Trevor McDonald's Indian Train Adventure | Episode 1/2

i'm undertaking a journey across india on one of the most amazing trains in the world are these gold plates yes 500 public i do this the maharaja's express celebrates the height of elegance and style i love the ceiling recreating the feel of the royal trains once used by india's kings he had five wives legally i would suspect that that's probably a little too many almost half a mile long can i show you the bathroom wow it's the length of 60 london buses well it's always though nothing about it feels like a bus in my eighth year we've never said no to any guests for everything i knew you were going to say that traveling 1200 miles from mumbai to the nation's capital new delhi [Music] my journey will take me to some of the most iconic places in india that's amazing and to its most hidden surprises so the rats drink the milk but you drink the milk yes i was lost in the indian subcontinent as a news reporter in the 1980s the potentially explosive tamil issue today the traffic is as bad as it always wants this is just man poverty is still an issue miles of slums but so much else has changed i wonder what role mobile phones play in the worship to the goddess but i also have a more personal reason for coming back here i was born in trinidad my mother was pure afro-caribbean but i'm pretty sure that my father was indian wow and you can't see the joy it's a chance to discover ancient traditions that's a sign of happiness and to see how old and new india are coexisting in the 21st century this is the beginning of a great [Music] adventure mumbai till the 1990s it was known as bombay before boarding my train i'll be spending a day here there's so much to see with a population of 21 million people it's india's largest city and today it's booming across the whole of india the economy is growing so fast it's now the fifth largest in the world [Music] what is endlessly fascinating about this place is that everywhere you look there's industry people are doing things everybody is on the move there's nobody static and that's a good sort of metaphor for what mumbai is all about it's a city on the move exploding that is just mad but at the very heart of everything that happens in this city is the battle the competition between poverty and riches i'm here to see how this battle is playing out in the new india the skyline has certainly changed mumbai has the fifth highest number of skyscrapers in the world it's also one of the biggest building sites in the world with nearly 50 towers under construction [Music] this is one of the world's largest private houses it's owned by an oil tycoon mukesh ambani it's almost as tall as london's telecom tower and it comes with a ballroom free swimming pools a private theater and accommodation for 600 staff the thing to think of when you look at this extraordinary building is that it was designed for a family of five today india has 50 billionaires like ambani but not everyone here is so lucky just a few miles away is the suburb of dharavi home to nearly a million people this is one of the biggest shanty towns in all asia on the surface this is old india [Music] yet deep inside there's an explosion of activity very narrow here which is very much part of the new if you look there's always a factory inside oh right eddie is working in there he's making t-shirts and he's cleaning it's a garment factory right vinod shetty runs a charity supporting hundreds of recycling businesses in dharavi they've sprung up to help process the 10 000 tonnes of waste which mumbai generates every day this is a plastic recycler who's sorting plastic inside and glass does he start this on his own initiative yes yes totally these are all entrepreneurs who have risen from the ranks and they have established a small sheds yeah and they are recycling excuse us some of the workers also live inside even the smallest of sheds now he my goodness so small entrepreneurs he's the owner and yeah this is all his belongings okay he'll be far from his family gosh this is claustrophobic in there must be difficult to work in there all day so like you will see this gentleman here the work done by these entrepreneurs helps the city to recycle twice as much of its waste as we do in britain extraordinary there's a lot of work going on there yeah rajindra specializes in electrical goods we've been working here since the age of 16 yeah yeah doing just this it's basically specialized in separating the electronic waste all this can be reused yeah no machine can do this very impressive for young men like rajindra the work pays 40 pence a day every young person here wants to be a owner of a shed like this or a factory a small business their entire lives revolve around this dream that they will send their children to school yes they will send money back home to their families exactly like how the industrial revolution happened in the west but just just the size of it all is quite extraordinary to me i think this is one of the most amazing things i've ever seen for me they are my heroes and i think a society where people work hard is going to be one of the biggest powers in the world it's just that i never thought i would find it and see so many examples of it in a place like this yes the community here is inspiring despite living in one of the most overcrowded places on earth hello how are you the urge to succeed appears to be all that matters it's a reminder that nothing defines the new india nice to see you more than its people [Music] after a day in mumbai