'Delirious Delhi' by Dave Prager.

For anyone interested in, or planning to visit the REAL India, this is a most worthwhile read. 30 year old New York ad agency copy-writer and his wife are posted to the Delhi branch for 18 months. The book recounts their shock, pleasure, dislike and final acceptance of a very different country. The tale details in some humour, their challenges on a very practical level--- from renting an apartment, buying food, coping with incessant 24 hr. street noise, managing corruption, handling social relationships at the office and with the ever-changing expatriate community to name a few. A memorable passage in the book relates how Dave passed the same traffic island each on his way to work in his taxi. At 7.00am on a hot morning he noted a young mother and small child standing on the island who appeared to be waiting for someone. When he returned from work in his taxi at 7.00pm, mother and child were still there amid all the pollution and noise. Next morning, at 7.00am, mother and child still standing on the island, probably without food, sleep or drink for 36 straight hours. Who were these two people and what became of them? A great read.

Deciding which camera to use to shoot the journey....

The nominees are.....

          Major decision to be taken. Which camera to take on the trip? I have recently become quite immersed in the hobby of photography. Spending too much time reading “Dummies” books from the local library, but learning that there is so much more to a good photograph than 'point and shoot'. To TAKE a picture, or MAKE a picture.... that is the question!

India is maybe the ultimate country destination in terms of  intensity of sights, colours and human activity. For this reason, I believe is worth a little time to consider how I should try to capture my memories of crowded streets, Hindu temples,  Raj era railway stations and the lives of some of the billion people on the sub-continent with whom I shall cross paths.

            My Christmas present was a Canon Rebel T3. As an entry-level DSLR, likely adequate for anything within my range of capabilities, especially with a few choice add-ons.  Heavier and requiring a fair size bag to haul around during long hot sight-seeing days, maybe a chore. This low-end Canon camera of 2014, packs more technology than a $5000 high-end model of circa 2000.

          Since 2012, my regular pocket sized, long-term camera friend has been a Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS3. This camera accompanied me on my walk up the River Rhine, surviving much rain, even snow, plus absorbing 1100 kms. vibration on many cobbled streets. Light-weight, easy to use and proven to take clear pictures through the Leica lens, also sports optical 12x telephoto. The MAJOR drawback of this and all point & shoot cameras is the LCD screen as view-finder. OK in-doors, on cloudy days and fine in low light situations, the LCD image is almost impossible to frame in strong sunlight---likely very prevalent in India.

         After much equivocation, the winner is......... the Lumix point & shoot. Light-weight portability wins the day, plus the fact that the camera is less tourist pretentious and hopefully makes me less attractive to any potential 'snatch & grab' street hoodlums.

Arrangements progressing...

        Trip arrangements are proceeding. As part of usual routine prior to my long journeys, I

Jostling crowd for tickets.....

tend to read a lot, hopefully picking up  useful travel strategies from recent travellers to India. Whenever a useful item turns up, I include it in my tentative 'must take' list. My solo travel experience has been that failure to include seemingly inconsequential items in travel baggage can lead to frustrations---spare batteries, string for an impromptu hotel room washing line, pegs, soap dish and even Scotch tape. I recently learned that a monopod (as opposed to tripod) is useful in India. In Asia, many sights and scenes are frequently blocked due to the sheer number of people. Attach the monopod to the camera, extend the monopod 30 inches and shoot pictures over the heads of the crowds. Monopods also useful for the solo traveller to fire off a few "selfies" in front of major monuments!

       The nuances of world currency swings often seem arcane and remote as reported on the evening TV news. The latest buzz word is “tapering” and whilst designed for the US, it is hitting emerging economies (BRIC+ Indonesia) hard. The Indian rupee was rocked in September '13 and slumped sharply. Not being a very fleet footed currency trader, I missed a great buying opportunity ($1Cdn= 60 IR). Six months later & the $Canadian also has hit a period of weakness due to softening world commodity prices and the rate for rupees has dropped to $1Cdn =52 IR.

          Using the most useful “India Train Info “ app., I have been able to identify hopefully, the most appropriate trains to aim for as I move along my inter-city route. Cannot be sure of course, just how reliable the timetable data that I have collected really is. Hopefully worth-while, as at least I now have a specific train in mind when I come to confront the booking clerk who recommends a 3.15am departure. The reality is that actual ticket/reservation arrangements will frequently have to be made at very crowded, noisy & hot local Indian Railways ticket booths.

