India at Xmas- on the old trunk road!
Travel in northern India is an unforgettable experience
Sometimes like a cross between the M4 corridor, the Notting Hill carnival and a Cumbrian cattle market – forget signals, forget lanes, forget priorities- foot (or hoof) on the gas and go for it!
For me it was a land carved out of the fabric of history, tightly woven in parts, threadbare in others.
What I will remember is:
The extraordinary, palpable energy of the trees in Ghandi’s memorial garden; the haunting amber fort and pink palace of Jaipur; the miniature wish houses made out of the stones at the side of the path, and lots of stripy squirrel bottoms – as they avoided attempts to capture them on film – on the road leading up to the temple of Ganesh at the fort in Ranthambore; the blue/black evening sky at the Laxmi Villas Palace on Christmas Day and the cycle rickshaw ride and birdlife and chai tea in tiny earthenware cups the next morning at Bharatpur; the tiger that walked right past the jeep , a hands breadth away, as we were leaving Ranthambore game reserve at sunset – we did not even merit a switch of her elegant tail- and the tiger trails and embracing trees in Jim Corbett country at the foot of the Himalayas- and the people- almost exclusively male- courteous and cheerful- and the land itself