it's time to move on [Music] mumbai's central railway station is the busiest in the world every day three million commuters pass through almost as many as those who travel on the entire british railway system the people are the powerhouse of the new indian economy but in a far corner of the station there's a little piece of old india which still survives the maharaja's express is inspired by royal trends built over a century ago for india's kings the maharajas i'm one of 67 travelers on a tour of old india the entire staff is lined up to greet us it's my first meeting with executive chef john stone good evening welcome thank you this is your valley out here he's going to take you back oh thank you welcome thank you thank you i'm this is worlds apart from where i was 24 hours ago thank you very much cheers i've always had a sort of great affection for little bars like this so i'm i already feel at home thank you thank you i'm now anxious to see my room gosh this is glorious yes sir almost half a mile long the train has 23 carriages and 40 suites welcome to your room sir thank you very much so this is your sweet room i've i've heard a lot about these but it looks even more splendid than i thank you sir there is a mini bar and magazines yes thank you for sitting arrangement you welcome to the bedroom i say there is a telephone and the tv is there yeah wow it all looks absolutely splendid can i show you the bathroom as well yes thank you this is the cubicle area yes and there is the amenities handles and the body loss and everything is there this suite takes up half a carriage well this is better than anything i've ever stayed on especially on a train thank you and there is a minibar also too many bars yes i think i might have a party in here tonight bang on time we're off from mumbai we'll snake 1200 miles across this great nation ending up in india's capital new delhi who once owned royal trains like this one i'm with train manager nitin i'll take you another bar yeah another another bar yes that's our second bar i like the sound of that wow the interior is inspired by saloons like this built in the 1920s for a maharaja in rajasthan [Music] what this whole carriage reminds me of is of an old-fashioned english club room yes which is gracious and luxurious yes so it has the origins of the maharajas yes it also has that connection with britain yes gosh these guys lived well so who were the maharajas for centuries even under british rule until 1947 india was a patchwork of feudal kingdoms ruled by the maharajahs their lives were the subject of countless stories and legends this is that the picture of maharaja patiala singh yes when did he live he lived in 19th century to 1938. and surrounded by all these beautiful women yes that actually he had five wives only only five no sir he has five wives legally and 365 total one wife per day i i would suspect that that's probably a little too many but the maharaja seemed to look very well on it yes in fact it was the maharaja's father who had 365 wives not bupinda he is said to have had a more modest harim of 350. and he have 83 children 83 yes how wealthy was he that time is a millionaire as you can we heard that he have the special necklace yeah in that necklace they have three thousand diamond wow and out of three thousand diamonds there's a one diamond the seventh largest in the world and the cost of that time in 1938 is 25 million dollars but right now the value of that netherlands would be about 250 million more than sir more than more than sir well i think it's a great vision of good living perhaps a little extravagant wonderful [Music] i thought that was a valet i thought the calls to drink in fact not a call to drink just a rattling glass but i've taken it as my call to sleep which is probably just what's needed given that there'll be so much to see over the next eight days [Music] valley service thank you very much thank you [Music] after a 200 mile overnight journey north we've arrived at the small town of pachora and we're just in time for breakfast with 23 carriages the maharaja's express is as long as five football pitches which means that in a way it has its own inbuilt exercise regime you take a long time to get from your suite to this place because you have to stop and say hello good morning to so many people rather nice the sway of the ride is young a little more than you expected i suppose you move on the rails even in the luxury train at every station stop we're given a royal welcome similar perhaps to that given to a maharaja guests are disembarking to tour the local area good morning [Music] but we're heading somewhere else in town [Music] this is old indian is located in the rural state of maharashtra is one of the nation's food baskets but despite the economic boom in the cities maharashtra is struggling i'm here to find out why people in rural areas like this are leaving in droves to find work in the cities ten years ago 340 million indians lived in cities in another decade that figure will be nearly 600 million [Music] ritesh is one farmer who decided to stay he's tended the same plot of land now for over 50 years but in four of the last six years he's been hit by drought this year it devastated his crop hello very nice to meet you when was the last time you grew a successful crop here seven years before and since that time he hasn't known and is that because of the lack of rain what are you saying that's the main reason yes how much how much rain would you need now to restore this to anything like it was you'll need