A note on the pictures: The photographs were scanned directly from 35mm negatives. Clicking on the thumbnails should bring you the full-size JPEG. Some of these are well over 100K. Since it was the rainy season, the skies are overcast and the light clear but somewhat flat. Because of the low contrast in some of these photos, there are occasional artefacts. That's digital for you. There's some encyclopaedic-style info dropped in here and there, not because I think that you wont know it, but because I didn't at the time.

Hyderbad, Andhra Pradesh, was my first port of call. Hyderabad is the home of my friend a colleague S. R. Murthy Velamakanni, and it was here that his wedding to Srivally Prasanna took place.

Murthy and Srivally	Murthy and me (photographer unfamilar with manual-focus cameras, I guess, and sharpened as much as I dare. Not worth a bigger version)

Murthy and Srivalli are both Brahmins, the "priestly" caste, literally "those who know Brahman [God]", so the wedding was full-dress Hindu. The main event takes place at a time and on a day determined to be auspicious by a form of astrology, in this case 10:36 on 25/07/01. It is at exactly this time that a screen placed between the bride and groom is dropped.

Weddings are a big deal in Hyderabad, taking place in one of the large halls built for the purpose. There's a whole street of these hangar-like places in the so-called Sikh Village in Secunderabad.

Hyderabad is really three cities: Hyderabad itself, the old Muslim capital of Andhra; the administrative centre of Secunderabad built by the British, and the abandoned Hindu walled city of Golconda. Most of the population live in Hyderbad proper, in great poverty, most of the money is held by the minority who live in great comfort in Banjara Hills, Secundrabad.

Banjara is also home to the "Hi Tech City" development through which Hyderabad is seeking to challenge Bangalore as India's leading IT center. Murthy worked then for Saven Technologies, the parent company of Penrillian, who employ me, which is how I come to know him.

Not for the last time the wedding made me think that India is much like southern Europe. Although the marriage itself takes place in only a few minutes, the whole extended family (a couple of hundred people) take part in prolonged celebrations over the space of a few weeks. On the night before the wedding there is a communal meal shared by all the (blood-)relatives of the groom. One of which, Murthy's father explained to me, I was now deemed to have become, hence my invitation to it. There then ensued a very polite little debate about who was most honoured, them by my flying thousands of miles to be there, or me for being welcomed so.

The guests begin to arrive. Rather different from the parish hall..

Commute to work on a classic Brit hard-tailed thumper. Nice Notice absence of indicators, mirrors: in Indian roadcraft, all signalling and traffic awareness is achieved through the horn. You know, when I took that snap I didn't really pay attention and filed it under "Bullet", but looking again I believe that this is actually a very well restored sprung-hub Triumph Speed Twin with the "bathtub" taken off. That's a very serious, very valuable classic bike. Respect.

The Brahmin wedding ceremony involves several priests, a good deal of Sanscrit and much play-acting. The audience don't really pay much attention, except when it comes to bless the couple by throwing saffron-dyed rice over them.

Murthy is a secular Hindu. He follows the dietary rules, and he goes to temple now and again to keep his mother happy (and he sat still for a Hindu wedding), but that's about it. He gets quite heated about the caste system, describing it is "horrible" in general and "very horrible" in particular.

I'm a voodo chile, voodo chile

Conversely, the driver I hired to take me from Delhi to Agra, and subsequently around Agra itself, was a very devout Hindu. To the extent that he would take his hands off the wheel in order to make the motions of prayer every time the car passed a shrine or temple. Which was often. His mother, he told me, goes every month to the temple built at the birth-place of Lord Krishna, Mathura, which is about half-way between the two cities, and which we passed en route. Although India is on country, there are border posts, and searches, at the boundaries of the provinces.

We stopped for a rest-break at a hotel built in the middle of nowhere, just of the highway. At the junction of its driveway and the main road were a small group of men with a couple of dancing bears.

I don't want to think about it.	Or this.

