Blow Horn

If the taxi trip from Agra to Delhi yielded anything interesting, anything at all apart from mile after mile of village dotted arid scrub land, then I'm afraid it rather passed me by. The road and the miles slipped on by with only the occasional body numbing jolt to break the monotony. All four of us took to playing Risk on Ewan's I-phone to pass the time. Dom, never having played the game before, found himself to be disturbingly good at it and so the six hour drive passed relatively quickly and uneventfully as we all tried to figure out how to stop him winning for a fourth game in a row.

In the background, and slowly as if creeping up on us, Delhi announced itself with gradually increasing traffic and a selection of wide open, decently maintained tree lined streets that stretched themselves into the distance. If Mumbai, Jaipur and Agra had shown us three different India's so far then Delhi must be the fourth point of that same compass. A city with nothing to contain it, the commodity that Delhi does best in is space. Everywhere you look there are wide streets, squares, parks, shopping malls and clear skys.

Out taxi deftly navigated us through the traffic to our overnight stop in Delhi, the Prince Polonia hotel. It appeared electrical fire free, so we accepted it as an improvement on Agra, dropped our stuff, asked the hotel to book us a train to Kalka for the following day and set out to see a little of the city.

Delhi had never really been a major stopping point on out trip, more of a rest stop as we plough on north into the Himalayan foothills. While it's the capital of India it actually offers surprisingly little in the way of new experiences or cultural insight. In fact in many ways it's exactly like any of the major European cities with nothing but the traffic and the heat to set it apart. All the shops sported western brands, levis, reebok, nike, and so did the people shopping in them. Even, for once, the prices were similar to those you might find in the UK.

For dinner we had the choice of italian, Spanish, Chinese, and about ten other nationalities of food and we, only semi accidentally, ended up in a Mexican restaurant where the waiters wore cowboy hats and boots and Totenham   were playing Stoke on the plasma screen tv. Delhi didn't really feel like India at all. Absent was the hassle. Absent were the beggars and absent were the crushing crowds of people. Absent were the piles of rubbish and absent were the funny smells. Absent were the street markets and the shanty houses. Absent were the potholes and absent were the cattle herders in the street. In their place was Delhi.  A modern city. And that about sums it up. Our train was booked for the following evening and none of us had any regrets that we had no more time to spend looking around. Would we come back to Delhi? Yes, but we'd bring something to do with us.

***

It turns out that to bring out the true Indian culture in Delhi requires a morning, a brief wander, and a visit to tourist information. A grubby looking building hidden away on a side street one might be forgiven for thinking the official government tourist information centre was just another white goods store on a random street in Delhi. But a little sign in the window and above the door announced it's true identity and we all pressed ourselves inside in the hope of planning out our next few days.

All in all I rank the experience of sitting in that tourist information office as one of the most thouroughly confusing and socially unbalancing experiences in my life to date. Two men appeared almost instantly by our sides. Two such different men as it would be hard to imagine. One tall and thin, a smiling face under a big black beard wearing a casual t-shirt and jeans who approached us with open arms and greeted us in a ridiculously high but husky voice, like someone who's just about to lose the power of speech, or someone who's just got it back. The second man was short and rotund, clean shaven with very little hair at all to be seen and a gruff business like manner which all but saw us pushed us into his office without even the chance of a backwards glance.

"Hello," said the first, "my name is Touramassaratal...." and at that point we all looked at him incredulously as he reeled off a further 16 syllables before stopping. There was only a moments silence before, cool as you like, Dom went right ahead with, "sorry could you repeat that?" and recieved a second soundbyte that confirmed to all of us that we stood no chance of ever even repeating this name let alone remembering it. Unfortunately, etiquette dictates that after you've asked for, and recieved, three repetitions of a name in a row, you have to stop asking and just give it a shot with whatever you can remember. The look on Doms face rather revealled that he knew that very well, and after pushing for a fourth repetition the rest of us sat back to see if he would a) give a valiant but plainly hopeless attempt at pronouncing the name, b) ask for what would be an incredibly awkward fifth repetition, or c) nod politely, say "nice to meet you" and try to move on quickly.

"Touratala..." oh dear. Gales of laughter so husky it could pull a sled. Infectious as well and we all found ourselves joining in. The man sounded extactly like mutley.

"Touramasat...  Toramattalan... Touritasal... he waved at  Dom to stop from behind a wide grin.

Leaning in conspiratorially he said quietly, "it means, the man who is the person who makes everybody smile." The rest of us laughed as Dom tried to make out that he of course knew very well that that wasn't his REAL name and the conversation moved on with all of us looking at each other smiling awkwardly.

And then the other, rounder gentleman told us that our hotel had charged us double for our train tickets, that we should cancel them as soon as possible, and the smiles disappeared.

I wont go into the details of what was a very long and in depth conversation about just how our hotel had swindled us. The rotund man rattled on at a hell of a pace, tapping away at a computer older than the building it was in and showing us screen after screen of numbers and train timetables. There were numbers we could call and companies we could chase up and so on, and on, and on. We all listened as closely as we could, slowly growing more and more incensed as it became obvious that our hotel had played us for the tourist fools we were. It's true that when in India you always find yourself playing a game of 'who to trust most', but a government tourist information official backed up by the official Indian railways website is hard to argue with. Especially when your train ticket has, clearly marked on it, that it's gone through a package tour operator you've never heard of for a cost of 300 rupees apiece.

