Back to Archive

Home
About Us
Join the SIG
Join In
Newsletter
News & Events
Gallery
Bulletin Board
Links

Copyright ©
2004-2007 British
Mensa. The Mensa logo
is a registered
trademark of Mensa International Limited,
all rights reserved.
Mensa does
not hold any opinion
or have, or express,
any political or
religious views.

Early last year my wife, Cathy, and I had a holiday which combined these three very different countries.

We started with three nights in New Delhi. Technically this was my second visit to India way back in 1968 we'd had a stopover at Delhi Airport, en route from Bangkok to Tehran. I'd at least touched Indian soil, or rather tarmac. Cathy on the other hand had visited India as one of a party of Guiders from East Surrey; they had stayed at one of the four World Guide Centres, in Pune.

Although there are direct flights from London to New Delhi, our tour company had, in its wisdom, routed us via Amsterdam. Schiphol Airport is impressively large - as we discovered during our ten-mile trek (or so it seemed) between our two flights, laden with heavy luggage. We finally reached our hotel in New Delhi at 2.00am. But then, punishingly, we had to be up again at 4.00am for our included all-day excursion to Agra. (We had just two full days in Delhi and, on the second, being a Monday, the Taj Mahal would have been have closed.)

We travelled to Agra on the comfortable Shatabdi Express, which provides a complimentary airline-style meal. The Taj Mahal is magnificent and nowadays much better looked after than in the past. A lot has been done to cut down pollution in Agra, which boasted while we were there numerous posters proclaiming it to be a "green city". A new attraction is "Diana's Seat", location of the poignant photograph of the Princess, sitting on her own, not long before the final break-up of her marriage.

There is of course more to Agra than the Taj Mahal. For a start it is a bustling city with a population approaching a million. We visited two other historic monuments. The first of these was Agra Fort, a large complex (populated by monkeys with attitude!). The Moghul Emperor Shah Jehan was imprisoned here for the last few years of his life - by his own son. The view from his window was of his own creation, the Taj Mahal. We also visited the Itimad-ud-Daulah, which is sometimes known, misleadingly as well as somewhat tweely, as the Baby Taj.

On the following day we had a much needed lie-in, followed by a tour of New Delhi. There was not alas time to fit in Old Delhi. It has to be said that India can be a challenge to the conscience. In the opulent Grand Hyatt Hotel in the affluent southern suburbs, we were fairly well cocooned. Its sizeable complex of shops offered every conceivable luxury. Yet one cannot avoid the poverty. Around the station, for example, we saw numerous people sleeping rough. Indeed I'd perhaps delayed visiting India because I'd feared that I could not cope with the poverty aspect. But, as veteran India correspondent Mark Tully has observed, it is the poor themselves who have to "cope with" poverty.

On our third day we flew to Kathmandu, enjoying, as we flew over the Himalayas, what must be one of the most spectacular approaches by air to any capital city. But we were soon to discover that Kathmandu, contrary to romantic image, is no Shangri-la. It is a surprisingly large and sprawling city, by no means entirely attractive. Nepal itself is often thought of as a small country but this perhaps reflects the fact that it is sandwiched between two giants, India and China; in fact it should, with its population of some 20M, be regarded as a medium-size country.

Our hotel was the modern Annapurna. The walls of our corridor were adorned, bafflingly, with pictures of Munich and Augsburg; it so happened that we'd visited these Bavarian cities a few months previously. Just down the road was the Royal Palace but this would definitely have looked out of place in Shangri-la as it is a functional seventies building. But there are some romantic parts of Kathmandu. Regrettably we were not able to explore Durbar Square, with its many temples. But we did make it to the picturesque Thamel district, where we did some last minute shopping for our forthcoming trek. We went there on foot and returned in a bicycle-driven rickshaw - an experience that was at times alarming, especially as this is a city virtually without traffic lights! We had in the evening an excellent Nepalese dinner, eaten cross-legged in the local manner, in a restaurant near our hotel, the Kathmandu Kitchen.

On the next day we went on a helicopter flight to Everest. One does not get particularly close but the black pyramid shape of its summit is clearly visible and the views generally are, as one would expect, spectacular. As the helicopter turns round, once Everest is sighted, everyone gets a chance to see in all directions. This trip was immediately followed by an excursion to Bhaktapur, a dozen or so miles from Kathmandu. En route we stopped at one of the capital's most celebrated monuments, the Stopa at Bodnath, a Buddhist temple albeit this is a predominantly Hindu country (the world's only Hindu monarchy, in fact). A further stop was made by the river where we encountered a picturesque, yet melancholy, scene. It is here that bodies are cremated, within hours of death. A body was in fact being prepared for cremation on the opposite bank of the river and our guide thought that we might actually be able to witness the cremation itself. But then he realised that the preparation process still had some way to go and that we lacked the time. I was rather glad that this was the case.

Bhaktapur is an amazing and beautiful city, its historic centre frozen in time. This could be in Shangri-la! One can do the journey from Kathmandu by trolleybus. We'd in fact followed its route for most of the way and the wires and poles looked somewhat surreal, set against the Nepalese countryside. These smooth-running and pollution-free vehicles were introduced into Nepal in 1973 - one year after they ceased running in the UK!

Unfortunately - and, I'm glad to say, uncharacteristically - I felt unwell in the afternoon hence the inability to do any further exploration of Kathmandu. This was still the case when we got up the following morning at 5.00am for our seven-hour coach journey to Pokhara, where we would be starting our trek. Indeed I threw up on the way - luckily Cathy had kept some airline sick-bags! Not exactly an auspicious start to our trek. But it seemed to do the trick for I soon felt as right as rain and began to enjoy the countryside scenery through which we were passing. We started the trek a little beyond Pokhara. This is by all accounts an attractive and interesting city but there was no time for a stop there.

