Indian summer

When I left France for India at the beginning of the summer, I soon became obsessed with the authenticity of my future travel. Is there such a thing as an 8220;authentic8221; trip? I decided that to achieve this required a complete immersion in local culture, far beyond the usual sanitised trip of the average backpacker. In practice, it meant living as the locals do, and attempting to transcend the usual boundaries created by tourism. On a few occasions, I felt close to reaching this goal 8212; at Nizamuddin8217;s dargah amidst a colourful throng of fervent pilgrims; travelling sleeper class on the Bombay-Calcutta train, sharing victuals with my fellow passengers; or in Bengal8217;s capital, where I was invited to a baul recital in a bookshop-owner8217;s house. These were but fleeting moments, ephemeral forays into life as it is, untainted by the economic pressures of tourism.

In many places, it is near-impossible to rise out of one8217;s condition as a base tourist. The incessant passage of tourists over time has ensured this, as one8217;s experience is formatted, to taste perhaps, but formatted nonetheless. To the passing traveller, cities such as Udaipur or Benares are not representative of the life India leads today 8212; they are mere carcasses of their former selves, catering to an imagined ideal of India. Only with time would it be possible to evade this clicheacute; and pierce through the faccedil;ade of hassle and commerce to delve right into the heart of Indian life as it has become.

When time is not on your side, only big metropolises such as Bombay provide a shield from the 8220;norm8221;, and allow one to hide behind the mass of anonymity. Large urban sprawls are even more challenging to unearth, but one can at least circumambulate at leisure, shielded from one8217;s own identity by the ceaseless activity of the city 8212; in Calcutta8217;s flower market I passed unnoticed, a very pale ghost amidst the myriad colours.

I enjoyed the trip enormously. I saw many things of beauty: the Taj Mahal, Mehrangar Fort, Fatehpur Sikri, a host of temples and masjids, and discovered as fine a cuisine as I have come across. However, I conclude that sights are but a fraction of your visit to a country. The traveller must attempt to capture its essence, by rising above the manufactured ideal and uncovering the present: life as it is being lived.