about three months range any sign of that so far the rains haven't come and there's not enough water in the well to irrigate ritesh's land next month his daughter is due to get married but ritesh doesn't have the money to pay for her wedding it's very difficult to see this change for the picnic the crops have decreased like the earlier it was like 60 70 percent now it's only like five to 15 percent crops from from from what percentage 50 60 percent to like 5 to 15 percent in this particular area yeah that's a catastrophic fall that that's that's bad that's same like from the past five years is the same many of ritesh's friends face the same problem the government has provided some with emergency loans but farmers can't afford the repayments why do people keep coming back over and over to this land like this to this plot of ground but him like the land is his mother yes so he's here and it's very connected to it yes it's it's almost yeah a kind of spiritual connection to the land which is why you need to keep coming back yeah every single day well i wish you luck but in the circumstances that seems a a very poor thing to say really thank you very much thank you [Music] much of what i see around me here has a strange familiarity to it i grew up in trinidad an island where almost half the population were of indian heritage like all migrants they arrived in the caribbean with their culture religion lifestyle and of course food i remember coming back from school and always dipping into the indian festivals because we got free food and they always gave us free food and and one feature of these vegetables was elaborate cooking and they never turned our school children away and would lessen the burden of my mother to prepare them but there was another reason why as a child i was drawn to indian festivals i was born an island which had a total population of about a million and a half and almost half the population were indian and i'm pretty sure that my father was my mother was pure afro-caribbean and we were the product and my father had long straight black hair and he wouldn't be classified as sort of african negro it's the story of west indian life it's people coming in from other parts of the world from africa and from india in a strange amazing way we are all connected which makes me think that any kind of political philosophy which tried to divide peopleis [Music] home to one-sixth of humanity the people of this nation are drawn from many cultures and many faiths the challenge for the new india remains as it's always been to unite them [Music] day three and the maharaja's express is 500 miles into its journey across the northwest of india [Music] we're headed for rajasthan on our way to india's most romantic city udaipur [Music] gosh this is so elegant yes i'm in the restaurant with train manager nitin the elaborate design is another illustration of the maharaja's love of grandeur the peacock is the national bird in india okay the stained glass is come from spain this chair is magni mahogany yes you can see this last styles it is from german from germany yes it's more romantic when you'll eat over here sir yeah i take your word for that the train has been loaded up with four tons of food that's the kitchen sir and there are nine chefs on board to prepare it i can hear the sounds of the kitchen yes sir and we're going past the chef john nice to see you again thank you so much i see you again dinner will be served from 7 30 p.m onwards thank you and there's more it's another restaurant wow it's called rang mahal yes what does that mean rang mahal means color yeah so this is the colorful restaurant from the moment i walked in here i was stunned by this the ceiling this is the ceiling carpet which is made with that horse here okay yes my goodness the effect is stunning i think it's wonderful now when i first came in here these these caught my eye they are beautiful yes sir are these gold plates yes sir this is the gold plated plates 24 carat gold especially from larsen the cost of this one is near by far and 500 public 500 per play yes sir so you don't want passengers walking off with these plates definitely [Music] the lamb looks good so far i've met many of the ordinary people of india it's hard not to think about their daily battles simply to survive but it's always intriguing to find out how the other half lives tomorrow in urai paul i've been invited to one of the largest royal palaces in all india i'm going to meet the son of a maharaja [Music] in the morning there's another ceremonial welcome as we prepare to see one of india's most beautiful cities [Music] for 500 years udaipur has been the capital of a vast princely state known as maywar home to half a million people the city's seven man-made lakes were constructed by generations of local maharajas spectacularly rich these regional kings of mewar thought nothing of draining lake pechola's 13 million cubic metres just to build another retreat [Music] for centuries even under formal british rule between 1858 and 1947 across all india were masters of their own private kingdoms but when the british left everything changed every single maharaja was forced to hand over his land to the new republic of india [Music] to many ordinary indians it was a welcome change today maharajas do still live in palaces like this one in udaipur but since independence their authority has been slowly eaten away prince lakshya raj singh mewah is the son of avin singh crowned in 1952 as the 76th maharana of udaipur i wanted to find out what it was like for