This post is my attempt to start a travelogue. I hope to capture the “All India Tour” phase of my life (as people have started to call it). I’ll try to keep these posts from becoming travel guides. There are loads of them and I surely don’t need to increment count.

This post is after a trip to Kanpur, Agra and Sikri.

• Trains are never on Time. The delay increases exponentially with your distance from the sourthern most tip of the country. Also, the confidence of the aam admi in this delay is proportional to the distance. Any delay less than an hour wasn’t considered to be a delay. Thanks to the fog, low visibility.
• If you want to travel around India, all you need is an SLR. Additionally, if you are not of Indian origin, you’ll need the “India” guide. I got bored of seeing people poring over the pages of that “blue” India book or madly clicking away on their SLRs.
• Whether or not you get food or water on a train, you are assured of enough “chilled” air from the slit under your window. Come what may, you shall not be deprived of this service.
• The trust of a person in you is inversely proportional to the difference between your ages. It is inversely proportional to the 2.718th power of the difference if you are aged between 20 and 25. I only vaguely remember what the TTE told me in my sleep, while paying the fine for not carrying a print out of our e-ticket; but, it really was something sick and senseless.
• The chill at a place, on the day you reach, is inversely proportional to how much people have scared/warned you. On the rest of the days, it is proportional to the square of the warm clothing you have on you. I thoroughly enjoyed the chill of Kanpur. Wonderful! The infrastructure, too good! Never expected a 50 year old campus to be so Awesome. [They have an air-strip too!]
• The thrill of having an ice-cream is proportional to the square of difference between the ambient temperature and the standard room temperature.
• Don’t ever think of celebrating your escape, without the Aalu encounter. Welcome to the land of Alu addicted men. You shall, surely, have your share. If not anything else, you shall be serverd a Capsicum or Brinjal stuffed with Aalu. Also, the quality and availability of leather seems to be proportional to the addiction to Aalu.
• “hawker time” - the time you spend being followed by hawkers trying to convince you to buy whatever they have. “firang-ness” - difficult to predict; a parameter that depends on the amount of branded stuff on you, stylishness of your winter wear and other unknown variableness. Your hawker time is proportional to (firang-ness) \* abs(time of day in 24 hr clock - 1400) [when, 900 < time < 1800] I understand, that, they need to make ends meet; each day of their lives. I got followed a lot. I can’t help observing. Sometimes, enjoyed being followed too.

The Taj. Simply Awe-Inspiring. As Madhu put it, “the longer you keep watching it, the more it’s beauty overwhelms you”. But, I still think, the first time is the best time to see it. It’s simply mind blowing when you get the first glimpse, after entering from the West gate.

It’s time to stop writing when all you can see is proportionality between totally unrelated things. Here are a few pics