My driver was a good guy, helpful and honest. Unlike the slick, westernised guide who showed me around the Taj Mahal. Similarly, amongst the auto-rickshaw drivers of Hyderabad you do much better to hire a devotee--he'll be much more likely to charge you what it says on the meter, much less likely to take you to places you don't want to go. Watch out for a windscreen almost obscured by images of some deity, and flamboyant svastikas painted on the front of the vehicle.

It's hard for a westerner to get to grips with the use of svastikas as auspicious decoration. It's a symbol that we've become very coy about. There is one painted inside the nose-cone of the Spirit of St. Louis, amongst the signatures and encouraging messages placed there by Lindberg's crew. It's on display in the Smithsonian. The caption manages to explain that it is a Native American symbol meant to bring good luck without actually naming it. The Indian svastika is often drawn within a square rather than a rhombus, and may have dots between the arms.

blues for Allah

While in Delhi I visited the Jama Masjid mosque, reputed to be the largest in India. It stands on a platform raised several stories above the bazaar in Old Delhi, not far from the Red Fort. It is a magnificent building.

The various parts of the mosque and their functions were explained to me in great detail by a very eloquent guide who spoke not a word of English or anything else. Unlike any Christian church I've seen, or any of the Hindu temples I saw, Muslims young and old, male and female, come to the mosque just to hang out, chat with friends, watch the world go by. There's a remarkable amount of the world going by in the adjacent bazaar.

A small charge is levied for the care of your shoes while you are in the mosque. Well, in truth, you have to buy them back off the guy. The staff tret me with a strange mixture of deference and contempt. Another traveller, white, blond and female, was given a very hard time, I noticed. Her mistake may have been to have gone in with her head uncovered. That might be too generous to the git who threw her out.

Since Islam has a strong injunction against idolatry, graven images and representational art, so obviously photography is not permitted inside the mosque. Unless you pay the Rs 100 camera fee. The mosque contains three relics of the Prophet: a hair from his beard (as red as mine), a Holy Quran in manuscript by his son-in-law, and an imprint of his foot miraculously sunk into a slab of marble. Obviously these relics are far too important to be shown to some passing unbeliever. Unless that unbeliever should pay a Rs 100 to the "high priest" who holds the key of the reliquary. An unbeliever wouldn't know that mosques have imams, not priests, who don't spend their time fleecing tourists. As it happens, the imam of Jama Masjid currently spends his time attempting to broker peace-deals in Kashmir.

Courtyard in the Mosque	View of Delhi bazzar from Mosque

By the proportions of this foot-print I estimate that the Prophet must have been about nine feet tall. And his son-in-law must have been a dedicated student of fine calligraphy and illumination.

Masjid, interior	Birla Temple, view from Secretariat Road

At the Birla temple in Hyderabad, spirituality is dispensed in a production-line fashion. Devotees enter a narrow corridor that runs past the statue of Lord Venkateshwara (one of Lord Vishnu's forms), where they make a small offering, recieve a splash of holy water and a dab of saffron paste to mark their forehead. The whole process takes a few seconds. At the Birla temple photography is strictly prohibited, and signs instruct you to neither pay nor tip the men who look after your shoes.

I'd like to help you son, but you're too young to vote

As the Moghul Empire collapsed the sub-continent was left a patch-work of squabbling princely states. One of the reasons that the British are still looked somewhat kindly upon is that they re-united India. India in this case meaning Hindustan. One might hesitate to compare Clive with Bismark, but the situations in eighteenth century India was not dissimilar to that in nineteenth century Germany.

