From space, the 100 kilometre road from Orchhra where our train is parked, to Gwalia would look like any respectable highway. Four lanes of bitumen and a well-tended median strip down the middle. Now we’re not talking about the drivers here – they are a constant all over the country. We are talking about the actual road. It seems to me that to make a bitumen road, you put down the base, put the hot bitumen on the base then roll it flat and smooth. This has been achieved successfully all over the world. Except here. This feels like driving on a cobbled road in a vehicle with concrete suspension, except the cobbles haven’t flattened and smoothed with age. They are bricks that were liberally and randomly strewn around last week with edges exposed. Passenger joints have been loosened to the extent that limbs litter the buses aisle. It’s taken about an hour to write this paragraph – line up the “t”, hit the “h”. And vehicles are charged a toll to use this road. Maybe it’s to raise money to put that top layer of bitumen down.

There’s a very impressive palace in Orchhra that was built by Shah Jahan’s (of Taj Mahal fame) father. He built it especially to welcome one of his regal mates in the area. It took 22 years to build. That’s a long time to wait to go and see a friend for a barbecue and a beer.

In #5 of this series I mentioned that to get a decent night’s sleep on this train, I’d have to drink more. This was proven without a shadow of doubt on our last night on the train. One of the great aspects of travelling with groups of people is that occasionally you meet up with kindred spirits and a great time is had by all. So it has been on this trip. The four of us gave it a nudge last night and I slept like a baby. I woke up a bit fuzzy about four minutes before the alarm was due to go off (don’t you hate that) but it was a night where rattling wheels, swaying carriages and piercing horns were shoved firmly into the background. It was also a night when we were all gifted Indian garb – saris for the women and long collarless shirt type things for the men. There was an expectation that we would all dance, Indian style. The women did but in keeping with the ancient adage that men over 40 should never dance, we didn’t.

And that’s pretty much that for the Indian leg of this expedition, unless I think of something else. Sri Lanka will begin just as soon as I see something that you need to know about.

In Agra we were subjected to another bout of economic tourism. It’s to be expected and is perfectly understandable – milk the foreigners like Old Macdonald’s cow. Incidentally the various monuments are in on this as well. Entry signs say 50 rupees for Indians, 750 rupees for foreigners. You can’t get more obvious than that. Agra is all about the Taj Mahal so local artisans make various tables and othe items requiring flat surfaces and inlay them with semi-precious stones fashioned into shapes like flowers and….other flowers. If nothing catches your fancy here, the swarm of salesmen, one of whom is always at your elbow, will usher you into the next room which has similar stuff only smaller, like drink coasters. The next room, but wait there’s more, has wooden carvings and metal things and wall hangings. The next room is souvenirs where the CB bought a fridge magnet – our contribution to the local economy. After negotiating what seemed like the local version of Ikea we felt we had to buy something just to escape.

Moving on to Varanasi then Khajuraho, we see a life and death comparison or more accurately death and life respectively. Varanasi is dominated by death with two cremation areas on the Ganges in a 7 kilometre stretch of 84 ghats or step areas down to the river from the higher up town streets. Each crematorium can handle 40-50 bodies at a time without mingling grandad with the widow on the adjacent pyre. There is an element of “life” in the process I guess, because most of the ghat area is for people to cleanse and rejuvenate themselves in the river. Judging by what we saw in the river, this would be a short cut to crematorium 1 or 2 for people like us without the immune system of a mechanical bull.

Khajuraho on the other hand, is an overflowing font of life which has manifested in every newly wed’s (okay, in the 1950’s) favourite book – the Karma Sutra. They were randy buggers back in the 12th century, getting up to all sorts of shenanigans, all carved into temple walls in more loving detail than your average Pornhub video. We won’t go into what soldiers and their horses got up to when in the field with no (human) female company to speak of. Suffice to say, carving a surprised look on a horse’s face must have taken a lot of skill.

