully, riffling through our bible (aka The Lonely Planet) circling places we wanted to go, sights we wanted to see, checking the maps and costs and making a list of Delhi highlights before we headed off to India proper. It was only once we stepped off the plane, blinking through the bright sunshine, sailed through immigration and exchanged some travellers’ cheques for cash did the knot of anxious apprehension start to loosen and a smile begin to appear on our faces. We were here!

We hired a pre-paid taxi to our destination – Camran Lodge on the Main Bazaar in Paharganj in the old town – and suddenly we were thrown into the bustling city of Delhi: we sat in the same places in the taxi we’d sat on the dismal journey to Heathrow, but instead of staring at cows in fields, the cows were now in the roads! They wandered, nonchalantly across the three lane highway, oblivious, or maybe in spite of, the oncoming traffic; cars and automatic rickshaws paid no heed to traffic police or indeed each other as they bibbed and scooted, under and over-taking, swerving; babies sat on drivers’ laps unbelted as children stood in the sometimes door-less hubs of auto-rickshaws while an intense heat blasted through the open windows. I sat, smiling eyes and mouth stretched from ear to ear, drinking in the myriad of wondrous, unfamiliar sights around us. It was a sunny, hot, smouldering afternoon; brightly coloured trees and flowers lined the roads, street sellers littered the pavements, shading under their rickety canopies: a far cry from the dull, grey morbidity of home.

The traffic became more dense, slow and deafening as we neared Paharganj, the flustered wail of horns becoming more frequent as vehicles of all varieties seemed to merge into one caravan of angry drivers. We came to a standstill amongst stalls and rickshaws clustered at the end of Paharganj’s Main Bazaar. Dusty, dull-eyed children caught us in their gaze and pointed to their mouths as they approached the car; eager touts swarmed around us, all smiles with calls of ‘Madam!’, as we climbed out of the shiny black taxi to retrieve our rucksacks from the back. One tried to drag us to Camran Lodge, having ascertained our destination from the cab driver, but we soon realised he was after commission from somewhere else as he lured us away from the Main Bazaar. Determined, we promptly turned around and made our own way there, yet not before gathering at least another unwarranted, unwanted six followers, like the hapless Brian in Monty Python, each trying to coax us into going somewhere else, all the while avoiding pissed off rickshaw drivers, withered pipe sellers and determined cyclists either expertly interweaving between the throng of people that packed the Main Bazaar or reaching out their arms and calling to us, apparently desperate for our custom. Like Graham Chapman’s Brian, we were bewildered and overwhelmed, compounded by the initially sickening concoction of dung, shit, spices, incense and fried food that saturated our nostrils, intensified by the sticky weight of humidity. We certainly weren’t in Kansas anymore: from a sleepy seaside town, this was definitely an assault on the senses — it was great!

We found Camran Lodge halfway up the road, a dilapidated green door nestled at the top of a few dirty white steps. I craned my neck upwards and saw the dome of the former mosque: a faded, dirty pink. We stumbled up the steps into a dark hallway and I waited for my eyes to adjust to the change of light. Inside, there was a welcoming cool provided by the marble floors and white washed walls and a noticeable quietening of the ongoing din outside. We made our arrangements of stay, probably two nights, checked the price (R180!), paid and were shown upstairs, key in hand to our bed for the next couple of nights. Ours was the third room along a yellowish corridor — paint, age or nicotine? It reminded me of the hallway in the film of The Beach (no cleaner mopping next to a live wire though); entering the room enforced this idea so much that for the following few nights, I half expected Robert Carlisle’s face to appear through the grate above the door, spliff in hand, asking for a light and babbling feverish nonsense. It was a simple room with a white double bed, pale green walls, a window overlooking the bustle of the Main Bazaar — and a fan! We dropped our rucksacks and explored our lodgings: as well as the basics we had a bedside table each, and a bathroom consisting of a hole in the floor, shower head and basin. Having inspected the room and peeked out the window we collapsed on the bed, exhausted: it had been ten hours since we’d left the UK and it felt so good to finally be here, if not a little surreal — as if we’d just walked through an elaborate film set. I lay on the bed, staring up at the rotating fan, relieved that we were here at last and smiled. No plane crashes, no hitches.

We rested for an hour or so, unpacked what little we needed, washed, and I attempted to aim my wee in the small designated hole in the bathroom floor before heading out to find some authentic Indian food.

