India's golden grand prix
Posted on 15. Jan, 2008 by Mikey Leung in Editorials
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People with sensitive stomachs need not be worried while travelling India’s most well-touristed trail, says Mikey Leung
It was in a Pizza Hut, well within viewing distance of the Taj Mahal’s towers, that I finally caved in. A Britney song droned overhead, cheapening the far-too-familiar atmosphere. Tonight we would dine on Pasta Arabiata, a cuisine fit only for the modern Mughal aristocrat—i.e. the India tourist. Across the table sat my upbeat father, for we had just seen the Taj Mahal a few hours earlier. Despite that wonderful moment when I first gazed upon the Taj’s towers, I finally gave up on being an explorer in India—the way I am in Bangladesh each and every day.
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It was day six on our India tour, and fairly indicative of how the trip was going. With an iron stomach and an anthropologist’s curiosity, I felt rather at odds with our culinary choices that evening. We were, after all, visiting a heartland of Northern Indian cuisine. But really, I should have known better when I noticed that my father couldn’t say the words curry and diarrhea in separate sentences. And thus, our trip had become a colossal battle of the traveller’s tolerance vs. the tourist’s tummy, and I was now waving my Pizza Hut napkin in defeat. Meanwhile, my father, whose naturally downturned lips make him appear to wear a kind of permanent frown, was hidden behind his menu, no doubt choosing gaily between fusilli and spaghetti.
Our lightning tour was filled with gastronomically preventive pitstops like these. Every year, millions of visitors, especially those from other Asian countries, now race around India’s Golden Triangle track. A typical trip covers India’s most impressive architectural masterpieces while buzzing through its countryside at something near warp nine. Despite these sites being awash in monsoonal torrents of foreign tourists, the Mughal Kingdom’s lavish tastes still manage to exude their graceful charms several hundred years later, like being at an ancient airy banquet hall with room for wealthy guests from all over the world. The extravagant riches that the kingdom amassed from its subordinate neighbours far surpasses most other measures of conspicuous consumption that can be contemplated in Asia. Apparently, displaying your wealth was as popular then as it is today in modern India. But today, it is the tourists who (dis)grace the private audience halls of the former Mughal court.
Every month, thousands now stream through Delhi’s old city to stand under the Jain Mosque’s imposing and inspiring facade. Dozens wait under the Amber Fort gates every morning in Jaipur for an elephant ride to its lofty sandstone terraces. And over at Agra’s Taj Mahal, millions of yearly arrivals journey to admire the jewel in India’s crown, a site that still remains as timeless and impressive 250 years after Shah Jahan’s original vision became reality. Thankfully, that breathless moment when one first gazes upon the Taj can’t be outclassed by bazillion other visitors you must now share the experience with.
But it’s precisely that market that brings out the least savory parts of the India experience. For those unversed with the subcontinent’s cultural nuances, the stench and the rot on its streets hits you like a punch in the face. No doubt that tourists have plenty to frown at, as the ‘real’ India lies splayed out on its streets, distinctly unpackaged and definitely unruly. On their well-heeled trail follows a circus of touts, guides, beggars and salesmen, each trying to hustle some honey from the masses. In each city of the triangle, a franchised fraternity of pizzas, pastas and Pepsi offer slices of home.
In retrospect, I’d been far too idealistic of my father’s perspective, hoping that he would enjoy the subcontinent’s unpredictable nature as I do in Bangladesh. I’d thought the trip adventurous, deluding myself that he, the 60-year-old straight-laced electrical engineer, would somehow enjoy nearly slipping on cow dung and sidling through India’s oceans of humanity. I attempted to shield him from the chaos by booking a fully arranged tour, with hotels whose rack rates quote dollars instead of rupees. In the end, we learned more about each other’s nature than we did from the India that surrounded us.
Mikey Leung is a freelance journalist and photographer. He is currently researching a new Bradt guidebook to the subcontinent’s hidden gem: Bangladesh.