To emphasise the extent to which pleasures of the flesh dominated procedings in Dark Ages India, there were originally 84 temples in this area of which 25 remain. That’s a lot of dirty pictures and an absolute boon for the illiterates (and everyone else) although it would.d be rather difficult to hide a hindu temple under your mattress. However wild your imagination the good burghers of Khajuraho had it covered, bearing in mind they had no electricity for more elaborate kinks. There were either a small number of energiser bunny artisans, carving day and night for years or a very large number of equally talented sculptors dedicated to their art (and various proclivities). It must have been on for young and old on Saturday nights in Khajuraho.

You’ve heard of the caste system right? It’s a bit like a family hierarchy with Dad at the top (where’s that laughter coming from) and the pet budgerigar at the bottom. Indian society is similarly structured with Brahmins (spell check tried to change that to Bradman which I guess makes sense for cricket fans of which there are a few in India) at the top and Untouchables at the bottom. These Untouchables aren’t FBI agents although Melania Trump may have felt they were bottom feeders when American FBI agents were rummaging through her knicker drawer during a Mar a Largo raid a couple of years ago. No, they are societies forgotten people. But they apparently have their own king and you can see his big yellow house on the west bank of the Ganges in Varanasi – who knew? I don’t think his name’s Fagin, but I get a very Oliver Twist taste from this.

If I’m to get a decent night’s sleep on this train, I’m going to have to drink a lot more. I swear, last night we went cross-country and there were pot-holes aplenty. Trains aren’t supposed to do that. They are supposed to glide smoothly on two polished ribbons of steel. Walking back to our room involves pinballing down narrow corridors and I think i’ve done a hammy. Don’t get me wrong, the staff are great as is the service, the food is superb, the drinks are eminently reasonable and the presentation is immaculate, but this train has square wheels. The shinkansen it aint.

We’ve just been to the Taj Mahal. As with all ancient or at least centuries old wonders of the world, the numbers associated with it are mind-blowing. It took 20000 workers 22 years, from 1631 to 1653 to build it (admittedly short by European cathedral standards) in honour of a woman who bore 14 kids in 18 years, a tradition which families in this country have striven to uphold ever since. After a marathon like that the poor lady expired from over exertion but she has a magnificent monument to her efforts which one or two catholics might be a tad jealous of.

Actually, regarding the time it took to build this thing, if the heat is anything to go by, it’s not at all surprising. It’s all we can do to drag our feet around unencumbered let alone carrying a big block of marble. But if the Taj had been built in Norway, it’d have been finished in about three weeks. Have I mentioned how hot it’s been. It’s been, should I visit one of the wonders of the world or stay in the train’s airconditioned bar, hot. It’s been Monica Bellucci hot. And I got a cold. How did that happen and how mesmerisingly ironic. Bloody climate change….or something. Actually that’s been mentioned a few times by the guides and as there are only 18 of us (excluding staff) on this train, rather that alienate the climateers I’ve kept schtum. Notwithstanding climate debates and entirely due to the heat, I’m currently surviving on muscle memory and sense of smell.

Further on health matters, we’ve been in India for well over a week and the inevitable is yet to happen for me. In a perverse way I was sort of looking forward to it because my hat’s a bit tight and when the trapdoor opens you can usually be guaranteed to drop a couple of hat sizes. But Delhi belly will be lurking I have no doubt so the wait is like what the redcoats had to endure at Rorke’s Drift. Only a matter of time before the Zulus explode into view with debilitating mayhem on their agenda. Actually, the wait’s not quite that bad.

One thing I have noticed, or haven’t to be more precise, is the complete absence of the once ubiquitous Ambassador car. When I first started coming to India in the late 1980’s, they were pretty much the only cars on the road. Now, in your typical city commute, you are totally hemmed in by Korean and Japanese cars and the same trucks and buses – they haven’t gone anywhere. But where could the Ambassadors have gone? The things were damn near indestructible. I was in an accident in one many years ago. Today the front of the car would have needed considerable TLC from your favourite panel beater. Our Ambassador back then – not a mark. The inside of the car was chaotic with papers and bags  (and people) strewn about but the outside was business as usual.