Now £4 each is not a massive amount of money to be cheated out of I grant you, but it was more the principle than the cost that made us cancel the ticket, and by this point we were starting to think that the train might not be the best option anyway. At this point our keyboard bashing friend was outlining another, much more expensive, better, but more expensive, more reliable, but at the end of the day slightly more expensive option. An option which, funnily enough, we now needed because we'd gone right ahead and cancelled that train ticket.

"Do. you. like. fishing?" inquired a pair of massive bushy eyebrows from the doorway. All of us turn and wonder if we are going to have to pronounce the names of fish now.

"I can get any fish I want." said the eyebrows suggestively. "you want me to teach you?" His nudge nudge wink wink manner made it painfully obvious that we were now involved in the kind of extended fish metaphor that none of us could possibly have anticipated.

"Er..."

"Each fish is different, you have to use a different line on each one, but for every fish there is a line that will work. You know?"

We all clearly responded in the affirmative.

"Aaah you see you know! This way you can catch lots of fish. Just using the right line!" said the eyebrows, dancing disturbingly.

"What do you fish for?" said Tom in an attempt to break free from a bad metaphor.

"Trout." said the eyebrows.

"Ah. Well. Ok then." A pause. "We don't like trout really do we guys?" We all shook our heads. "We more prefer...err...well...." Tom was struggling, "Cod?"

"Women," interjected Ewan.

"Yes. Women." we all agreed. This conversation was, if such a thing were possible, getting stranger.

"I have caught many a trout you know?" he extended the word know for far too long and then started laughing while making playful winks at us. "I used a different line for each one, tailor made for the time you know?."

"You should just use a net," I said. "It'd be more efficient if you want to catch lots of trout." Pretty much I was taking the fish metaphor and running with it. But eyebrows didn't seem impressed.

"No!" he cried in mock despair throwing an arm around my shoulders and turning to the others with a pleading look. "A net!? No! You guys have to teach him you know?"

At this point Tom, Dom and Ewan were struggling to hide laughter as they watched me gently and surreptitiously try and duck out from under the arm. But all of them nodded their agreement.

"You see!!!!" sad eyebrows turning on me. "You don't use a net! Promise me you won't!"

"Oh.. OK...." I stammer before Dom helpfully interrupted with, "He already has a girlfriend." Eyebrows looked at me incredulously.

"You have a picture? Of course you do. Show me show me." I obediently got out a picture and showed it to him. He glanced at it for a second.

"She's not my type," he handed the picture back abruptly, leaving me once again grappling with a conversation that didn't seem to follow any of the normal rules.

"Well she is mine? I assume I'm allowed to think that?" but eyebrows was no longer listening.

"You want to see a proper girl? Here." he flipped open his wallet to show a girl who, with all the best intentions, looked quite a lot like a trout.

In a quite touching display of solidarity all of us at the same time declared that she was "not our type". But eyebrows didn't seem to register anything, he just took the picture back and walked towards the door with that huge grin still fixed to his face.

"You wouldn't get that with a net!" He shouted over his shoulder as he left.

We turned back to the  man at the computer who was wearing a beautiful expression which said "please just do as I tell you and pay me money before he comes in again." So that's exactly what we did.

***

Once again we found ourselves in a taxi driving north. Once again risk was keeping us entertained. And our new driver was called Kaka, which thanks to a rather famous Brazilian footballer, we all found, for once, easy to remember.

The road north out of Delhi is a massive eight lane highway spoilt only by the roadworks spread right along it's length. Periods of easy running on flat Tarmac are sporadically broken as four lanes cram down to one dirt track and everyone swerves right off the road to avoid the massive rises of earth and machinery. These regular lane squashings seem to provide the Indian drivers with a much needed opportunity to exercise their horn skills, and everyone merges together onto the track without even slowing down.

The horn in India is a completely different beast to the horn in the uk. In India a short blast on the horn hides a whole language of different meanings depending on the situation.  It can cover everything from "get out of my way" to "hello please don't crush me", from "I'm just about to undertake you at speed" to "watch out! Your cow is in the wrong lane." It's used at a standstill and at 90 miles an hour. It's used when the car ahead is clearly unable to move due to traffic. And it's used when there are no cars ahead, just to make sure it stays that way.

All the big lorries that crowd the near lane have "blow horn" painted onto the rear doors. The idea stems from the fact that nobody here ever checks their mirrors before pulling out of their lane. The blind spot on indian cars is everything not through the front windscreen. If you don't blow your horn when overtaking a truck it's liable to pull out for no reason and crush you, and the truck driver will argue that if you didn't want to be crushed, you should have made a noise.

Kaka, thankfully, had absolutely no trouble using his horn and so for the long drive up to Chandigarh where we were staying the night, crushing was avoided at the expense of our ear drums.

Settling down for another single night stay at yet another hotel it was odd to reflect that earlier that day the plan had been to get a train from Delhi. Somehow that seemed a long time ago. But in the end everything had worked out well enough so far. We even had pre-booked toy train tickets for the next day. The 5  and a half hour train had ended up costing us less than a pound each.

At that cost we would happily have paid double. But we thought it best not to pry too deeply into our expenditure this time around. Just in case.

George