the maharajahs when the new india took most of the power from them what sort of things were people talking about when they talked about that change that to put it very bluntly and straightforwardly that now marajas are going to start washing dishes was it as as stern as that absolutely absolutely because that's how it was considered to be at that time the entire nation was up in arms there's no question about it so and let me also be very honest and give you certain facts of history we were the first family to merge in the republic of india we were the first ones to say that there should be a great independent happy united republic india after independence maharajas were given sweeteners in return for giving up power they were allowed to keep their royal titles and they received handsome annual purses as compensation for giving up their lands to the state what were people who didn't accept it going to do well i don't know some may have perished some may exist but when you're presented with a revolutionary situation you come up with revolutionary ideas and the idea was certain parts of the palaces were converted into museums certain parts were converted into hotels and at the same time we didn't give up on a 1500 year old promise of looking after the people so as far as you are concerned it's worked out well yes absolutely it does seem to have worked out pretty well the hotels they opened have entertained the queen the shah of iran and american first lady jackie kennedy seen here at the palace in 1962 and though the maharana must now confine his quarters to a small corner of the complex he has still managed to corner a decent share of the income from tourism [Music] away from the serenity of the palace udaipur is a bustling city of half a million people its markets are a kaleidoscope of color crammed with exotic vegetables and fresh spices the perfect place for the trained chefs to source fresh produce the 67 passengers on this trip are having most of their meals in the comfort of the train's two restaurants all prepared by executive chef john stone and his team please come sir okay i'll just show you and john's devotion to his kitchen is transparent this is my most expensive piece of equipment it's called the combination oven it does everything from boiling rice to baking breads wow including microwave cooking anything can be done in this yeah now we're getting ready for the dinner yes now everything on top is hot down below is cool i don't have to run to the store to get my vegetables they're all here optimum usage of space which is very very essential yeah all the ingredients that you see yes all world class if you were an italian and you wanted a risotto i would give you a risotto made out of arborio rice and not basmati rice right till now in my eight years we've never said no to any guests for everything you've never had yes you know so food is all about passion and somewhere along with good ingredients if you put a little bit of love into it the dish automatically comes out good all chefs talk about putting love into this yes and what about the products that you get sir where where do they come from i'll tell you so all my meats are imported from where uh uh so like the lobster is coming all the way from australia uh you get no system australia norwegian the salmon is coming from norway smoked salmon is coming from norway the shrimps and prawns are coming all the way from malaysia the chicken is coming from sri lanka lamb is coming from australia i don't believe so forth for this spring you can't have anything but the best i knew you were going to say that thank you sir and i'm on the menu tonight sir stuffed chicken breast which has been slit through the center and are stuffed with mushrooms cooked in white wine along with cheddar cheese and along with that would be a nice red wine reduction i like that it seems a miracle that all this can be done on a fast moving train tell me about the big difficulty of working in a kitchen on a quickly moving trail because this is it's not even easy to stand around here are you able to say to the engineer or the driver we're having a gala dinner tonight could you keep the speed down sir we are fortunately we are very lucky because on the day when we have gala dinners the train is static that's a bit of a cheese yes if i request please slow it down a bit because the super spilling or the water spilling he immediately calls up the driver and the train slow so you can you can we can actually do it wow we can actually do it that's impressive thank you thank you very much [Applause] the maharaja's express runs on the fourth biggest railway in the world its track will go around the globe one and a half times using the regular service a trip from one end of india to the other equivalent to traveling between london and istanbul costs around 12 pounds from udaipur we now journey 120 miles north to jodhpur on the edge of india's spectacular tar desert [Music] for centuries jodhpur's royal family defended their territory from within these impregnable walls [Music] across town i've been summoned to one of the family's less intimidating palaces with petals thrown at my feet and honor guard before me and welcome to uman pavan the very last maharaja's palace ever to be built in india thank you very much thank you sir please thank you hello thank you for you thank you very much the maharaja himself has agreed to meet me very warm welcome thank you very much [Music] from an ancient fortress to a symbol of the british raj [Music] jodhpur is one of india's