It's been a strange couple of weeks. Suddenly nine months of loafing has become a two week holiday and every moment seems precious. We've posed for photos with guns and small children, seen the teeth of a tiger and almost missed the Taj Mahal.
The shootings in Mumbai were a horrible shock, even more so as we were oblivious in the mountains for the first day of the crisis. We'd been to several of the places attacked and stayed just round the corner from the Taj Hotel.
Luckily the closest we got to it all was a couple of days later in the northern town of Chandigarh. We were admiring old bracelets assembled into chickens and men with brocken tea pots for hands when a bunch of jubilant off-duty marines turned up and insisted on posing for photos with us and some of their guns. Very surreal but they were nice guys with guns so we agreed.
Chandigarh was planned by Le Corbusier, a great lover of straight lines ("the curve is ruinous, difficult, dangerous" apparently), but it has evolved into a very Indian version of modernism with al fresco barbers set up among the leafy arcades and chapati makers crouching among the stark facades. I'm not sure what the great man would have made of the junk yard art either.
We went one night to the beautiful 1950s cinema to watch Yuvraj the film we were extras in. Sitting in isolation among just a handful of bored children we made it through two and half hours of hindi with the odd english phrase ("la la la anti-family man la la") and several power cuts. Just as we were coming to our appearance in the dances at the end, the screen suddenly flicked off, the house lights went on and the last stray dog filed out. Maybe we'll have more luck with a DVD!
Our next stop was the Corbett national park where we ended up chasing a tiger on elephant-back, all very colonial. The elephant wasn't terribly pleased and kept trumpeting as the tiger turned and growled. We asked later what kind of defences we had on board and the handler pointed to a small pointed stick. We spent the rest of the day on a smug post-tiger potting high infuritating everyone else we met and then somehow managed to get another peek from a jeep in the evening.
Our other stops were Varanasi, very spiritual and beautiful in the misty morning light but far too full of excrement for my liking, and Agra where we marched towards the Taj Mahal wondering why we were visiting when we already had a picture postcard view wedged in our minds. In the end, we went through the gate and burst into laughter. The winter fog had come down and just the faintest outline was visible.
We're now admiring erotic temple sculptures (gravity defying bestiality, lovely) and posing in photos of school outings (at their request).
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