Alwar & Jaipur, India

Jaipur is the name of a deliciously citrussy IPA made by Thornbridge Brewery. I've been drinking it for years and I felt it was time to give the city itself a try. It's quite a long train ride from Delhi, so I looked on the timetable for a random place to stop over en route, and that's how I came to spend a couple of days in Alwar first. Both cities are in Rajasthan: it's the first time that this blog has been to a 'stan', if you ignore the slight spelling difference. Plenty to look at here. See pictures.

There has been a slightly grumpy tone in some of my blogs lately, so I should emphasise that I've never had a bad day in India, and more importantly that this is just about the friendliest country of the roughly sixty that I've visited in my life to date. Indians are naturally warm and peaceful people. On these crowded streets, I've only seen two or three unpleasant episodes, all involving traffic disputes, and all settling down rapidly after a brief outburst of raised voices and a little bit of pushing. It's as if, once both parties have saved 'face' by demonstrating their determination not to back down, there's an unspoken agreement that things can go on as they were before. Not like back home in England, where any minor confrontation quickly escalates towards either the police station or the hospital, or both.

It must be admitted that Indian men spit way too much. This is closely associated with their habit of chewing tobacco way too much. Also, you often see men easing their bladders at the roadside. Of course, if they're manning fruit stalls or driving auto-rickshaws, then it's not like they have much choice, and they do at least have the good manners to face the wall while micturating. But with Indian streets, as with Jane Austen's evening dances, one can't help but wonder what the ladies do.  

Anyway, my Indian adventure is now over. From Jaipur I'm taking a short flight back to Mumbai and then going home from there. This is the most time I've ever spent in tropical climes - two months - and it's been fantastic but the heat and the noise and the pollution all start to get a bit overwhelming after a while. Probably it'll be 2026 before this blog kicks into gear again. I hope you all enjoy your own 2025 holidays...in the meantime I'm looking forward to getting back to cool rain and warm sausage rolls. And a can of Jaipur, or two.

City Palace in Alwar

Sagar Lake in Alwar

Jaipur street life seen from the Metro station overhead

Hawa Mahal in Jaipur (1799)
Built specifically to allow royal Indian ladies to watch street events & processions...
...without being seen themselves by the plebs.

Albert Hall Museum (1887) in Jaipur

Jaipur at dusk, seen from the path up to Nahagarh Fort

Gaitor Ki Chhatriyan (royal crematory) in Jaipur

Edd vs Food #162
Just what the doctor orders when it's 32°C at lunchtime on the terrace
(and I'm recovering from a dicky tummy):
Extra spicy Rajasthani chicken curry with roti bread.
At the Rajasthane Kitchen in Jaipur

New Delhi, India

Well, I guess they call it Delhi Belly for a reason.

Ironically it wasn't even something I ate in Delhi. I started to feel queasy on my final day in Agra. It might have been the posh mixed kebab platter (see the last Edd vs Food), or it might have been my home-cooked bean stew, or it might have been some slightly-too-softly-boiled breakfast eggs. Either way I had a couple of days of feeling a bit off, with details that you don't want to know about. No real emergencies though, and I made it through the train journey from Agra to Delhi without any need for Immodium, and I'm fine now. But since then I've been eating very unadventurously, as you'll see below.

Obviously Delhi is a tourist hotspot, by Indian standards, so there are plenty of options for unadventurous eating. But the American chains do have other uses: generally, the only two options for decent coffee in India are a) Starbucks and b) McDonalds. Incidentally it seems the only two options for finding tuna of any kind are a) Subway sandwiches and b) cat food.

Delhi is full of monuments and temples and other interesting sights, of which but a very small selection is featured in my pictures below. Perhaps the most spectacular of all is Swaminarayan Akshardham, an absurdly huge Hindu temple completed only in 2005. But they don't allow photography there - indeed you aren't even allowed to take your phone in with you. I handed mine over on entry, and then when I left, it was given back to me by a bored-looking young Indian lady who belched loudly as she did so. Anyway here's what the temple looks like.

The hawkers and touts here are more persistent and impertinent here than elsewhere. Nonetheless Delhi gets my vote because it has lots of nice open spaces to stroll around in, for example Kartavya Path and Connaught Place (see pictures below). The Metro is excellent too. And I'm reliably informed that the food here is better than anywhere else in India, which makes me regret my slight digestive indisposition all the more.

