Tag Archives: india

Slow train to Darjeeling

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MY MOTHER’S FATHER, who died young in the early 1930s, was Mayor of Barkly East, a small town in the Eastern Cape (South Africa). He was the driving force in bringing the railway over the mountains from Lady Grey to Barkly East. This was the most expensive (in terms of cost per mile) stretch of railway ever built in South Africa. It included a series of switchback stretches to allow the trains to ascend or descend the steep mountain slopes. Another mountain railway with switchbacks can be found on India’s West Bengal. The narrow gauge railway links New Jalpaiguri in the plains with Darjeeling high up in the mountains. We travelled on this line on December 2019. Here is what I wrote soon after the ride.

The author and the train

Today we travelled on a narrow gauge mountain railway with at least 5 switchbacks. It is the so called ‘Toy Train’ that runs incredibly slowly between New Jalpaiguri and Darjeeling which is in the foothills of the Himalayas, more than 2000 metres above sea level.

We took almost two hours to travel the first about three miles. This was mainly because of a seemingly interminable wait for a signal man to arrive to allow our train to cross a river near Siliguri. Soon after we began moving, we passed tea gardens and began our several hour slow ascent towards Kurseong, Ghum, and Darjeeling.

The train follows the route of NH55, crossing over it frequently at unguarded level crossings. The serpentine course of the railway is designed to lengthen its route in order to reduce the gradients that need to be tackled.

The wheels squeal and shriek as the carriages wind around the tight curves of the tracks. The diesel engine’s horn blasts very frequently to clear the path for the train.

The views from the train are spectacular. The carriages pass extremely close to buildings, plants along the side of the track, and steep drops. Passing through towns on the route, sometimes we were so close to shops beside the track that it would have been easy to snatch goods from them. Leafy branches sprung through the open carriage windows, shedding leaves and flowers.

The flora along the route was very varied. We passed a multitude of colourful flowers including magnificently exuberant poinsettias.

Because of our slow start we travelled the last three and a half hours in darkness as the sun set long before we arrived at our destination. We arrived over three hours late.

Our enjoyment of this superb railway journey was enhanced by having conversations with a businessman from Bangalore and a couple from Lincolnshire in the UK.

Even though it is very slow, a trip on the Toy Train is thoroughly recommendable.

When we arrived at Darjeeling, it was dark and extremely cold. There were few people at the station apart from our fellow passengers. There were no taxis or autorickshaws, and we had no clue as to where our guest house was located, and how to reach it. Luckily, we had our host’s telephone number, and we rung him. The kind fellow, a Nepalese Buddhist cleric as we discovered later, came in his car to fetch us.

Although our host’s family were very hospitable, we would not stay at that place again. The main problem was that it could only be accessed from the street by a steep outdoor staircase without a handrail. One false step, and one of us might have fallen from the steps and then down the orecipitous slope into the ravine far below us.

I have yet to revisit Darjeeling, which I loved, but next time, I will choose a warmer time of year.

My first visit to Kolkata (Calcutta) was very nearly my last

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IN AUGUST 2011, my wife was invited to attend a Loreto House School reunion in Calcutta (Kolkata). As I had never been to the city before, I accompanied her. While my wife took part in the daily activities with some of her former schoolmates, I explored, and fell in love with, the great city on the Hooghly River – one of the channels through which the Ganga (Ganges) makes its way to the sea.

Throughout our five-day visit to the city, the monsoon rains fell heavily and incessantly. I walked around Calcutta in sandals without socks – often wading through filthy water that submerged my feet and lapped around my ankles. Fortunately, my feet did not become infected by whatever might have been lurking in the water. However, the monsoon did not affect my enjoyment of the vibrant, but delightfully decaying. city – one could almost say it is India’s own distinctive version of Havana in Cuba.

One day, I visited Jorasanko, the palatial residence of the Tagore family, whose members included not only the Nobel Prize winner, the polymath Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941), but also artists such as Abanindranath and Gaganendranath (both Tagore). After seeing around the fascinating rooms of Jorasanko, which I enjoyed so much that I visit it whenever I am in the city, I sploshed through the flooded streets towards the Hooghly River. On my way, I walked along a busy street lined with shops and filled with crowds of people. A steady stream of rickshaws pulled by thin, sinewy men – each of the vehicles laden with two or three passengers – made its way through the busy throng. The huge wheels of these vehicles keep the passengers high above the water flooding the streets, but the pullers’ feet were permanently submerged.

I noticed that some shops – often those of clothing and textile merchants – men were distributing hot food – rice and dal – to occasional passers-by. I stopped at one of the stores, and asked about the food distribution.  It was explained to me that during Ramadan, it was a virtuous thing to feed the poor. This kindness impressed me, especially as those who were serving it were fasting.