Inda has had several capitals, over the years, old and new Delhi, Agra and Calcutta. The current republic is ruled from New Delhi, although the states retain a good deal of independence, and local politics is vigourous. Another parallel with Germany, now that I come to think of it. In fact, Indian politics is a little too robust. A leading MP was shot while I was there. This occasioned widespread outrage but little surprise. Remembering that even the Mahatma was assassinated, who'd be an Indian leader?

your Daddy's rich, and your Momma's good looking

Most of the great monuments in Delhi and Agra were built by the Mughals, most notably Shah Jahan I. Even after five hundred years of looting, sub-tropical decay and institutionalised vandalism by the Brits, the palaces within the Red Fort still radiate an aura of vast wealth, stupendous luxury and great sophistication. One favourite decorative effect there was to allow a sheet of water to flow through a slot and down in front of a wall pierced with many niches, each holding a lamp. Another was to inlay very complex patterns drawn with cut semi-precious stones into translucent marble panels.

This technique is used extensively on the Taj Mahal. From a distance it's surface appears pristine, but at close quarters it is seen to be encrusted with colourful floral designs and Arabic script. Inside and out the Taj carries much of the text of the Quran, each letter cut from a single sheet of black stone.

Portrate of Ghandi on the Rupee 500 note	Scavenger clinging to exterior of bathroom window New Delhi

when the train come in the station

Travelling from Agra Cantt back to Hyderabad by train, I had a strange feeling of deja vu. The railways are nationalised, and the lucrative freight business used to heavily subsidise the passenger side, which is run almost as a public service. Being worn out from the incessant clamour of Agra's tourist industry, and knowing that the journey would be about twenty-four hours, I bought a ticket for 1st class AC. There are around a dozen classes: AC or not, berth or chair, 2 or three tier, reserved or general, and more in various combinations. Each of these has various quotas: VIP, tourist, vertan, student, disabled and so forth. While buying my ticket I suddenly felt a revelation come over me, and came to understand something that had been a puzzle.

Inlaid marble panel Red Fort, Delhi	Bovine resident of Agra Cantt Station

Having marched up to the foreigners, veterans and service-men window in the booking hall, it was not enough to simply state where I wanted to go and when. No, to purchase a reserved ticket one must fill out an application form, and hand this to the clerk. He watches you do this, and then types the data you put on it into the booking system directly. So why provide, as one must, your name, permanent address ("in the UK?" "Yes") and telephone number? Why can't he just ask you, and type?

This sort of thing happens a lot, for seemingly trivial concerns. Why? Because there is a good chance that you'll be wanting to complain. If so, then your complaint will be dealt with very seriously, and the relevant tribunal will want to summon you to give evidence. So they need to know how to get in touch with you.

At Hyderabad's Rajiv Ghandi airport I went to the manager's office to enquire if there was any left-luggage facility there (there wasn't). His first words to me were "what is your grievance?"

As in meditterainian europe, little effort is put into getting things right in the first place. Substitute chai for espresso, Hinduism for Catholicism (a suprising easy exercise, I suspect) and Enfield Bullets for Vespas: then Agra could easily be mistaken for a southern Italian town. But, and this is very likely British influence, the complaint is a sacred thing. Complaints must be dealt with. There is a seemingly endless beaurocracy devoted to complaint, claim and counter-claim. In Hyderabad I was interested to note the substantial building that housed the "Traffic Fines Apellate Tribunal".

But the railway, and that sense of deja vu. When I was growing up in Teesdale, we were about twenty years behind the curve. I was taught out of books written in the fifties. Rural lines had fallen to Dr. Beeching's axe (Dad's farm used to be within easy walking distance of two stations, one with a significant goods yard), the railway was to be found in distant, exotic, little visited Darlington. But the railways had been a vital force in the nation's life during the period that these books had been written. So I grew up with a mental picture of the railway that the Rev. Awdry would be proud of. And that's what India has. Steam has gone, and the only people to mourn its passing were romantic foreigners. But otherwise, it's all there.

please stop your train, and let a poor boy ride

Passenger and freight traffic are commingled, so the platforms are piled high with wooden crates, great burlap sacks, hand-carts laden with cartons. A soldier (Agra has been an army town, one army or another, for a good thousand years) reclines upon a giant bale of something, sleeping with his jacket over his face. There are busy mail-rooms, with post restante at the larger stations. Well-staffed left-luggage offices with no x-ray machines, but signs warning of rats. More railway officials than you can image, all with their own office, and all with cryptic, abbreviated, utterly fascinating job descriptions painted on the doors. All of this uncannily familiar.