most historic cities on the edge of india's tower desert temperatures here can reach 50 degrees in summer today though it's a balmy 28. [Music] extraordinary place this is this is jodhpur's oman pavan palace it's wonderful and i'm here to meet the last maharaja of jodhpur my welcome takes place in the palace's glorious entrance hall [Applause] [Music] it's a magnificent setting [Music] in all india only the taj mahal has a bigger dough built in the 1920s as a private home i'm told the palace was assembled without mortar or cement every stone is marked with a number so that the entire edifice can at a whim be taken down and rebuilt somewhere else flat pack at its finest the man i've come to meet gad singh was a child king he was only four years old in 1952 when he became maharajah sir please this way oh thank you after his coronation garge was sent to school in england returning home just in time for the bad news that in 1947 the government had taken away the maharaja's land then in 1971 it stripped them of their titles and made them commoners even so the place has an atmosphere of solemn reverence as i'm led in and out of various rooms going back to where we came and along various corridors [Music] it is as if i'm being inspected by the all-seeing eyes of former maharajas [Music] as i wait [Music] and wait you'd never suspect that the boy king god singh once crowned last maharaja of jodhpur is today according to the indian state just an ordinary man gosh my goodness my audience will take place on the terrace absolutely spectacular viewing glorious sunlight but where is he finally he appears and i have the chance to ask him how it felt to have his maharaja title taken away of course it all changed in 1971 with the change of the constitution did you regret having so short a time as maharaja no it wasn't that it was the um the way it was done we made it look small from being privileged people the press was against political climate is against and you once said we are the bad boys what did you mean by that we were made out of the bad boys i see yes everything became an issue yes the villagers went land on the ships and the whole thing it was a bit of a damp now it hit us very badly do you think what was done was done because of any kind of envy at the privileges no change had to come and we said we might change it has to come but do it in a vulnerable way so you think it was done in a dishonorable way yes like the royals of udaipur the family have maintained their lifestyle by converting their palace into an hotel and one that's been voted the most luxurious in the world but far beyond the terrace in a secret corner of the estate there's a hidden treasure from the long gone days of the maharajahs a genuine maharaja's royal train yeah okay sadly though it's not what it once was so this is the entrance today they all carry yes sir amit worked on board in its glorious heyday it's very narrow along these corridors this was one meter gauge sir one meter three feet three inches yes little smaller than what we have today's date the train was built a hundred years ago so that gad singh's grandfather could travel in style to the tiger hunting grounds of the south so tell me about the fact that this this was built for his grandfather the current maharaja exactly the marathon of that time who was ruling maharaja he ordered birmingham railways to build these carriages in england wow yeah and so all together it was a combination of eight carriages which been pulled by a small steam locomotive how luxurious were these carriages they had very comfortable beds in each of their bedrooms the sitting area had a very spacious place where these group you would sit and enjoy their drinks during their travel it was bar come sitting area even the dining room had a lovely table to accommodate 20 people and i must say that it was the most luxurious way to travel at that time and what's here this was the kitchen sir wow and we had this charcoal operated oven there charcoal charcoal operated yes so it limited how much you could do yeah yes sir and these were the ice boxes to keep this stuff and this was cool box where we used to keep hole this very english of trains fell out of use after the maharaja died but in the 1970s a young gad singh brought it back to life [Music] using it to take his hotel guests on sightseeing trips to the desert city of jezelmere some might call it the first and original maharaja's express [Music] people could travel overnight from jyotpu to jaisalmer reach there in the morning have their breakfast leave for sightseeing then again they will come back in the evening they would have dinner and ride back to you and then go back it connected the two places yes sir it connected them but not for long the tourist trips ended after only a few years and so for the last two and a half decades these once magnificent saloons have stood alone and empty the royal trains demise perhaps symbolizes that of the maharajahs themselves though as i look out to the ancient fortress i find it difficult to decide whether it really is all over for the maharaja's just yet next time on the maharaja's express my adventure takes me to india's most extraordinary temple and that helps you to stay healthy yes healthy a meeting i'll never forget [Music] and one of the great wonders of the world gosh

Channel: Travtik

Views: 713,631

Rating: 4.8486042 out of 5

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Id: WpsnsG2FOBk

Length: 46min 11sec (2771 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 30 2021