Howrah Bridge

Eventually, after boldly crossing a wide road clogged with slow moving heavy traffic, I stepped onto the Howrah Bridge, a gigantic steel bridge – a Meccano lover’s dream come true. It traverses the Hooghly – a section of the great Ganges River system. It was constructed between 1935 and early 1943. At first, the bridge crosses over a large market that is strung along the riverbank. Then, after a few yards, it is over the water. I walked along the downstream facing pedestrian walkway, dodging many porters carrying heavy and bulky loads on their heads. I took numerous photographs until I was two thirds of the way across the river. There, I met a policeman with an ancient-looking rifle – its leather strap slung over his shoulder. Politely, he informed me that photography was forbidden on the bridge. By then, I had sufficient images stored in the memory of my digital camera.

Once over the river, I headed through the streaming rain and thick crowds to a boat station close to the Howrah railway terminus. My plan was to travel on a river bus downstream to a landing stage not far from Park Street.  I bought a ticket which was printed on such very poor-quality paper that it had to be kept dry to stop it dissolving or falling to pieces.  I asked someone on the floating platform at the water’s edge if the boat that was approaching was heading for my planned destination. I received what I believed was an affirmative reply, and then boarded a relatively empty boat with plenty of free seats. We set off.

To my surprise, the boat headed upstream rather than downstream. Soon, we passed beneath the Howrah Bridge. We sailed a long way upstream away from the city centre. The banks of the river were lined with unattractive industrial buildings, and these were punctuated by occasional bathing ghats. We were heading away from the pleasant old part of the city in which Park Street is located.

I disembarked at the boat’s first stop. Had it not been raining so heavily I would have stepped out of the boat station to explore the area around it. Instead, I bought another flimsy ticket to return to Howrah. This time, I asked several people to tell me at which of the two floating embarkation pontoons I should board the downstream boat. I waited close to the water while a large crowd of fellow passengers gathered behind me. I wanted to be sure of embarking first.

The boat approached where we were all standing. I could see from afar that it was ‘packed to the gills’ with people. When the boat was about 18 inches away from the pontoon, I felt a great push from behind me and I was catapulted across the water towards the approaching vessel. Luckily, I was able to grab something on the boat, and this saved me from falling into the water and being crushed between the boat and the pontoon. Had I not been able to do this, I feel sure my life would have ended prematurely.

 The boat was stuffed with people – I am sure that sardines are less tightly packed in tins. I wanted to try to take a photograph to capture an image of this crowd, but I could not because so great was the pressure exerted by those around me that I was unable to raise my hands from beside my body. Thus wedged, I looked around and noticed there were only a few lifesaving flotation items. If our boat had sunk, I imagine that only a few of us on board would have survived.

It was a great relief to disembark at Howrah. I was drenched, somewhat shaken, and hungry. I decided to take a taxi to Flurys in Park Street. It is a European style tearoom/restaurant that served what I was yearning at that moment – toasted club sandwiches. I boarded a dented yellow Ambassador taxi in a car park near the railway station.  We inched our way forward into a mass of other similarly damaged taxis. The crowded taxis were so close to each other that it felt as if they might become welded together. It took almost an hour for my driver to skilfully manoeuvre his vehicle a couple of hundred yards from where I boarded it on to the beginning of the bridge.

At last, we arrived at Park Street, where, slightly drier because of sitting for ages in the taxi, I settled down at a table in Flurys. I ordered my sandwich and savoured the peaceful atmosphere in the tearoom*.

Despite my near escape from severe injury (or worse) on the banks of the Hooghly, my enthusiasm for Calcutta remained undiminished.

*Note: when I last visited Flurys in January 2025, it had lost most of its charm; it has become a place for tourists and Instagrammers.

This is a chapter in my book “The Hitler Lock & Other Tales of India”, which is available from Amazon

Shawls with embroidery from the Punjab in a neoclassical setting

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A FEW MONTHS AGO, we visited Claydon House (in Buckinghamshire) – a stately home filled with antiques and decorative features that are several hundred years old. We went to see an exhibition of contemporary art that was being displayed within the historic rooms of the house and in its gardens. I wrote about this show (https://adam-yamey-writes.com/2026/06/17/modern-art-on-display-in-an-english-country-house-setting/) and concluded:

“From the point of view of looking at these artworks, I see little point in showing them in the historic setting of Claydon House. There is something faintly amusing seeing the contemporary artwork almost competing with the variety of picturesque items within the house, which were created many years before their existence …”

In brief, I was not over impressed. So, it was with some trepidation that I set off to see a collection of nineteenth and early twentieth century Punjabi wedding shawls being displayed in the fine, neo-classical interiors designed by the eighteenth-century architect, Robert Adam (1728-1792) at Osterley Park (in west London).