During our trek we ascended halfway up the Annapurnas. I made that last bit up. Actually this was a trek for "softies", a gentle three-day hike in the vicinity of Lake Phewa. There was no mountaineering as such although it must be said that Nepal is not much like Holland when it comes to terrain (or, come to think of it, much like Holland in any other respect!). Over the three days we saw much beautiful and varied scenery - forests, farms, villages, and fine views over the Lake. We also at one point enjoyed, if that is the right word, the experience of walking through a thunderstorm, though this was fairly brief and we otherwise had good weather. The infrastructure of footpaths is remarkably good.

We were in the very competent hands of our Sherpa, Kauli, and his team. They did all the hard work - carrying all the equipment, setting up and dismantling the tents, and cooking delicious outdoor meals using the most basic utensils. There were invariably `seconds' of everything and for our final dinner we had a special meal comprising a Nepalese curry followed by a `farewell' cake.

The only drawback, for me, was the camping. Cathy, from her years running a Guide company, is used to it but it was a novel experience for me and not one that I'm in any rush to repeat. To compensate ourselves we'd upgraded ourselves in our next stop, Bangkok, to the luxurious Oriental hotel. So as I tried to get to sleep, I lay back and thought of- Thailand. But, in the morning, as we awoke to the views of the distant snow-capped Annapurnas, I was sure the camping was well worth it. Certainly the trek overall was a marvellous experience and we felt sad when the time came to say goodbye to Kauli and his team, who'd looked after us so well. In fact we felt a bit guilty, for we enjoyed a flight back to Kathmandu, which was nearly as spectacular as the one to Everest. Kauli on the other hand faced the long journey by overnight bus to get back to his modest Kathmandu abode, yet he and his team were the ones who had done all the hard work.

We had one more night in Kathmandu before flying on to Bangkok. The changes since our last visit, thirty years previously, were at once evident. Don Muang is still the international airport but I seem to recall that the surroundings in 1968 were fairly rural. Now the airport is part of the huge metropolitan sprawl. Our route into the city took us along an urban motorway. We were struck by the large number of high-rise buildings. Thailand had been one of the `Asian Tigers' and the city had been transformed accordingly. Sadly, though, the baht had collapsed just a few months previously and the country now faced serious economic difficulties. One result of this was that the monorail linking the airport and the city was half finished; given Bangkok's notorious traffic jams (from which, it so happens, we were spared) it is badly needed but the funding had run out.

We had looked forward to staying at the Oriental and were not disappointed. It was one of the Grand Hotels of the last century and continues to be one of the world's finest; indeed it was once voted, by the American bankers' magazine, Institutional Investor, the best hotel in the world. Our room was on the eleventh floor with fine views across the Chao Phraya River, which bisects the city. The hotel offered a choice of several restaurants for dinner. Being lovers of Thai cuisine - the world's finest, in my view - we went for the Thai restaurant, located on the opposite bank of the river and reached via the hotel's shuttle boat service. We dined al fresco, looking back across the river towards the city centre, and drinking champagne to celebrate our thirtieth wedding anniversary.

We had just one full day in Bangkok. Deciding how to spend it was difficult: we would have liked to have revisited some of the main sights in the city but the countervailing attraction of combining a river trip with the former capital of Ayutthaya won out. We travelled out via road, pausing en route at the Summer Palace. We retraced our steps to the airport and then travelled about the same distance again. The metropolitan sprawl followed us nearly all the way. It was once one of Asia's richest cities but was destroyed by the Burmese in the 1760s. The ruins continue however to be awe-inspiring. A further drive got us back to the river where we boarded our boat and enjoyed a good buffet lunch and leisurely trip back to the city. From the river one sees an altogether different Bangkok, far more traditional with no high rises in view. Appropriately enough, as this was our thirtieth, or pearl, anniversary, the boat was the Pearl of the Orient.

We returned to the hotel's Thai restaurant for dinner. Even in these idyllic surrounds we encountered a member of a species which seems to find their way everywhere: the besuited, po-faced front-of house woman whose main joy in life seems to be to tell people that "we are fully booked". Admittedly we hadn't booked but this hadn't been a problem the day before and we could clearly see a newly vacated table. So we sat down anyway and soon a better table, right by the river, became available and we moved there. I should add that all the other staff were charming and we again enjoyed an excellent meal.

It was something of a wrench to leave the following morning but at least our holiday wasn't quite over for we had four nights in the island of Koh Samui, in the southern part of Thailand. The small airport there, surrounded by lush bougainvillaea, must be one of the most attractive anywhere. Our base was the Tongsai Bay Hotel, on the north coast, where we had our own "cottage", complete with two baths, one of them out-of doors (in a suitably discreet walled garden!)

The surroundings were idyllic and again we enjoyed excellent Thai cuisine as well as a Thai show with dancers and a kick-boxing display. The beach, it is true, is not anything special; there is fine white sand in Chaweng, on the east coast, but this is a lot more commercialised so one pays ones money and takes one choice. I rather think we made the right one!

Mostly we relaxed during our stay here but we did do a short trip to the island's main attraction, the Big Buddha, a giant golden statue, and also spent a day touring the island in a jeep. It was a pity to leave all this but at least our flight home from Bangkok was a direct one.

First published in VISA issue 34 (autumn 1999)