Travels with my daughter

Elephants, camels, horses and zip wires. Seasoned independent traveller Nicola Naylor rediscovers the deserts and forts of Rajasthan in the company of her nine-year-old daughter

I had been waiting for my daughter to be old enough for a holiday in India. At Easter, she turned nine and we were off to visit Rajasthan where we spent three glorious weeks, and I discovered that touring with Poppy added another spectrum to my view of travel. I had visited Asia many times but until this trip had only seen and written from the perspective of a blind woman travelling alone.

Old enough? A difficult one to answer. Old enough to be my guide? To be helpful at times would be a bonus, but to shoulder the responsibility of guiding in such a foreign environment would, I felt, be too great a burden for some years to come. I wanted her to be mature enough to absorb the culture shock and to experience and enjoy the vastly different way of life with all its colour and vibrancy.

I hoped Poppy would love India as I do, but I also wanted to bring her and her belongings home safe and sound. There is some irony that as a blind mother I managed to produce the most extraordinarily independent child who developed a propensity for wandering off as soon as she could walk. Poppy is now able to curb her explorer’s zeal some of the time, especially when faced with the commotion and thronging crowds in an Indian street. I also felt that Poppy was now less likely to leave her backpack somewhere, or open for someone to pilfer the contents. This is important when you can’t just glance over and quickly check for them.

The trip still needed to be tailored to appeal to a child. I soon realised, to my pleasure, that this coincided beautifully with my own preferred way of travel, which is through experience and activity. If you are blind, there is no point in touring, cooped up in an air conditioned vehicle behind glass, and sight seeing is of limited interest. Too much of this would also have induced wails of protest from Poppy. One happy solution was to book lots of elephant, camel and horse safaris as a way of exploring the countryside and desert.

When we arrived at the Dera Amer elephant farm, near the famous Amer fort, there was a row of seven enormous elephants lined up to greet us, each with a Mahout, the elephant’s own trainer, perched on top. There were two waiters, one with cold towels for us to mop our brows and the other with a tray of bananas for us to feed the elephants. The velvet feel of the trunk gently and nimbly folding round the banana was very reassuring. We soon got used to lolloping through the Aravalli foothills with the occasional deep vibrating purr from our elephant and the sounds of gathering dusk. It was easy to imagine ourselves as Maharajas on a trek to a royal residence. There was a cold beer stop and a camp fire dinner at nightfall with musicians and dancers. It was all hosted by Udaijit Singh, a conscientious, Rajput landowner who has diversified but maintained local tradition. The only complication was getting on. We mounted from a tall tower and my problem was discerning the back from the front of the cushioned chair we were to sit in. Poppy hooted with merciless laughter and offered the, for me, useless information that the back was where the tail was.

We rode camels at Reggie Singh’s desert camp in Osian in the Thar desert where we stayed in a luxury tent with an ensuite modern bathroom, and a swimming pool built on top of a sand dune. This time I was prepared to mount as the camels were kneeling on all fours and there was just the forward, backward swing up. The silence of the desert and the thud of the camel’s feet on the sand were hypnotic. On camelback, we were able to reach many remote desert villages where we were welcomed into dung huts with straw roofs for chai ‘tea’.

Apart from finding that being mounted in the open was the most enjoyable way to soak up the atmosphere and get to know the countryside for both of us, it was also fascinating to be in such close contact with animals that we would not normally meet.

The tough feel of the elephant’s skin and the camel’s hair was amazing. The Marwari horses have lyre-shaped ears which point inwards and almost touch at their tips. These ancient horses of the Marwar region were also interesting to ride. They prance and carry their heads so high that they wear colourful, cloth martingales to stop them bashing their riders’ noses. Rohet Garh, a former home of nobility is the heritage hotel with the finest collection of horses, but both Rawla Narlai, a former shooting lodge, and Deogarh Mahal offer fabulous trekking. We covered much more terrain on horseback. My only concern was whether I would be told about overhanging branches as the others were busy spotting wildlife like the blue bull and the black buck.

It was the beautifully restored heritage properties converted to hotels that made our decision not to do too much sightseeing an easy one. We didn’t miss out by not seeing many city palaces and forts because we experienced them first hand by staying in smaller versions. We could soak up the history at our leisure. Deogarh Mahal is a sumptuous palace, over 300 years old, owned and restored by the Rawat Nahar Singh and his family who live nearby and visit their guests most evenings. Poppy was thrilled to take tea with a real, and delightful, King and Queen and to be invited to a lakeside picnic, a torch-lit dinner in one of their forts and a visit to their summer palace, deep in the desert and on the banks of a (currently dry) lake, which is now for hire to private parties. We enjoyed the opulent royal suite complete with what seemed like an opium den with mirrored walls and coloured glass baubles, reflecting the gaudy decadent taste of bygone royalty. Poppy explored the many rooftops and inner courtyards of the palace while I decided that the audio guide, prepared by William Dalrymple, was one of the best of the many that the heritage hotels had to offer. This is also the only one with a lift installed.

Neemrana fort, built from 1464, is perched high on the Aravalli range between Delhi and Jaipur and is also steeped in history with its ramparts, keeps and endless corridors and steep stairways. Here, I had my first experience of zipping, organised by Flying Fox who have built India’s first zip course. It is made of steel cables suspended high above the craggy mountain tops and the fort’s battlements. You are attached by a harness that you wear and accompanied by members of a professional team of experts.

The sensation was like flying! Poppy was too young to join us on the zip wires as you have to be over ten. She watched, a little crossly, from the battlements. I don’t think it is such a bad thing for youngsters to see parents do something they can’t yet do themselves, especially when one is disabled.

The environment could be challenging for both Poppy and me at different times. She was made uneasy by people staring at her and needed some reassurance. I, on the other hand, needed a hand, particularly in some of the older properties, descending their steep, uneven steps. Poppy found these convoluted buildings so irresistible to explore and often ran on ahead, setting herself the challenge of finding her own way. At these moments she wanted to think that a small thing like a precipice of steps was of little consequence to her intrepid mother. However, she was always at her most attentive when we were out, and she wanted to steer us both clear of dirt. She hated the pollution, made worse by heat and dust, and the filthy, rubbish filled streets. Her reaction also made me much more aware of the dirt than I had been previously. I also became more convinced that children can be willing and excellent guides, but it needs to be on their terms until greater age makes them less easily distracted and more empathetic.

There was the added advantage on this trip of enjoying my daughter’s view of what she saw. Although I do enjoy assembling my own picture, I liked seeing things through another pair of eyes. This was not merely having things described to me, it was often just gauging the honest reactions of a child to what she saw. I always knew how close we were to having a near-miss with a cart, careering with no brakes, or with a cycle rickshaw, skidding out of the way of a water buffalo, by how hard Poppy gripped my wrist! I felt her fear and her fascination which gave me a fresh take on the India I thought I knew so well. I think we have returned having truly shared a fabulous experience and a new love for India.

Tips
Return flights from London to Delhi from £350.
Best way to travel within Rajasthan is by hiring a car and driver at a cost of around £50
all-in, per day. Cheaper alternatives are trains and buses.
The heritage properties offer a wide range of prices but a double room is between £60-£100 per night.
Emma Horne of Nexxtop is a private travel adviser living in Delhi and can organise and personalise trips. horneemma@yahoo.co.uk