The exhibition at Osterley Park, “Journeys – Wedding Shawls, Baghs and Phulkaris from the Karun Thakar Collection”, is on until the end of October 2026. The ‘journeys’ in the title refer to the fleeing of Hindus from Pakistan during the Partition of India (in 1947) and to the travelling that is often necessary during Indian weddings (for example, the bridegroom has to travel to meet his bride, and the married couple might need to move elsewhere after the wedding celebrations are over).

Before I explain the textiles, let me outline Karun Thakar, who was born in 1960. The British Museum website (https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/term/AUTH234453)  summarises him as follows:

 “Born Kenya, brought up in Delhi. Moved to UK as teenager. Former dealer and collector of ethnographic textiles and antiquities. Major collector of textiles from Africa and Asia.”

About 70 pieces from his vast collection are on display at Osterley. As part of the exhibition, there is a short video of him talking most interestingly and sympathetically about the wedding shawls.

The shawls on display are/were worn during weddings and other festivals. They are all embroidered, and fall into two categories: baghs and phulkari.  They are both handmade, traditionally by groups of women working together. Each comprises silk thread embroidered onto a woven cotton cloth or backing. Michael Beste (www.m-beste.com) describes phulkari in his essay “Hopes & Dreams: Phulkari and Bagh from the Punjab” as:

“Phulkari in Punjabi literally means “flower work”and was originally used to describe all types of embroidery. In time, however, the term came to be used only for an embroidered head cloth or shawl …”

And he distinguishes the two categories in his essay:

“The major distinguishing feature between baghs and phulkaris relates to the amount of embroidery. In phulkaris, the motifs are more or less regularly divided over the whole cloth, and large areas of ground fabric are visible. As a rule, the ends have quite different patterns from the centre and are often much more richly worked. The motifs on a bagh, on the other hand, are embroidered so close to each other that the ground cloth shows as just a thin line around each motif. Also the ends of the bagh almost always pick up the motif of the main field.”

The patterns on the phulkari tend to be figurative with spaces surrounding them so that patches of the backing cloth are easily visible. The flowery motifs are like well-spaced plants in a garden. In contrast, the baghs are literally covered with geometric motifs that leave little or none of the underlying backing cloth visible.

All the shawls on display are beautiful and show evidence of painstakingly careful embroidering. At Osterley Park, each of the ground floor rooms, all of which had been decorated by Robert Adam, contains several of the shawls from Karun Thakar’s collection. A few of the shawls have been playfully placed to clothe some of the classical statuary that can be found within Osterley.

The presence of the Punjabi shawls at Osterley is not inappropriate. For some time, Osterley Park was owned by the Child family, owners of Child & Co., a private bank that financed some of the East India Company’s voyages and ships. The company had three trading ships named Osterley. The first of these, which was launched in 1757 was partially financed by Francis Child III (1735-1763). It was this man, who commissioned Robert Adam to redesign his country home, Osterley Park. The house contains several east Asian artefacts in its permanent collection. These were acquired through the Child’s involvement with the East India Company. So, Karun Thakar’s shawls feel, in a way, quite at home in Osterley.

Unlike the contemporary artworks that were being displayed at Claydon Hall and clashed, sometimes violently, with their historic surroundings, Thakar’s shawls seemed to harmonise with the historic environment in which they were being displayed. They are quite different to what surrounds them, but not at all out of place. To my great joy, what had been done at Osterley was far more satisfactory than what I had seen at Claydon.

A peaceful scene at an ancient place in India

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HAPPY INDIAN INDEPENDENCE DAY

As it is difficult to judge a book by its cover, here is a brief excerpt from my latest book “Road to Heaven – a passage through India”. It describes what we saw at one of the ruined gateways to Mandu in Madhya Pradesh.

Mandu is a huge hill fort at about 2400 feet above sea level, and 1200 feet above the surrounding plains. This irregularly shaped, undulating plateau extends from east to west for between approximately 3.7 and 5 miles, and from north to south, it measures 3 to 3.7 miles. Deep ravines cut into the steep, and in places vertiginous, cliff-like, slopes sweep almost vertically down to the plains below,

Here is the excerpt:

 Our journey continued along a rough track that ended abruptly and without a warning sign at the edge of a high cliff that dropped down precipitously to the plain far below. The view from the cliff edge was spectacular. We could see a couple of lakes or reservoirs amongst the fields and trees, but the horizon was obscured by haze. To our left, there were the impressive, crenellated  walls of the hill fort and one of its seven gateways. We had reached the fortress-like stone Tarapur Gate at the southwest corner of the plateau. A staircase leads up from it to a walkway that runs along the remains of the high walls.  Near the bottom of this, an old stone roadway, now in a parlous condition, made two right-angle turns before passing beneath an arch and continuing as a rocky track that wound its way down to the plains below, clinging precariously to the steep slope of the drop at the edge of the plateau. Of this path, Yazdani wrote:

“… the fall of the hill beyond the outer arch of the gate is very precipitous, and although there are traces of a paved path descending to the plains, it is very difficult to believe that heavy artillery or chariots could be brought up this way, for the garrison could easily have crushed them by rolling down heavy stones. History, however, records that the Fort was invaded several times from this direction …”

While we were looking around, a straggling parade of farm animals, many cows and goats, made its way quietly through the gateway, and down the rocky track. They were accompanied by a couple of herders. The right-angle turns in the gateway were probably designed to make it easier for those guarding it to control entry to the hill fort. Apart from the farmers and their animals, we were the only people at the Tarapur Gate. It was in a part of Mandu which felt more remote than the rest of the hill fort.

After leaving the gateway, we drove through a hamlet where I noticed a man seated on the ground, weaving a cane basket. Further on, we passed women in saris carrying bundles of straw on their heads. We drove northwards through luscious countryside, passing many country folk chatting and working outside their simple homes. Then, after passing the Jami Masjid in Mandu village, we reached …

[ My book is available as a paperback from Amazon:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0HBN8BZG2 ]

A few words on my new book about India

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It is difficult to summarise a 269 page book succinctly. So, here is something that captures the essence of my latest book.

India is a country whose vibrant contemporary life mingles intimately with its age-old traditions. My new book “ROAD TO HEAVEN – A PASSAGE THROUGH INDIA” explores the intimate interweaving of past and present in the life of modern India by describing a journey I made through western, central and southern parts of the country.

In addition to relating our travel experiences – places we saw and their histories, whom we met, what we ate, and how we travelled, I have included other topics. These include accounts of places we (my wife and I) visited written by earlier visitors, and a detailed insider’s view of the formerly British colonial clubs of India. These clubs used to be out-of-bounds to Indians, but since the country became independent, they are now part of the rich fabric of Indian social life.

And as for the Road to Heaven, this really exists, and I have described my journeys along it.

The book is NOW available from Amazon:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0HBN8BZG2

A remarkable queen in central India

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Over the centuries, there have been many notable female leaders. These include Hatshepsut, Cleopatra, Boadicea (Boudica), Joan of Arc, Elizabeth I, Catherine the Great, Queen Victoria, the Rani of Jhansi, and Indira Gandhi … to name but a few.

During a recent trip to Madhya Pradesh, a state in Central India, we stayed in the small town called Maheshwar, which had a famous resident, a queen called Ahilyabai. I must admit I had never heard of her until we visited the town, and this is not good because she was at least as remarkable as, if not more amazing than any of the women I listed above.

Ahilyabai was born in 1725 in the village of Chaundi, now in Maharashtra. Her father, Mankoji Sindhia (Shinde), a scion of the Dhangar family, was the Patil (village headman). Although it was at a time when women were not allowed to go to school, Ahilyabai’s father taught her to read and write. When the Maratha ruler of Malwa (now part of Madhya Pradesh), Malhar Rao Holkar (lived 1693-1766), was travelling to Pune in 1733, he spotted Ahilyabai and was so impressed by her that he arranged for her to be married to his 10-year-old son Khanderao Holkar (1723-1754). Her husband, who admired Ahilyabai, fought in many battles, and was killed at the Fort of Khumber in 1754. As was the tradition of those times, Ahilyabai wanted to commit sati by throwing herself on Khanderao’s flaming funeral pyre, but Malhar Rao stopped her.

From 1754 onwards, he trained her in military matters and administrative skills. Soon, she became competent in both, and successfully carried out several military operations against enemies of the Holkars. When Mahar Rao died, his successor was Ahilyabai’s 21-year-old son, Male Rao Holkar (1745-1767), who went insane, and died a year after he came to the throne. The writer, John Malcolm (1769-1833), who lived in India between 1783 and 1831 and knew people close to the Holkars, and wrote about them in his “Memoir Of Central India Including Malwa Vol.1” (published in 1824) included descriptions of Male Rao’s madness, such as:

“It was a common usage with him to place scorpions in clothes and slippers that he gave them; he also put these venomous reptiles in pots filled with rupees, which he invited the holy mendicants to take; and, when their eager cupidity caused them to be stung, his joy was as excessive …”