Many years ago I spent some time walking the various government ministries trying to get a number of projects underway. One of the most comical scenes I saw was when convoys of Ambassadors left a ministerial building, like a stream of Noddy cars, conveying a minister somewhere. Amidst all the flashing lights and sirens there were security people hanging out of windows waving their arms to get traffic out of the way. Good luck with that.

I have stood fuming, behind people in immigration queues in India who appear to be trying to negotiate their way into the country. I get most impatient in check-in lines at the airport and in immigration lines. How hard can it be, I’m saying to myself. Have a valid passport, get a visa, fill in the immigration form, you’re in. Now it’s e-visas and we became that person who’s holding up the queue a few days back. We had our e-visas and all of the other required documentation so what could possibly go wrong. Something induced chagrin in our immigration officer but we still have no idea what. So after handing over passport, boarding pass, e-visa print-out and customs form, he did this :

1. Takes the paperwork and stares at it like it was a ransom note.
2. Consults his colleague in the next booth who shrugs – a problem shared is two problems so he’s not interested.
3. Gets up and walks off. Not a good sign. Fortunately he didn’t return with an officious looking gentleman in uniform, just a worried look.
4. Re-takes his seat and continues tapping his computer and shuffling paper.
5. Stamps passport – a good sign but then…
6. Continues to scratch his head and stare intently at the computer screen and the paperwork yet again.
7. Hands everything back without having said a word or even looking at me during the whole process. I say “thank you sir”, step into India and hope I don’t have to step back into non-nationality limbo (remember, we’ve left Australia) to rescue the Child Bride..
8. Repeats with CB’s paperwork.

At least we didn’t have to wait for our luggage to appear. After this rigmarole it was rotating on the carousel when we got there.

So Trump’s new tariff regime has been announced. I think our hotel here in Delhi must think we’re Americans because our bar bill last night had 4 taxes attached. S.C. was 8%, CGST was 9%, SGST was 9% and DVAT was 25%. I don’t know what any of those are apart from variations on consumption taxes but it increased the bill by about 30% which, apart from being rather excessive, doesn’t appear to make mathematical sense until you realise that the two 9%’s were 9% of the 8%. So the original bill of 6050 rupees became 8133.62. Our government, with only a 10% GST are obviously rank amateurs, especially at milking foreigners.

My first visit to India was 1986 and I haven’t been back since 2013 so it’s changed a bit. The bit we have seen so far in Delhi including the airport, has changed in some fairly fundamental ways especially with their Metro rail system. The place has evolved from the East India Company to the Jetsons. Indians have always been pretty tech savvy – look who runs or at least drives a big chunk of Silicon Valley. But whilst your average Indian can code a moon launch, ask them to drive between two white lines and see how far you get. Those lines represent wasted paint; nothing more, nothing less. How else do you convert three lanes into five if you can’t ignore those pesky lines.

As Geoffrey Chaucer sagely observed in 1395, “time and tide wait for no man”, and neither does Indian traffic. As I remember, the traffic rules aren’t. They’re just for guidance and once you get past vaguely sticking to the jeft side of the road, you ‘re on your own. I couldn’t help notice the dual speed limits – 70km/hr for cars and 40km/hr for trucks….on the same road. Now there’s a recipe for disaster. Not quite as bad as the urban myth about Sweden switching from driving on the left side of the road to the right in 1967 – cars this weekend, trucks and buses next weekend. If you’ve seen pictures of the traffic on the actual fateful day you’ll notice vehicles being hit from all directions. It’s why Volvos are so boxy. What did really cause a small problem in Sweden was that the buses all had doors on the left side so stepping off said bus into traffic mayhem was somewhat problematic I would think.