Even the painted signs. Almost all the signage is hand-painted. And most packaging is done with paper, string and cloth.

There are an army of porters, grizzled of boys mostly, wearing red turbans on their heads and brass badges on their sleeves. Women in sky-blue saris run the waiting rooms and "retiring rooms"--accommodation provided within the stations themselves. And all this, thanks to those junior-school books, utterly familiar and comforting (except perhaps for the colours).

The cow that lives in Agra Cantt station is another matter, however. The platform food vendors cook up snacks for sale to folks in the lower class carriages. The scraps get fed to the cow. And she has learned to drink form the taps. Public water supplies are common throughout India, for drinking (if you're brave enough), washing or just cooling off. In the stations there are self-closing taps: a gnomon of pipe projects from a wall, the weight of the tap as it hangs down holds it closed. Lifting the body of the tap releases the water. Raised by the nose of a smart bovine it delivers a stream of water into her mouth.

Someone had hung a garland of flowers over her horns, quite possibly one of the Sadhus down at the local terminus end of the station, industriously mortifying their flesh by taking huge hits off potent-smelling chillums.

The only really bad food available in India is that served in railway stations. This too may have been learned from the British.

A First Class AC berth is remarkably comfortable. I could lie full stretch on the bunk and not touch the ends or sides, which isn't even nearly true on a British sleeper. Since I'm about three times the size of the average Indian, this is luxury indeed. I couldn't touch the ceiling, having to climb up onto one of the upper berths to adjust the fans. Joy of joys the outside doors of the carriage may be opened while the train is in motion. There are few greater pleasures than watching the world pass by from an open train door. This was quite safe as my train, the AP Express, averages around 50km/hr and the loading gauge is generous.

Some notes taken on the train and back in Hyderabad	An image of Ganesh painted on Marble.

"Such-and-so Express" trains don't go very fast, but they also don't stop in many places. A "mail train" goes quite fast but stops at most major towns. "passenger" trains stop everywhere and don't get much above walking pace between times. Services are still divided into "up" and "down" trains, by no system that I could skry out. The timetables are large, complex and (of course) sign-written by hand. A most agreeable few hours may be passed in the (non air-conditioned) AC Waiting Room, ministered to by the blue-saried crone and brisk chai-wallah.

Hell-hound on my trail
Less agreeable were the few minutes I spent in the station forecourt. Having put my rucksack into the left luggage office, and rats be damned, I stepped out to see a little more of the place before the train was due. Almost immediately I was surrounded by loafing ricksha drivers, all keen to show me the sights. I explained that I was waiting for a train.

Ah, they said, your guide told you that we were all pickpockets! (He had) And that you shouldn't come with us, because we'd rob you and leave you stranded (that too). He was just trying to keep your money for himself (which, of course, he was). I noticed though, that one of the fellows was scrutinising me quite closely. After a little while he lifted his shirt and slapped his belly, right around the place corresponding to that on my body where the pouch containing my passport, tickets and backup dollars was held. Coincidence? Paranoia?

Well, I'd got to Agra by car, organised by the agent who also organised my hotel there, and the guide. The desk clerk at the hotel in Delih had given his opinion on this package, and it was not rosy. The guide was a creep, the hotel was fine as far as it went, although (to reduce the need for air conditioning) the rooms had no windows. Most oppressive.

This same agent had also arranged my train trip from Agra back to Secunderabad. Except...on closer examination my ticket turned out to be a stand-by, not a reservation, and for a lower class than I had paid for. Well, I got on the 'phone back to Delih and was fed a pack of lies. So.