Unwilling to adopt an heir, Ahilyabai wrote to the Peshwa (senior official of the Marathas), petitioning him to appoint her as ruler of Malwa. He sent her a letter, appointing her. Immediately after this, she appointed Tukoji Holkar (1723-1797), the great nephew of her father-in-law, Mahar Rao, as commander of her army and to manage Malwa’s military affairs. This allowed her to concentrate on administering Malwa and other Holkar estates.  Until her death, Ahilyabai and Tukoji worked together harmoniously. After she died, he became the ruler of Malwa, and was known as Tukoji Rao I Holkar. John Malcom met people who remembered Ahilyabai, and they told him she was a good ruler:

“Her first principle of government appears to have been moderate assessment, and an almost sacred respect for the native rights of village officers and proprietors of lands. She heard every complaint in person; and although she continually referred causes to courts of equity and arbitration, and to her ministers, for settlement, she was always accessible: and so strong was her sense of duty, on all points connected with the distribution of justice, that she is represented as not only patient, but unwearied in the investigation of the most insignificant causes, when appeals were made to her decision.”

During her reign, Ahilyabai did much to make Indore into a prosperous and beautiful city, but shifted her capital to Maheshwar. She did much work to improve the roads and forts in Malwa, as well as making many religious endowments (including mandirs, dharamshalas, tanks, bathing ghats, etc) in the kingdom. A man, Baramul Dada, who knew Ahilyabai well, related to Malcolm that:

“… she rose one hour before daybreak to say her morning prayers, and perform the customary ceremonies. She then heard the sacred volumes of her faith read for a fixed period, distributed alms, and gave food, in person, to a number of Brahmins. Her own breakfast was then brought, which was always of vegetable diet; for, although the rules of her tribe did not require it, she had forsworn animal food. After breakfast she again went to prayers, and then took a short repose; after rising from which, and dressing herself, she went about two o’clock to her Durbar, or court, where she usually remained till six in the evening; and when two or three hours had been devoted to religious exercises and a frugal repast, business recommenced about nine o’clock, and continued until eleven, at which hour she retired to rest.”

Her good works in connection with her religion extended well beyond the boundaries of Malwa. Using inherited Holkar money, rather than public funds, she ordered the construction of religious edifices in places including Varanasi, Kashi, Gaya, Somnath, Ayodhya, Mathura, Hardwar, Kanchi, Avanti, Dwarka, Badrinarayan, Rameshwar and Jaganathpuri. Ahilyabai. After shifting her capital to Maheshwar, she did much to improve the place. 

During her life as queen and after her death, Ahilyabai’s reputation was legendary, and remains so. In what was once Malwa (and elsewhere), she is regarded as a saint.  It is worth noting that Ahilyabai was not the only female Maratha ruler. Earlier, Tarabai Bhonsle (1675-1751) was the regent of the Maratha Empire from 1700 until 1708. Undoubtedly,

Ahilyabai was one of the most remarkable women in India’s long history. Indore’s airport, where we landed, is now named after her. To digress slightly, when we were in Bombay, we saw a statue of her – a bust – close to the city’s busy Churchgate train station. It is in a prominent place, but  market stalls and vegetation around it make it difficult to view her properly.

A bit of Bengal that once contained more wealth than the entire British aristocracy

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When I was aged between 8 and 13 years old, a pupil at The Hall, a preparatory school in London’s Belsize Park, history was taught in an uninteresting way. The emphasis was entirely on the chronology of events rather than their significance. One of these events, which meant nothing to me for many years, was the Battle of Plassey (1754). Little did I know when hearing this name as a young schoolboy that many years later, I would visit India and see places that were important in the events leading up to (and following) the battle. These places are within Murshidabad and its environs, which we visited in early January 2025.

To reach Murshidabad, which is north of Kolkata, we travelled by train on the Dhano Dhanye Express. Despite being called an ‘Express’, the train was anything but rapid. It dawdled along while local trains swept past us. It was after dark when our train drew into a station whose name I had known since the early 1960s, but had meant nothing to me then: Plassey (in Bengali: Palashi). Although I could not see much of the place, I felt a frisson of excitement when I saw signs in the station bearing a name that had been in the back of my mind for over 60 years.  

Murshidabad was, until after the Battle of Plassey and the development of Kolkata, a major city in the Indian Subcontinent. Today, apart from the former British cantonment town of Berhampore, the rest of Murshidabad consists of historical monuments, some intact others ruined, scattered around a large, mainly rural-looking district – once covered by the great city. One of the many places we visited in Murshidabad was in the district of Azimganj, where there is a palace – Bari Kothi. It was constructed by a wealthy Jain family in the late eighteenth century,a few years after the Battle of Plassey.

