Ruby Grimshaw relives her Indian holiday

I have been back from India the same length of time as I was there, but it made a great impression on me and I am still reliving all the sights and sounds, all the small happenings that made it such a wonderful 11 days. It was my second visit and I will definitely go again but spend longer next time. I must ride those beautiful Mawari horses once more.
Helping me prolong this feeling of wish fulfilment is the plethora of India-based films around at the moment.

“Imagine collecting your pension by tuk-tuck and hitching a lift back on a camel cart”

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel is based on an old people’s home set in a crumbling romantic hotel in Jaipur, an idea as tempting as it is unbelievable. (I have not heard of anyone being given an option of having their hip fixed at the Sussex County or Delhi Distict.) But if there were such a place I would be on the first plane out, even if I knew the other occupants were not going to be as interesting as Judi Dench or Bill Nighy. Imagine collecting your pension by tuk-tuk and hitching a lift back on a camel cart.

It has made me realise how we take simple things like clean water and a flushing loo for granted in the West. After six hours riding over Rajasthan’s dusty farmlands we would arrive back at camp, hot, tired and dirty and wait while a fire was lit and water boiled. That half bucket of hot water (turned into a ‘shower’ by means of a ladle) became an object of bliss, imagined and coveted during the last hour of the ride. Likewise, we had a loo, rather like a Romany caravan, towed with us from camp to camp.

I am sure the boys who set it up each time, like all the rest of the team who prepared our delicious curries, looked after the horses and set up the tents, were puzzled that we could not relieve ourselves like they did, in the countryside.

The Indian women always looked serene, wearing the most beautiful saris, in bright colours, red, gold and yellow. I’m sure they wondered why these white women, careering along on horseback, wore ugly men’s clothes in brown and black. At the brick kiln, when we met the women’s group who looked after the mules, one woman draped in a beautiful yellow sari rushed in late and apologised. She had been at her second job: breaking stones on the new roadway. That’d be like gardening in one’s best ball gown…