TRAVEL: INDIA


Horns honked perpetually as scooters, motorbikes, sometimes carrying four people, jostled for position


Chamaraja Wadiyar, who was educated at an American university, lives in an opulent apartment with his wife, Trishika. Almost six million tourists each year trek around the palace – rebuilt to a design by British architect Lord Henry Irwin after the old wooden building was destroyed by fire in the late 19th century. One exhibit is the royal throne, comprising an eye-watering 80 kilograms of decorative gold. We returned to the car park to be


informed by our driver, Ravi, that we had just missed seeing Wadiyar leave the palace in an eight-car escort. Who said the Days of the Raj are over? “When he travels, the road from Mysore to Bangalore is closed to that he can do the trip in 1½ hours, when you have seen it took


us four hours,” smiled Ravi, a superb guide and companion for 13 days of our 23-day journey through the south of India, which began in Chennai, then took us to Bangalore, the tea plantations of Ooty and Munnar, Bandipur National Park, Cochin, a port on the Arabian Sea, Alleppey, and Kovalam, before we flew north to explore Delhi and to be awestruck by the Taj Mahal in Agra. Noise and chaos travelled every


kilometre on the road with us; over 1800 kms of driving through the states of Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Kerala. Horns honked perpetually as scooters, motorbikes, sometimes carrying four people, jostled for position alongside, trucks, cars, oxen-drawn carts, Tuk Tuk auto


rickshaws, wandering cows and battered local buses. Yet we did not see one incident of road rage. At the roadside of rural


communities, men and women sold bananas, water melons and coconuts to eke a living. We had fish trawled by Chinese fishing nets in Cochin. In Kovalam, I was invited to drink beer in a seafront restaurant from a tea mug as Kerala State is allegedly “dry”. Not one day was a dud; just some


excelled more than others. If style and elegance can be perceived in a silk saree, it can also manifest itself within the eyes of a tiger seen close- up in the wild as we discovered in the Bandipur National Park. We had been on safari for over two hours, and the light was fading. Suddenly, some 400 yards ahead we saw movement on the dirt track. Our driver demanded silence with a raised hand. We sat motionless; waiting, waiting. Then there she was; a tigress, strolling leisurely and serenely towards us, as elegant as a model on the runway at an Armani fashion show.


SAVILE ROW STYLE MAGAZINE 73


Malcolm and his wife enjoyed eating fish trawled by


Chinese fishing nets in Cochin


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