Bari Kothi is now a luxurious hotel run by the Dudhoria’s, who are friends of the Jain family of my wife’s sister-in- law. They live in Kolkata, and had arranged that we could be shown around the historic building that houses the hotel.

The Dudhoria family were originally Kshatriya Hindus living near Bikaner in Rajasthan. They were direct descendants of Raja Chaban, ruler of Ajmer. In about 105 AD, they converted from Shaivite Hinduism to Jainism. Along with other Kshatriya families in the town of Osia in Rajasthan, they converted to Jainism, and all these families are known as Oswal Jains. After moving between various towns in Rajasthan, the Dudhoria’s, led by Harjimal Dudhoria and his two sons, Sabai Singh and Maujiram, moved to Azimganj in 1774. They began life as merchants in their new home, and soon became successful.

In the late eighteenth century Rai Bahadur Budh Singh Dudhoria, constructed the huge mansion, now known as ‘Bari Kothi’. Close to the river Hooghly, its garden stretches to the bank of the river. The huge edifice, which was restored a few years ago, is built around seven courtyards. Its lavish decorations have been recreated in a style that would have been familiar to the family in its heyday. The influence of neo-classicism is evident in many parts of the building. Today, it is used as a luxurious ‘heritage’ hotel, which is famed for its Jain food. When the banker, who lived at Bari Kothi, told the Nawab that he wanted to move away from Murshidabad because he lacked the company of fellow Jains, the ruler allotted land on both sides of the river to the Jain community, and told the banker to invite other Jains to make their homes there. 97 families arrived from Rajasthan.

The combined wealth of the 30 or so Sherherwali (mainly Oswal Jains) families who settled in the square mile area within Azimganj, which included Bari Kothi, was so great that it exceeded that of the entire English aristocracy. After Bengal’s capital shifted to Kolkata, so did most of the Sherherwalis.

Bari Kothi was badly damaged during the Naxalite disturbances in the 1970s. It was beautifully restored under the supervision of the architect Dr Samar Chandra. We visited the place and were shown around its maze of corridors, rooms, and courtyards. Our guide showed us parts of the building that are still undergoing careful restoration. What has already been restored and is used by hotel guests is superbly done. For those seeking a glorious ‘heritage’ experience, a few days at Bari Kothi will not be disappointing. The large dining room is decorated with tiled panels (art nouveau style) depicting rustic scenes, and in several rooms, I noticed trays laden with bottles of high-class imported and Indian liquor.

The hotel serves guests with highly acclaimed Sheherwali Jain cuisine, which is strictly vegetarian. However, for those hoping for a fried egg at breakfast time, this and all other non-veg items are most certainly unavailable. The hotel employs local people as staff, thus bringing employment opportunities into what is quite a depressed district. One of these employees told us that most of the staff are not vegetarians, and so they need to sneak out occasionally to enjoy food that contains meat or fish. Or they starve themselves all day, and in the evening eat non-veg meals at home.

The British won the Battle of Plassey by guile. This was because some leading inhabitants of Murshidabad bribed the general commanding a major part of the forces of their opponent, Nawab Siraj-ud-Daulah. He was paid not to join the fight. He and his soldiers stood aside during the battle. Some hint that part of the bribe was provided by wealthy Jains (for example the Jagat Seth family) who were unhappy with the Nawab. However, as the Dudhoria’s only arrived in Bengal in 1774, it is unlikely that they had anything to do with the defeat of Siraj-ud-Daulah at Plassey 17 years earlier.

For much more about Murshidabad, read my book “88 DAYS IN INDIA: A JOURNEY OF MEMORY AND DISCOVERY”, available here:

An unusual invitation in the place where MK Gandhi was born

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During our first tour of Gujarat, which my wife and I undertook in 2018, travelling on inter-city buses.  We stopped at Porbandar, a port on the southern coast of Saurashtra. This Gujarati seaport, which is not on many foreign tourists’ itineraries, is the birthplace of MK (‘Mahatma’) Gandhi. During our stay, we visited the house in which the great man was born.

We spent four days in Porbandar, which gave us plenty of time to wander around.  One afternoon, after reducing the amount of baggage we were carrying, we visited a place, where we received a strange invitation …

After the two uncomfortable bus journeys that we had made so far, we decided to reduce the amount of baggage we were carrying by sending one of our suitcases to Bangalore, where we were going to spend the last few days of our sojourn in India. We had already discussed sending it with the owner of a dispatch company in the lounge of the Hotel Natraj, where we were staying. He met us after we returned from Subhas Nagar (a fishing harbour) and escorted us with our suitcase to his small office, which was nearby. The price for sending our twelve-kilogramme suitcase was very reasonable. We learned that the case would be going by lorry to Bombay and then from there to Bangalore by train. We were told to leave the case unlocked so that, should it be necessary, the railway officials in Bombay would be able to examine its contents. We watched our case being sown into a huge sack, and then kept our fingers crossed. For the record, our case arrived perfectly intact in Bangalore five days later.

