Monday 7 May 2007

You say Dausa I say Dosa

We relaxed by the pool in the morning before picking up Sham and heading off to Agra. He is a lovely chap and a bloody good driver, always pointing things out and helping me with my Hindi. We were ripping along at a good pace when we were stopped by a level crossing in a little place called Dausa (pronounced Dosa, like the Indian pancake). Stuck in traffic front and back we were forced to just sit and wait. After a while curiosity got the better of me and I got out to take a picture of a camel. That drew a little crowd, not for the camel, for me! All the tourists normally bypass Dausa but we had gone through to get a chemist. We were a total novelty. We took pictures of camels, tuc tuc's and kids - and they begged us to take more. Keith made friends with the owner of the camel and the schoolgirls flocked around me. No one asked for money, food or anything - they just wanted to look. After an age (well an hour) the traffic moved a little, and then stopped again. But we had enough room to do a U turn and back track to the bypass. The rest of the journey was back to barren scrub and agricultural land, the colours not from the land but from the people. The bright pink and yellow saris, the elaborately painted trucks and the camel trains. Tractors groaned under the weight of heavily overloaded wheat sacks, spilling over front, back and sides. Peacocks and peahens filled the fields and monkeys run around wild at the roadsides. No flowers, few trees, just a tonne of cars, motorbikes, bicycles, tractors and camels and a very long, very flat stretch of tarmac - all the way to the busy city of Agra.

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