Lydia Slater embarks on a lavish and life-affirming passage through India, touring lush gardens, magnificent palaces and bustling spice markets
ON THE FIRST NIGHT OF OUR INDIAN HOLIDAY, THE EARTH MOVED.
Gazing out of the bedroom window, with its panoramic views over the trees covering New Delhi’s golf course, I blearily noticed that the curtains were swaying back and forth. So, indeed, was the bed. Then my phone began to ping with earthquake notifications.
As my family told me crossly the following day, I ought to have got up, dressed and run down the seven flights of stairs to find safety outdoors. Instead, I commended myself to fate, and the hotel’s architect, and allowed myself to be rocked gently to sleep.
The experience set the tone for a fortnight that was as surreal as it was exhilarating, a sensory overload as we processed the vibrancy of the colours, the whirling crowds, the noises, the smells, the landscapes, the flavours and the history of the subcontinent. Furthermore, it was the first time in two decades that my husband and I had gone away together without our children. No longer obliged to stick to villas by the Med, nor to eschew visits to historical sites (‘Boring!’), we had signed up with Abercrombie & Kent for a positive orgy of sightseeing.
Our itinerary encompassed a whistlestop tour of India’s fabled Golden Triangle – the beautiful and historic cities of Delhi, Agra and Jaipur – then took us on to the hills and lakes of Udaipur, before we ended up on the oceanfront of Mumbai’s megalopolis. On paper, our schedule threatened to be both over-ambitious and frenetic; however, the combination of erudite guides and the luxurious accommodation offered by the Oberoi hotels we stayed at meant that the experience was thrilling from beginning to end. As each overwhelming day drew to a close, we fell asleep longing for the next to begin.
On arrival in New Delhi, we started as we were to go on: at full throttle. Having disembarked from an overnight flight, we were whisked off in an air-conditioned car, passing whizzing tuk-tuks, ambling cows and cruising mopeds, to visit the government district. Its wide, shady boulevards and Lutyens-designed colonial-era bungalows, now owned by India’s richest families, could have been transplanted from Hampstead, but for the monkeys strolling along the walls, while the sprawling administrative palaces made Whitehall and Big Ben look rather insignificant.
There followed an afternoon of the city’s greatest historical hits: we were ushered to Humayun’s Tomb, built by a devoted wife for her husband af