Learning from the movies....

As part of my India pre-trip 'education', I borrowed this epic 3 1/4 hour movie from my local library. Almost as dramatic as the drama of Gandhi's  liberation struggles, is the story of the movie and how it became to be successfully completed by director, Richard Attenborough. The time from original concept to completion was more than 20 years, caused by wars (India/Pakistan), assassinations (Indira Gandhi) broken promises and bankruptcies.

Gandhi is a 1982 epic biographical film that dramatises the life of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, the leader of India's non-violent, non-cooperative independence movement against the United Kingdom's rule of the country during the 20th century. Gandhi was a collaboration of British and Indian production companies, was written by John Briley, produced and directed by Richard Attenborough. It stars Ben Kingsley in the titular role.

The film covers Gandhi's life from a defining moment in 1893, as he is thrown off a South African train for being in a whites-only compartment, and concludes with his assassination and funeral in 1948. Although a practising Hindu, Gandhi's embracing of other faiths, particularly Christianity and Islam, is also depicted.

Gandhi was released in India on 30 November 1982, in the United Kingdom, three days later. It was nominated for Academy Awards in eleven categories, winning eight, including Best Picture. Richard Attenborough won for Best Director, and Ben Kingsley for Best Actor.    (Courtesy: Wikipedia). 

The "Why" of this trip....

      So far, blog entries for this rail odyssey have attempted to cover the who, when, what, where and how

Second class air conditioned berth. Indian railways.

of the projected journey.
       I am prompted to write this entry in response to several people who have asked the question: "But WHY would you sit in crowded & slow trains in India for a least 40 days & nights when inter-city air-travel is fast and (relatively) affordable". The answer maybe: that as a mid/late sixties guy, I am unlikely to want to undertake such a journey a second time and as such, would like to cram in as much as possible during the planned 90 days.

        Travelling encased in an aluminium tube at 30,000 feet provides only limited human contact and so the opportunity to view, from the railway tracks, a slice of the life in the small towns and villages of rural India is most appealing and perhaps to chat with some of those 6000 who call Calcutta station 'home'.
        The Indian rail system is an institution of superlatives-- employs the greatest number (1.5 million) people of any organisation in the world, carries 18 million passengers per day, 17,000 locomotives on 64,000 kms. of track-- nearly equal to twice around the world .
     I feel sure that this explanation of  "WHY" will not convince those who may find unappealing the process of catching packed trains from crowded & chaotic stations at 2.30 am, to their taste. It has frequently been my 'rough' travel experience that any actual temporary discomfort is quickly forgotten and that one is left afterwords with a sense of accomplishment & satisfaction to have surmounted the logistical and cultural challenges and at least have a story to recount afterwards.
     Over a working life, I have stayed in many major luxury business hotels and flown business class world-wide. I truthfully say, in retrospect, collectively, these journeys are mostly a blur to me. Who wants to be the tourist to Jamaica, who when asked how many Jamaicans he had chatted with, confirmed that at his resort that he had only met folks from New York?

Budget work-up...

         Budget planning for extensive travel, always advised. There is nothing worse than being at the two thirds point on the journey and finding that only 10% of funds remain. Murphy is invariably lurking somewhere out there to catch the underfunded traveller with an unexpected expense. I suspect that this might be especially so, in an 'exotic' destination like India that is potentially a minefield of missed travel connections, cancelled hotel reservations, plus health issues ready to raise their ugly head without warning.
          My first-cut at a budget in $Cdn. for the trip is:

  Airfare: Toronto- Mumbai return                        $1211 ---actual

  India 90 day rail pass (2 AC class)                        650
  Hotels @ $35/night x 90                                     3150
  Visa                                                                       90
  Health shots & travel medication                            300
  Health insurance                                                    300
  Food  $20 x90                                                    1800
  Misc expenses (auto-rickshaws) $15 x 90          1350
  Day pack--light ruck sac                                          25----actual

                                                  Total                 $8876.