After dispatching our case, we returned to the Lords Eco Inn near the beach for refreshment. Then, while the sun started dropping towards the western horizon, we walked back along the seafront to the temple, which we had passed on our way to the seaside on our first afternoon in Porbandar. We pushed past the cattle outside it and entered. Some men were sitting around chatting. A couple of cats darted about the temple’s courtyard. The orange glow of the setting sun reflected off the white-painted tapering shikharas which pointed up to the cloudless blue sky.

We wandered through the open gateway of a walled compound across the road from the temple. The internal surfaces of the boundary walls are decorated with colourfully painted murals depicting deities and scenes from the Hindu scriptures. Models of very human-looking figures with monkeys’ faces perch at intervals along the walls above the murals. The walls enclose some buildings, long sheds.

The central, and most important looking, of these buildings was painted white and provided with glassless windows. Through one of the windows, we could see flames flickering. We realised that we had walked into a crematorium compound. An official came up to us, and confirmed our suspicions. Then, as if inviting us to dinner or for a drink in a pub, he asked us whether we would like to watch a cremation. Only in India can an offer like that be made so casually, because as Jon and Rumer Godden wrote in their book “Two under the Indian Sun”:

“We knew, without being told, that in India death was as casual as life, part of every day.” 

We declined the invitation.

If you enjoyed this or found it interesting, you can read more about our first trip to Gujarat in “TRAVELS THROUGH GUJARAT, DAMAN, AND DIU”, available from Amazon. The extract above is from the book, but modified slightly.

Tea and dining in Daman (India)

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YOU MIGHT WONDER why we spent a few days Daman in 2018.

Enclaves have always fascinated me. For many years before that, I had been interested in Daman, which had been until 1961 a tiny Portuguese possession, an enclave surrounded by Gujarat, on the west coast of India.

Even though my wife is of Gujarati heritage, neither she nor I had ever visited Gujarat before 2018, and Daman was one of the places on our itinerary.

The small district of Daman, now a part of the Union Territory of Daman and Diu (that also includes Dadra and Nagar Haveli) is surrounded by Gujarat and the Arabian Sea. The city of Daman lies on both sides of the mouth of the Daman Ganga River. From 1559 until 1961, when it became incorporated into the Republic of India, Daman was a Portuguese colony. The Portuguese captured Daman from the rulers of the Gujarat Sultanate. Daman was one of several Indian coastal colonies of Portugal. Other important colonies included (moving from north to south): Diu, Cambay, Bassein, Chaul, Goa, Anjediva Island, Cannanore, Calicut, Cochin, Quilon, and Galle (now in Sri Lanka). For a while, Portugal’s naval fleet used these bases not only for trade but also to regulate access of other nation’s boats to the valuable spices that could be obtained from the Indian subcontinent. The Portuguese in the 16th century wanted to create a monopoly of the spice trade. They imported spices via the Cape of Good Hope. Their Muslim rivals imported them via Egypt and Venice. So, to stifle this competition, the Portuguese established bases along the coast of East Africa and the Arabian Gulf (for a while they held Hormuz Island at the mouth of the Persian Gulf).

Daman city is divided by a river into two parts: Nani Daman and Moti Daman. Although in Gujarati ‘nani’ means small and ‘moti’ means large, Nani Daman is larger than Moti Daman.

Here is how we spent one of our evenings in Daman:

After visiting the fortress in Moti Daman, we headed back to Nani Daman. The sun was setting, and there was not much traffic. Eventually, an autorickshaw (‘auto’) already crammed full, with four passengers, stopped to pick us up. Two of the passengers moved to the front of the vehicle squatted hazardously on either side of the driver, and we squeezed onto the narrow passenger seat next to the other two passengers. After a short distance, the auto stopped. The two men squatting beside the driver disembarked and walked ahead of us. We drove on, weaving our way around a police check post, and then stopping again when we had passed out of sight of it. The two men, who had disembarked, retrieved their positions beside the driver, and we continued across the river to Nani daman. The driver explained to us, in Gujarati (which my wife understands), that the two men had to walk ahead of us past the check point in order that the auto would not be stopped because of being overloaded.

Later that afternoon, we returned to the bazaar in Nani Daman. We bought bananas and oranges from one of the many women squatting on the pavement surrounded by piles of neatly arranged fruit and vegetables. Amongst these, there were vendors with mountains of garlic bulbs and ginger roots, and others with tidy little mounds of fresh green chillies.