So, that night in Arga (in the sweltering, pitch-black room) I felt more alone, exposed and threatened than I have in a long, long time. This was after my guide, who had done a good job of getting me unmolested through the security checks at the Taj, and had shown me the best places on the river side to see it from, had trundled me through a series of shops belonging to "friends" of his. The usual Tourist Trap deal, all part of the game, but after the ticket farrago I was in no mood for it.

I spent that night with a chair wedged against the door.

Thus, the next day, after going in person to the station, refunding my standby ticket and booking my own sleeper berth, I viewed the ricksha-wallahs with a jaded eye.

Agra is well worth seeing, in more ways that one. To reach India and miss the Taj would be criminal, and because of the Taj (or rather, the conditions under which the USA underwrote its maintenance) Agra is firmly non-industrial. There are tax-breaks for traditional craft industries, any and all sources of air pollution are strongly discouraged. This makes for, well, for a very poor third-world city. But the Taj brings in the tourist dollars (and pounds, and, indeed, rupees), so floating above the government-sponsored mediaeval squalor is a huge capitalist machine finely tuned for the rapid extraction of same.

These grinning, joking chaps outside the station were merely its lowest echelon.

Secunderabad station seemed more welcoming than you'd credit. Potholed, congested S.P. Road was an avenue of dreams, the Hyderabad Yatri Nevas with its rock-hard beds a home from home.

Every nickel helps a lot/ so shine, shine on shoe-shine boy
When I got back to the UK someone asked me how I'd coped with all the beggars. Of which there are many.

It struck me that one of the conditions for very, very high population density is that people are able to sleep on the streets. A lot, a really tremendous number, of people sleep on the streets in Hyderabad, and there is no need of any cardbord-city. And many of these people beg. Not all, but many. And I am so very, very obviously not from Hyderabd, indeed not from India.

I was absolutely the tallest, broadest, fattest, palest, reddest haired person on the street. By a long way. And I also equally obviously had no idea about anything. Where anything was, where I was, anything. Totally lost. And so perfectly happy to pay Rs200 for what I later learned was a Rs 20 journey by auto-rickshaw.

Now there is a theory that this sort of thing is very bad, because it causes inflation for the locals. The ricksha-wallahs (in this case) get used to charging over the odds, it's said. It might very well be that the chap who overcharged me by an order of magnitude will also try it on with a local. But then the local passenger already has a good idea of what the fare should be. The local passenger also is easily identified as such.

So, given that Rs200 is about £1.50 to me, but is Rs200 to him, I say: good effort, a harmless scam that gives him some pocket money, and me something to write about here.

And similarly with the tourist-trap ethnic-craft-nicknack emporia that Kahn (the Agra guid) took me to. For sure, the stuff there is overpriced. Doubtless an Agrabaddi could get this stuff much cheaper--although probably still for a higher price than elsewhere, given the nature of tourist destinations in general. Not that an Agrabaddi would probably want a silk handkerchief with fanciful portraits of Sha Jahan and Muntab painted on it. I know I didn't.

Thus, despite the fact that they're ripping me off, and I know that, and they know I know it, the transaction is fairly harmless in the grand scheme of things. I was going to get the rug shipped back to the UK, but I guess that meant that Kahn wouldn't have got his kick-back until the paperwork went through, so our trip to the station just happened to pass by the rug shop, and perhaps we could just step inside for a moment...and I ended up carrying thing home.

With all this kind of stuff going on, it's hard to make any kind of judgement about the street beggars. The economic baselines are too different to try and figure out. In truth, I wasn't ever pestered by anyone (other than the ricksha-wallahs at Agra Cantt), I certainly wasn't accosted in the way I have been by Old Soldiers At Kings Cross. And indeed I applied the same general principle to the beggars in Hyderabad as I would in London. Basically: whim. Modified in the face of the higher proportion of Hyderabaddi mendicants with an economically disadvantageous number of limbs and/or sensory organs.

Thanks Keith for this fantastic effort. (Both words could be taken in a pejorative way but they shouldn't be.) We will benefit from this personal story for years. -- Richard