I eventually made it out of Agra. After hanging out and then napping in the common area at my hostel till 1am and after a substantial delay on my 2am train to Delhi which meant I got to witness how the station police at Agra Cantonment Station dealt with the drunk man who wet himself – drag him down the platform to just outside the station manager’s office and hit him with sticks. And with that I learned not to sit just outside the station manager’s office.

I got into Delhi’s Hazrat Nizamuddin station at sunrise and thanks to the train delay, I’d worked out a great strategy for seeing Humayun’s Tomb which one of the guys we’d hung out with on the rooftop in Agra had assured me (and proven with his photos) was worth a visit. It is located just next to Hazrat Nizamuddin station and, according to my guidebook, it opened at dawn so on arrival I left my backpack at the cloakroom (where, apparently, luggage has to be locked but where the manager doesn’t question it when you blatantly lie and say that your backpack is locked when it very obviously is not) and tried to make my way through the chaotic mass of people trying to get out of the station. I, of course, went out the station on the wrong side (yep, still directionally challenged) so had to battle through the crowds again to get back in and then back out the other side where I got totally lost trying to find the correct route past all the rickshaws and pre-pay taxis. I eventually found the main road and a friendly teacher waiting outside a school who gave me the most accurate directions ever. I wonder if he’s read this blog and recognised my challenges in this area…  It was a pretty short walk, through one of the city’s Arabic and more affluent areas, so it was actually a lovely peaceful start to my time in Delhi.

When I got to the entrance, the computer system for the tickets wasn’t up and running yet so they wouldn’t let me in. With the dawn light fading, I pleaded with the security guard to just let me in to take photos and then I’d come back out and get the ticket afterwards. This is (obviously) not standard procedure so I knew it was unlikely but thankfully I wasn’t the only one waiting to get in (just the onlyforeigner waving about a DSLR camera and the only woman so I had due reason not to be optimistic I was going to be let in). Two Indian men were waiting too and, after seeing my efforts at trying to talk my way in, they went to have words with the security guard as well and he soon gave in and let us all through. After 20min, and a substantial number of photos taken, the computers were working and we could buy our tickets to get through to the main tomb. And that was so worth the wait. There weren’t many people there at 7 in the morning so it was quiet and peaceful and lovely to just sit on one of the benches in the garden, reading, eating mandarins and chatting to the guy who came in his bright blue tracksuit to feed the birds as he, I learnt, does every morning. On the way out, I went to one of the smaller buildings off to the side which was surrounded by a wall and dew-covered grass and there was a peacock roaming about and I wanted a photo that actually shows its colours (my failure to do so on Ross Island on the Andamans still instilled deeply in me). So I tried to stay out of sight to not scare it off which involved ducking behind trees and walls and sneaking my camera blindly around corners. The full range of photos is actually quite hilariously random and none of them are particularly good. Ok, they are all totally rubbish. But my effort was still way better than at Ross Island so I’m pretty happy with my achievement overall.

I hadn’t planned much time in Delhi and arrived with an onwards ticket to Jaisalmer already confirmed because I really shouldn’t like it. So no one was more surprised than me when it turned out that I actually did quite like it. That beautiful morning at Humayun’s tomb and the fascinating little side streets and alleys of Old Delhi probably had a lot (ok, probably everything) to do with that. But I actually wanted more time in Dehli. There’s a sentence I never thought I’d write!

Next, it was off to Jaisalmer. Just a little 18 hr, 1000km detour towards the Pakistani border. I was putting all my trust in all the travellers I had been meeting since the Andamans that this place was awesome. The train ride was pretty standard except for the first 3 hours where I got to experience the commuter rush hour in Delhi. Which means you fit 7 people on the seats meant for 3 and then squeeze people into every bit of available floor- and top bunk space there is. Not unlike London in rush hour, really. Except that there are no women in sight. And that everyone chats to each other, plays cards and is generally friendlier and infinitely more sociable than anyone who commutes in London.

By the time the train arrived into Jaisalmer the next day, the commuters having long since gotten off and backpackers having gotten on and gotten off while I had stayed put, I had made friends with a guy who, like me, had made the trip out there with no plans other than to get there. So I joined him and his mate (who had gone for the 2AC ticket option) and braved the wall of guesthouse agents waiting outside the station. We pretty much got coerced into seeing this one guesthouse that, apparently, was full of other travellers. And while there were indeed other travellers there (and awesome ones at that), the inconsistency in the info made it pretty clear that this was just a story to get customers. Because Jaisalmer is all about camel safaris and guesthouses book these so customers mean money. So I had the most bizarre but also most financially beneficial negotiation process with this guesthouse owner. I did so very little actual negotiating. Like, almost less than I do in any shop in the UK. I was actually 100% honest about why I couldn’t immediately commit to the quoted price and then he just kept dropping it. In note form, it went something like this:

Guesthouse owner: ‘You want camel safari? I have a 3D/2N trip leaving tomorrow.’ 

Me: ‘I don’t want to go for 3 days. I just want to go for 2D/1N’

Guesthouse owner: ‘Why? 3D/2N is much better and other travellers who arrived this morning are already signed up. Only 3500 Rs’         

Me: ‘But I don’t need to spend 3 days on a camel. I just want to see some desert. And I have an awesome spreadsheet budget which never planned for a trip to to this place or a 3500 Rs camel safari didn’t budget for that.’

Guesthouse owner: ‘OK I give you very good deal. Only 3000 Rs and room tonight only 100 Rs.’

