India: the hot take

OK, we've been back a week, but time to allow thoughts to swirl round the empty spaces between my ears.

We had no preconceptions of the trip, as I for one was concentrating on finishing work, so it all came as a surprise.

India is hot, friendly, dusty, dirty, chaotic, vibrant, aspirational, mired in traditions, poor, noisy, vibrant.

All at once.

It thrives on administration. A hangover from the Empire, I guess. It took an hour to complete all tasks to get through immigration to get stamps in the passport. The last bit of familiar is the baggage reclaim hall, as once you leave that, it is into the red-hot temperatures and noise of the arrivals hall.

Where, I susupect, many come just for free entertainment of the confusion on the faces of those arriving. There is shouting, and the contant background noise of the tooting of horns.

We knew there would be curries. But surely they would not eat curries for every meal.

Well, they do.

I can say the mostly vegetable diet kept our digestion happy, but after 23 days, got rather boring.

The curries started on the Air India plane, and only ended back in London.

There will be a post of driving and traffic alone, but for now, let me say, even without any apparent rules, we arrived safely and saw very few accidents. We did see, especially in Delhi, cars covered in dents, showing how traffic sometimes gets too close.

Traffic is noisy, with horns to be used to let other road users you are there. The assumption must be that other users have memories like a goldfish, so toot every second, just to remind them.

There is litter everywhere, especially in cities. Sometimes an entire river will be nothing but trash. And yet there are signs and murals declaring the need for greener living and recycling. Odd then that most mechanical items are never thrown away, but repaired and reporposed. What is thrown away is the stuff of modern life: plastic bottles and carrier bags.

The extreme in living standards from those who live in shanty towns in parks, or work all hours on the farmland between cities, to the young and ambitious, to whom the aspirational advertismanrs are aimed. School is taken very seriously, as a way out of poverty.

We lived and travelled mostly in air-conditioned isolation, viewing the India either through hotel or bus windows. But oon the back of jeeps, racing through towns amd villages, with the sights and smells hitting us, unfiltered.

The seventy or so tiger reserves, provide economic hotspots among the rural dirt poor, giving jobs as guides, jeep drivers or administrators, and showing ordinary Indians their natural history. The public areas of the parks do better at preventing poaching, so thought is being given to expanding some of these areas.

Would we go back?

Probably not.

The gap between the haves and have-nots is huge, and painful. Much of modern India is labour intensive, from farming to sweeping the streets. It means people earn, but not much. I'm not saying its wrong or right, just the way it is.