 Possible savings  in several of areas:
    a)  Most Indian express trains (Rajdhani and Shatabdi) between major cities seem to involve overnight travel--according to timetables: it is not unusual to board at 2.30am! The cost of a hotel room obviated.
   b)  Super (Indian) first (civilised) class rail carriage accommodation is only offered on the system on a very few of the new long distance direct Duronto express train routes. It may be more cost effective just to book a regular 1st. class air con (1AC) pass at half price.
  c)  Food. I do not plan to eat expensive 'European' style food for the most part, opting rather to live off local fare, if suitable and if not too spicy for this delicate British stomach.

In training for 'zesty' Indian food....

        Realising that as a 'meat and potatoes,' bland food adhering Englishman, the robust flavours and spices of India may represent a gastronomic challenge, I have commenced, a full 15 months prior, to the actual journey, to try and acclimatize (call it training) my stomach to the 'zesty' delicacies offered at my neighbourhood Indian food supermarket. So far, so good..... on Friday evening we grabbed an assortment of  packaged snack foods. Both my 19 year old daughter and  my 81 year old mother in law at home however, were less than enthusiastic. Surprise, I actually enjoyed the full flavours and discovered that the items were especially tasty when consumed along with a glass of milk.The idea of the milk, being oil based, is to act as a detergent on the surface of the tongue and remove excessive hot, spicy oils. Last week, my wife Jian and I enjoyed an excellent meal at an up-scale local Indian restaurant, and really enjoyed the experience. Over the years I have had moderate acid indigestion, however, agreeably & to my pleasant surprise, I have found that the spice levels recently consumed have not created any unpleasant after-effects.
       Aways one to immerse myself in a good travel book, I have just completed a couple of good reads that were both most well worth the time. 'Calcutta', by Simon Winchester and 'Delhi, adventures in a megacity', by Sam Miller (ex BBC correspondent in India and married to an Indian lady). 'Calcutta', was rather more of an historical review of that city, from the splendours of the Raj, to the more modern 'hell hole' where 6-8000 people actually call the main railway station 'home'.

Exploring the technicalities of rail ticket purchase...

Provisional routing based on a 90 day rail travel itinerary. Trying to research the days that I should allocate to each city. Greater need to be somewhat accurate in pre-planning as I get nearer travel time, due to the the fact that rail travel in India is based on a firm seat reservation system --even with a first class travel pass in hand. No reservation---no travel. In theory, rail seats are reservable on-line. Recently I passed an interesting hour visiting the India Railways website to learn more about the process, and was daunted by the complexity and bureaucratic detail required to complete the 8 different sections required to reserve a ticket. Looks like I am destined to spend many hours in seat reservation booth queues.  Understand that there is a foreign tourist seat quota on major routes, so perhaps the challenge will not be so great as it now appears from this distance (in Canada).

(Very) Tentative routing:

1. Mumbai   2.  Ahmedabad   3.  Udaipur   4.  Jaipur.   5.  Agra (Taj Mahal).  6.  Delhi (Federal capital)  7.  Amritsar (Golden Temple)   8.  Back to Delhi  9.  Lucknow.   10.  Faizabad/Ayodyha
 11.   Patna    12.  Siligur/Darjeeling (hill station)  13.  Kolkata (Calcutta)   14. Bhubaneswar   15. Visakhapatnam   16.   Hyderabad   17.  Bangalore   18.  Chennai (formerly known as Madras)    19.  Pondicheri (old French enclave)   20.  Tiruchirappalli (aka 'Trichy')   21. Madurai    22.  Kochi   23.  Mangalore   24.  Hampi/Hospet   25.  Goa (formerly a Portuguese colony)   26.  Pune (hi-tech centre)   27.  Mumbai.
           These locations are transit centres only and hopefully additional reading, talking to fellow travellers and local tourist bureaux will indicate interesting spots to visit nearby--example--Golconda Fort  5kms to the east of Hyderabad. 

Lonely Planet---India.

             

The travellers' bible. The new 2013, 30th. edition of Lonely Planet's 'India'. 1230 pages and weighing in at nearly two kilos. Not sure what this will feel like after carrying it all day in 40 degree+ Celsius days of sightseeing! Jam-packed with general and specific tourist information. Have heard however, that the hotel and restaurant recommendations are so slavishly followed by the book's readers that they become 'sold out' and impractical.  I do not typically travel with guide books in hand, preferring to pick-up local information as I go. India appears to be such a rich, diverse & logistically challenging long-distance travel project, that I am certainly going to need all the information, support and advice that I can garner.