The Sensual India

"The eyes are the whores of the senses" according to Keith Richards.

In India all five senses are turning tricks all over the place. This country is loud, lively, brightly painted and be-scarfed, but has seen better days, like an aging drag queen or Steven Tyler.

The predominant aesthetic in central India is dust. It's all over your feet, your clothes, in the air. It's what you breathe. When you sneeze, dust comes out your nose. All over the place people are sweeping a losing battle. One guy who parked behind my hotel in Jaipur washed his car every morning I was there. Within minutes of him drying it off, it looked like it had been dusted with brown confectioners' sugar. When I wash my clothes at the end of the day the water is brown.

Once you scrape some of the dust off and peer underneath, you either find more filth or dazzling beauty, or both. It's remarkable how the two co-exist here so closely. So much beauty is created here but left in disrepair. Colourful mirrored disco temples live beside piles of rubble. There are vast fields of plastic bags and garbage next to verdant fields of wheat or golden fields of mustard. It doesn't help that Indians throw their trash down wherever they are. The cities are a riot of colour with sarees, painted rickshaws, gemstone mosaic and delicious shiny excess - just try not to step in the cow shit.

The sheer volume of human and animal life in the streets is remarkable. Even in the desert or on mountain tops in the Himalayas, when you peer behind a bush or rock, there are at least two Indians. Cows, pigs, goats, dogs, donkeys, monkeys, chipmunks and, in Rajasthan at least, the occasional camel just wander at will. It's one of the things I missed most last year when I came back to Canada. There are no monkeys in the streets, save the ones we elect to Parliament. Returning to Ottawa felt like watching life on a small snowy muted black and white tv.

There are very old palaces, temples and tombs all over India that just happen to be in a climate that supports the very slow decay of original 10th century wall and ceiling paintings. The sheer number of easily accessible artifacts is unbelievable but, they are commonplace for Indians, so the monuments are not cared for and often mistreated. Yesterday I touched a Buddha statue that had been dated from 5 BC and no one tried to stop me. The palaces at Orchha had clearly been used as urinals in some corners and people have scratched their names into the remaining art. If I ever find the Anoop Yadav who scratched his name in the former Maharajah's palace at Bundi, he may be left with some significant regrets.

It's the same story for the olfactory oriented amongst us. There are whiffs of exotic incense and resins, curry spices, roses and marigolds, plus piss and the aforementioned cow shit. We were remarking on a particularly malodorous gutter in Jaipur when a bristly pig ran over and joyfully flopped down in it. Different strokes, I guess. When we entered the garden at Ishwari Niwas in Bundi we were garlanded with fragrant roses, fêted with rose water in soda and then I discovered jasmine flowers in the garden. I was seriously in danger of dying from happy.

Dust aside, India is a tactile paradise. You want to be swathed in the finest silks, brocades or soft brushed cotton? This is your spot. Want to wake up and slip out of bed to put your feet on cool marble floors? Check. Want to feel the soft wrinkly skin of an elephant? You know you do. Want to be spat upon by a camel? No? That's okay, it's probably avoidable. Want to be clutched at by beggars or children? Best develop my magical withering stare. It works.

India is a cacophony of sounds. Getting sleep can be challenging in the cities. The sheer volume of Indian voices is astonishing, and there are a lot of people to be making a lot of sound. As Indian people get excited, voices become super fast and high pitched. You should hear an Indian traffic argument. I particularly notice this with people I know to be Hindu. The Sikhs and Muslims I have met have kept calmer and quieter when shit hit, but that's a personal observation that should be taken with more than a grain of salt. Then there is the particularly shrill voice used in female music vocals. It has a certain cat on a cheese grater quality. Children torment us with calls of "onephotoonephotoonephoto," but even if you take one photo the cry continues. There's no satisfying the little bastards.

Music is everywhere. Hindi pop, Bollywood hits and religious music blast competitively out car windows in the cities. Little Buddha Café in Rishikesh has an awesome mixed playlist perfect for being a funky yoga hippy. The temple music in Udaipur was so compelling it felt like it got inside me, as was the music at the Laxmi Narayan temple in New Delhi. Then there's the chanting. It's just magical. In Varanasi I was walking on a ghat alongside the Ganges when an eerie drone started from a speaker overhead. I suddenly felt I was in some quintessential timeless version of India, surrounded by Indians doing what they have done for millennia.

Some of the more ethereal sounds I have heard are the muezzins doing the Muslim call to prayer. The muezzin nearest our hotel in Chanderi had a sweet voice perfectly suited for calling to God. I shouldn't be surprised if God answered.

Traffic sounds are phenomenal, especially the omnipresent horn. Vehicles have two horns. One is the I'm-in-a-vehicle-and-I-am-driving horn that is honked continually when vehicles are even thinking about being in motion. Then there's the tuneful dee-da-lee-dee horn that means "get the fuck over. I'm serious here." In cities with congested traffic and no road rules where rickshaws go the wrong way on divided highways you probably can't even imagine what that all sounds like. Then add in the shrill whistle of the traffic police, where they exist, and all the bystanders giving their traffic opinions.

Weddings are excruciatingly noisy affairs. First there is the tinny DJ vehicle that pumps out squeally music at full blast. Add in the full brass band that plays the groom's procession music. Then include the drumming to which the bride's family and friends are dancing. Mix in the voices of thousands of partying wedding attendees and cap it off with gunfire, cannons and fireworks. No one sleeps when there is an Indian wedding.

Indian food reveals the poverty of the English language when discussing food. It's probably due to the British having no cuisine worth discussing. It's completely understandable why they adopted Indian tea and takeaway. Our travelling troupe have adopted picante from the Spanish to describe the kind of hot or spicy that will cause distress to D or G. In our lexicon, Indian food is picante if made with hot chilies or garam masala. Hot means you may scald your mouth if you don't let it cool and spicy means it is well-seasoned and flavourful. Precision in language is a wonderful thing.

For the love of God, come to India for the food. Just. Do. It.