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

Lucknow, India

I must confess that I've very quickly grown tired of the constant stares and catcalls and requests for selfies. So much so that I'm generally giving a brisk "no thanks" to the selfie requests. It's not that I think there's anything wrong with it, or that I resent the people asking; it's just that I can't be bothered doing it every five minutes, and I don't feel guilty about that. 

Younger males often shout out "wassup bro'?!" as I pass. I tell them that it's not an appropriate greeting for English people, but they should use it everywhere if they go to the USA, especially in Harlem or the Bronx.

Also I get a lot of unsolicited handshake requests and this is more significantly problematic in a country where, frankly, a lot of people still wipe their backsides with their hands. Just saying.

While I'm being grumpy, I'll add that India is The Land That Beer Forgot. Setting aside the total prohibition in Bihar (see previous blog), in most places it's a struggle to get even the halfway decent imported stuff like Budweiser or Heineken. Indian beer drinkers mostly go for the kind of low-budget extra-strong 8% ABV domestic lagers that make Special Brew taste like Chateau Rothschild, but are still pretty expensive, due to a baffling tax system that incentivises people to drink cheap spirits instead.

Might as well get all the grumpitude out in one blog. The other thing about India that bugs me is the over-attentive service culture. As a foreigner, you can't walk into a shop without an assistant running over to you and more or less putting his nose on your shoulder. In McDonalds, when you're using the self-service screens, they'll sidle up and start reaching over and pressing buttons that you didn't want to press. When you check into a hotel, any hotel, the bellboy will rush ahead of you into the room and begin a commentary of utter pointlessness ("here we have the bed where Sir will be sleeping, and also a television for viewing of the required programmes..." And this commentary continues without limit:"...that is the ceiling, this is the floor..." until you give them a 100-rupee tip and bundle them out of the door. I've taken to executing the tipping & bundling manouevre as soon as they put the bag down, before they get the chance to start talking.

Rant over. Lucknow is spectacular and everyone's friendly. See pictures below.

Lucknow Picture Museum

Chota Imambara

Rumi Darwaza. Note camel at left.

Bada Imambara
An Imambara is not quite the same as a mosque.
Here non-Muslims can go inside, but there are pictures of both the Iranian Ayatollahs displayed on the outside walls...
...so I opted to give it a miss.

Aasifi Masjid

Twilight of the Raj:
The Residency, badly damaged during the Uprising in 1857 and never repaired.

Musa Bagh

Ambedkar Memorial
There are 124 life-size concrete elephants in this park. Bonkers.

Edd vs Food #158
Chicken samosas at the street stall.
Spicy, succulent, sublime. 10p each, sauce dip included.