We explored in and around the Main Bazaar, initially turning right out of Camran Lodge, the incessant buzz of commerce still raging into early evening, steeped in flavour, every sense awakened, getting used now to the medley of smells that playfully teased our olfactory nerves. Pushing through the hub of brightly clothed bodies, eyes sought us out, staring – like that scene in Being John Malkovitch when all the John Malkovitches are suddenly all aware of you – or am I muddling that with Inception? Heads turn, eyes fixate – either way, it was unnerving. Was it because we were two unaccompanied white women? Both of us were wearing fake wedding rings as suggested in various guide books to ward off unwanted male attention by showing we were ‘unavailable’ and respectful. Or was it due to our physical oddity: Julia, short, svelte, red hair; me, by contrast, tall, stocky, speccy. Or maybe the locals stared at all newcomers, sussing them out. Whichever, it was a novel experience, wandering past stalls with welcoming holders, getting pushed into or off the road or pavement — it was hard to discern any notable difference between the two. Our stomachs leading the way, we stopped at one of the first places we came to, a few plastic tables inside a rudimentary building offering dhal and roti for fifty rupees — it was delicious and satisfying and I couldn’t wait to see what more culinary delights this fascinating country had to offer. Julia and I discussed our plans for the next week while I made a rollie: see a bit of Delhi, then head off to Agra for a few days. We’d been informed by a number of people back home that we simply must see the Taj Mahal and from different points in the day — when the light changes, so, apparently, does the building: the boldest and most elaborate testament of love. We also heard that Agra was worse than Old Delhi for assaults on the senses, being one of the world’s ultimate tourist traps. So a week of chaos, and then we planned to head South and explore the countryside. Again, I envisioned the lush vegetation and sparkling rivers described in Rushdie’s epic. Having saturated ourselves in the thick of the capital, we intended to escape to the heart of India.

Having eaten, we turned back towards our lodgings to explore the other side of the bazaar, spotting internet cafes along the way. My cigarette lasted two drags before I realised that I really wasn’t enjoying it so I stumped it out. My lungs were already steeped in Delhi’s toxins – I hardly needed to add more of my own choosing.

We continued as the sun began to slowly set behind us, the light gradually diminishing. Just off the Main Bazaar, where we’d been dropped off by taxi a few hours earlier, even more eateries offered a wider choice of dishes for even fewer rupees. Still, there was always tomorrow. We turned back to find an astonishing sight: the sun, now huge, glowing an almost unnatural ember-red, was sinking behind the dilapidated buildings. It was beautiful: then, a sight I had never seen before: this heatless, almost neon orb seemed painted or stuck onto hazy purple-whitish sky, perfectly round. Now, the sight is a familiar one: polluted sky colouring the light into garish fluorescent pink in Bangkok’s most choking months. Then, I had no idea this apparently natural oddity was caused by the dust that clogged our lungs. Back at the lodge, we clambered the steps to see the sight from the rooftop and it was even more spectacular: a sinking fluorescent pink moon, drawing a haze of purplish brown around it and over the dull, almost silhouetted city, as pin pricks of white light started to speckle the land.

Back in our room, washed and lathered in mosquito repellent, I wrote my diary entry and then wrote to Joe while Julia fiddled with the buttons on her radio. She’d brought it with her as a connection to the outside world and on the off-chance it may provide us with some much missed music. That evening, Saturday 12^th October 2002, it brought with it news from the BBC World Service of the nightclub bombings in Bali. We sat in stony silence listening to the atrocities caused predominantly to foreigners — backpacking like us, or holidaying from Aus – by a terrorist faction of Indonesia as a back-lash against a Bush-led capitalist society. We realised that three months down the line, that could have been us. I suddenly remembered that a friend from uni was living in Jakarta and had a wave of nausea pass through me as I wondered if she’d been affected. (Remember: this was a time before Facebook, before Friends Reunited even – email, the odd expensive text, phone calls and old skool letters were our method of communication then.) A myriad of ‘what ifs’ congested my head as I imagined how much more worried my mum would be about Julia and I travelling alone in the big wide world. Our plain, pale, sickeningly green room seemed then to become almost as oppressive as war itself. I felt suddenly trapped, unwilling to voice my fears of whether it would be safe to go there in three months’ time; if this one event had changed our plans irreversibly; if global terrorism (or US policy - two halves of the same coin) was going to disrupt our once in a lifetime trip. It roused a sickening feeling in my stomach that hardened into a small hazelnut of fear that grew into horror-filled waves of dread. (It was the same feeling, magnified, that I was to feel three years later when at work in a school in Dartford, I first heard of the London bombings, knowing one had exploded near Bank station and Joe’s place of work in an underground restaurant.)

We lay, too shocked and tired to talk, uttering only the occasional, “Oh my God!”, each wrapped in our own thoughts, too afraid to voice the unimaginable; listening again and again to the details of the disaster, trying to make sense of the unthinkable by submerging ourselves in facts. The room seemed a fitting setting for the emotional desolation we felt. Eventually, tiredness overcame us, Julia switched off the radio and I plummeted into a restless sleep.