We took tea at two different tea-stalls near the bus stand (bus station). One served a strong tea favoured with ginger, lemon and cardamom. The other provided a very milky, sugary tea, whose taste resembled like caramel. Everywhere in Daman, and, we were to discover, all over Gujarat, tea is served in tiny cups, that can be finished in two or three swallows. It is invariably sugary. These minute cups provide ‘sugar bursts’ (as our daughter describes them) rather than quenching thirst. Often, two men will share a tiny cup of tea. Half of the tea is poured into a tiny saucer, and one of the men then slurps it noisily. The other man drinks the rest of the tea from the cup. Tea shared this way is known as ‘cutting chai’.

The tea provided at tea-stalls is prepared by vigorously boiling milk containing handfuls of tea leaves or tea powder, and usually much sugar. Grated ginger and/or powdered cardamom might also be added to this bubbling mixture. When the milky tea mixture has been boiled sufficiently, it is strained either through a fine (plastic) sieve or through a cloth. The damp residue in the cloth is then squeezed using the hinged metal handles of a ‘sansi’, which is a pair of hinged tongs (used for lifting heavy pots off the fire or cooker). Every tea-maker produces a differently tasting tea. Some of them have high reputations amongst local people for the tea they produce.

After our teas, we waited for Daman’s only newsagent to open his stall. Newspapers arrive in the evening, so there is no need for the newsagent to be open at other times during the day. We ate dinner at the Gurukripa Hotel. Even between the frequent power outages, the dining room was so dark that the waiters brought portable electric reading lamps so that guests can read the menu. We asked to keep ours throughout the meal so that we could see what we were eating. Both the service and the food were above average. When we left the hotel at 9.30 pm, the streets were deserted. An hour earlier, they had been as busy and bustling as in a large city.

Despite the late hour, quite a lot of shops and food stalls on wheeled barrows were still open. On our walk back to our hotel, we passed a parking area containing at least twelve Ambassador taxis, with black bodies and yellow roofs. Although they do not conform with current trends in car design and economic fuel consumption, these vehicles, which are ‘descendants’ of the British Morris Oxford (series III model), are ideally suited for rough terrain and the hazards of driving in India. They are, it seems, almost indestructible, but many taxi drivers are replacing them by newer, more fuel-efficient types of cars.

This is a short, adapted extract from my book “TRAVELS THROUGH GUJARAT, DAMAN, AND DIU”, which is available from Amazon. I hope to post other extracts from my book in the near future.

A chance encounter in the pavilion and a suitable boy

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I HAVE NEVER MET the Indian author, Vikram Seth, who wrote the long novel “A Suitable Boy”, but today, 30 July 2026, my wife and I met his sister, Aradhana, quite by chance while visiting the beautiful brickwork Serpentine Pavilion in London’s Kensington Gardens.

In about 1968, my wife was awarded a scholarship to study for her A-Levels (university entrance examinations) in the UK. That year, she was not the only one to receive such an award, which allowed her to travel from India to study in England. Another awardee that year was Vikram Seth, now a renowned author.

In 1994, a few months before my first ever visit to India, my then fiancé, now my wife, suggested that I read Vikram Seth’s “A Suitable Boy” because it might have helped me to ‘acclimatise’ to Indian ways of life before I arrived in the country. The book, first published in 1993, is well over 1400 pages long. Dutifully, I began reading it, but then little of it made much sense to me, and I gave up reading the book by the time I reached page 300. Thereafter, I have not touched the book until this month, July 2026.

Since 1994, I have visited India at least 50 times, often for long sojourns, and have become familiar with many aspects of life in the country. A few days ago, I started reading “A Suitable Boy”, and I am finding it both enjoyable and incredibly engaging. Much of what Seth has written makes much more sense to me than it did in 1994. And despite it being published without a glossary, many of the Hindustani words (transliterations of Devanagari and Urdu scripts) now mean something to me.

Seth has managed to write an epic novel whose pages contain a brilliant portrait of life in certain social circles in India. Although I have only just passed page 230 (in four short episodes of reading), I feel that by the end of the following few weeks, I will have read the whole book.

Meeting Vikram Seth’s sister by chance was only one part of an amazing encounter today. My wife thought she looked vaguely familiar, and that is why we engaged her in conversation. It turned out that Aradhana and my wife had attended the same school, Loreto House, in Kolkata (Calcutta), and although they differ in age, their times at the school overlapped. In addition, Aradhana, was with her friend, Amrit, whose father, we discovered, had worked in the same company as my wife’s father.

Although India’s population is about one and a half billion, I am always amazed how often we ‘bump into’ Indians, with whom my wife can find some not too distant connection.