[2019]
[2019]
OUR FAMILY HOLIDAYS
9189 India 1995
Our most expensive holiday, in India, was the last the holiday before my health posed problems for me. We had always wanted to go to India, but had been nervous of surviving it – especially after my experience on the Nile cruise - due to the potential problems with food poisoning. Accordingly, we took a very expensive holiday with British Airways Holidays. The rationale behind this was that in the very best hotels we were less likely to get food poisoning – and, in the ultimate, I could die in comfort! It was a two-week holiday in Rajasthan, visiting the Mogul palaces; which we extended by a week to go up to Kathmandu in Nepal.
It was expensive, but it was beautifully run. We arrived in Delhi stay in one of the five-star international hotels. This was the last word in comfort, but could have been located anywhere in the world.
From there we did a number of tours through the city. Of course we visited the Red Fort, which was beautiful.
But we also visited some other mosques and temples. Perhaps the most interesting of these was the temple which had the thousand -year-old pillar of iron which had never rusted. It says something about the possibility of eternity.
The only thing that we missed was a tour of New Delhi, created by Edwin Lutyens. Unfortunately, it was just coming up to the national holiday when the whole of the centre of Delhi was to be taken over for a massive parade. As New Delhi was the centre of this, and they were building stands for the crowds, everyone was barred from its streets. I like Lutyens' country houses, but I am not certain I regretted missing his colonial architecture.
We also bought a silk carpet when we were in Delhi, which had come from Kashmir and cost around £1,000. Several years later, a trader - who claimed to be from the same organisation - came across to the UK with some carpets which he sold us. He tried to sell us these carpets for about £10,000, since they were very large carpets and also in silk. We managed to knocking him down to £2,000, but we didn't really want them! I still doubt just whether they were handwoven -- but I don't want to find out we have been cheated.
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