But India is getting a bit hot for me. I don't mean that the police have got wind of my browsing history. No, I mean that it's literally too hot. You might have seen on the news that summer has started earlier than usual here (please don't google 'India Summer' if you're at work) and I can vouch for this first-hand. Between dawn and dusk, I'm having to hole up under the aircon and the ceiling fan. This is no country for old men, and no country for white ginger men either. Now that I've ticked Delhi Belly off my bucket list, it'll soon be time to head home and mess my guts up with cask ales and kebabs instead. One more blog to go.

Central Government Office at the west end of Kartavya Path

India Gate (Lutyens 1921-1931) at the east end of Kartavya Path

Central Park in Connaught Place

Humayun's Tomb

Gurdwara Bangla Sahib

In the concourse at sunset in Sarai Rohilla train station

Red Fort

Edd vs Food #161
Peri peri chicken burrito at California Burrito
(surprisingly good domestic Indian burrito chain)

Kanpur & Agra, India

Kanpur, formerly Cawnpore, saw some of the worst episodes of the Indian rebellion in 1857. That's all behind us now though. And it's another foreigner-free place. On the way back to the train station, I caught my Uber driver sneakily showing me off to his friend via a video call. I didn't raise a middle finger but I did stare back at the lens with a distinct absence of friendly smile.

Agra was a very different kettle of fish, due to the presence of an Official World Wonder. There are seven Wonders and the Taj Mahal is my fourth to date. See pictures below. It was genuinely the first time since Mumbai that I'd seen more than two or three white people in one place. Most of these tourists fly into Delhi and then take a chartered coach trip down to Agra before going back to the airport and flying home and telling everyone that they've "done India". I shall always look down on these people from a very great height.

Having been in India for nearly two months now, here are my main tips for anyone contemplating a visit:

1. Get your e-Visa early, before booking your flights. It's not expensive. Carry a printed copy while in India.

2. Don't bother with roaming deals or e-SIMs for your phone. Just go to the AirTel stall at Mumbai airport when you arrive. For about seven quid you get a 28-day SIM with unlimited calls & texts and 1.5Gb of data per day. You can dual-SIM it with your own.

3. Always carry cash. The message "INTERNATIONAL CARD NOT ACCEPTED" has a habit of appearing at inopportune moments. You can't buy rupees outside of India but there are some Indian ATMs that don't charge for withdrawals, eg those run by Bank Of Baroda and Yes Bank. Get a foreign currency card that doesn't charge fees (I use Caxton). 

4. Work hard on maintaining a stock of small denomination notes: most people don't want to accept 500-rupee notes, but the ATMs generally won't give you anything else.

5. Ignore traffic signals. Because that's what the traffic itself usually does. Always assume that vehicles will be coming at you from both directions, on both carriageways, at all times.

6. You can use Uber not just for taxis but also auto rickshaws and rear-seat moped rides. It takes all the uncertainty out of both your destination and your fare.

7. When speaking English to locals, do so with a mild Indian accent. I'm quite serious here. You don't have to go full 'Goodness Gracious Me' but it definitely helps if you pronounce the words roughly the same way they do. It's like how, in the USA, you need to pronounce 'tuna' as 'toon-ah' rather than 'choon-er' if you want to be understood (something I learned to my cost on the very first day of Edd's Travels back in 2008).

If I acquire any more priceless pearls of Indian wisdom during the rest of my trip then I'll be sure to pass them on. But time is starting to run out on that score.

Taj Mahal (obviously) seen from the south

Main gateway to the Taj

Taj again from the south-west corner

Agra Fort

JK Temple in Kanpur

"Freight train, each car looks the same
And no-one knows the gypsy's name..."
'Melissa', The Allman Brothers, 1972

Edd vs Food #159
I like my spicy curries but the default in India is usually biryani.
Of which, here is a posher-than-average example from the Punjab Grill in Kanpur.

Edd vs Food #160
Mixed kebab platter: lamb (front), chicken (right), paneer (left), fish (back), yoghurt (middle)
At Kebab-e-que, in the Agra Hilton