Me: ‘That’s just a lot more than I’d planned to spend. I was only planning for a 2D/1N trip. I have an awesome spreadsheet budget which never planned for a trip to to this place or a 3000 Rs camel safari didn’t budget for that.’

Guesthouse owner: ‘But no other travellers want to do just 2D/1N. They are all doing 3D/2N. I’ll give you a discount, only 2500 Rs and room tonight only 60 Rs. It’s a very good deal, no better deal in all of Jaisalmer.’  

Me: ‘Ok, that’s fine but I have an awesome spreadsheet budget which never planned for a trip to to this place or a 2500 Rs camel safari didn’t budget for that so I will need to check if I can afford it.’

(I try to log onto googledrive to retrieve my awesome spreadsheet budget which never planned for a trip to this place or a 2500 Rs camel safari but the wifi connection is slow and the guesthouse owner impatient)

Guesthouse owner: ‘Ok, I’ll give you a discount, only 2200 Rs and room tonight only 60 Rs. It’s a very good deal, no better deal in all of Jaisalmer.’

Me (doing some mental calculations that this is suddenly not so far off the 1600-2000 Rs cost I was expecting to pay for a 2D/1N trip): ‘Hmm ok, it would just be nice to be able to check my awesome spreadsheet budget which never planned for a trip to this place or a 2200 Rs camel safari before I commit to it.’

Guesthouse owner: ‘Ok I give you very good final deal. Only 2000 Rs and room tonight free.’

Me: ‘Hmm yeah ok I can do that.’

And the lesson we can all learn from this? Spreadsheets are awesome. Or maybe; there is so much room to negotiate in Jaisalmer, you don’t need to do anything to get a good deal. The actual conversation was way longer than the above and the final deal came with the condition that this was only valid if I didn’t tell anyone about it. He obviously didn’t know I have a blog.

The safari trip itself was really good fun, lots of lying about in the shade in the crazy mid-day heat, lots of listening to my iPod, lots of reading, lots of awesome company and lots of impressive food given the absence of facilities (heavy on chapatis though). We slept on blankets on the sand dunes (not something the Thar desert is dominated by, by the way) under the stars and there were some serious discussions going on about whether or not we saw a UFO one night because something was definitely moving in an odd (ie non shooting star) trajectory across the night sky.                             We probably didn’t.

Back in Jaisalmer, the guesthouse owner let me use a shower (definitely needed after 3 days in the desert) and I hung out with the lovely people from the safari for the afternoon and evening before two of us went off to the train station to catch the overnight train to Jodhpur – the Blue City.

After getting into town after the overnight train, finding a guesthouse, grabbing an early-morning chai and catching up on a bit of sleep, we went off to find the omelette man. We had run into another traveller when searching for a guesthouse who had mentioned this place. And apparently it’s famous. And recommended in the Lonely Planet. So cue several imitation omelette outlets at the same traffic junction as the original. But we found him and his omelettes were amazing so the hype was clearly justified. He was also ready with his finest pose for photos, looking like quite the serious businessman, which I was, of course, happy to indulge him in.

Later, we went to the fort overlooking the city which provided amazing views but was not quite as impressive as we thought it might have been. Word is the fort in Jaipur is better but that didn’t feature in my plans so I can’t personally vouch for that.

My stay in Jodhpur was short, literally just the one day and one night before I was back on a morning train. The train was at 6.30am so I had to leave the guesthouse early, so early that there were very few people on the streets of Jodhpur. Unfortunately, after 6 weeks in India with no majorly uncomfortable incidents to report, this was the moment that was about to change. I passed a man just as I came out the guesthouse who said hello and who I, as you would in that situation, ignored. I didn’t think anything more of it until about 3min later when he came up behind me which led to some totally inappropriate grabbing from his side and a gut response from me to yell ‘fuck off, you disgusting human being!’ at the top of my voice at him as he was hurrying away in the other direction. I don’t think he gave a shit and it only made me feel marginally better. I think he was being disgustingly opportunistic, seeing that I was alone and there were no other people nearby so that was his chance to grope someone, but it’s impossible not to feel violated and even more impossible to fathom that I am probably lucky that this wasn’t worse than it was. I love this country and on a whole I love the people in this country. But I hate that situations like this are too often part and parcel of being a woman here.

I got in the first rickshaw I saw and, for the first and only time so far, made no effort at negotiating a better price. That also pissed me off but I wasn’t about to be hanging around alone there any longer. At the train station, I was back in the comforts of crowds of waiting passengers and, with a 3-hour train delay, back in the comforts of Indian rail travel.

I’ve included that last story not because I think it’ll define my experience of travelling in India (there have been way too many positives so far for that to be the case (in between all the obvious day-to-day sexism) and I still have places to look forward to before my flight out in a few weeks’ time) but because I don’t want to make light of the challenges of travelling alone as a female in India. I will always stand by the opinion that yes, you can travel safely here alone as a female and no, there is no reason you shouldn’t do it if you want to. I was worried about coming on my own at one point before I got here but am so happy that I have. It tests your adaptability and reinforces your approach to travelling and builds confidence faster than travelling anywhere else (in my experience) will. And I have felt, and feel, safe and happy travelling solo here. But it is a challenge and the awareness of that is probably essential to making it the most brilliant experience it can, and should, be. And I wholeheartedly intend for my time here to continue to be just that; brilliant. Disgusting human beings can fuck off in the meantime.

 

Today I’m listening to: Taken By Trees – ‘Dreams’