Twelve days in England and Scotland
Viren and I spent twelve days of June 2024 in England and Scotland, from London and Edinburgh to Fife, Oxford and Bath, and I got to see my MSc campus in person.
Last September I started a distance-learning MSc at the University of Edinburgh (UoE), and this trip was planned because I wanted to visit the campus I had only ever seen through a screen. Viren, a close friend from work, wanted to tour the UK along with me.
Over the twelve days we kept noticing the stark differences between the UK and India, and one question kept coming back to us - why can’t India be more like this? I’m writing it all down while it’s still fresh, from the planning to the flight home.
Table of contents
- Before we left
- Friday 14 June: Bengaluru to London
- Saturday 15 June: London in the rain
- Sunday 16 June: the train to Edinburgh
- Monday 17 June: Edinburgh
- Tuesday 18 June: St Andrews and Fife
- Wednesday 19 June: Technopole and Rosslyn
- Thursday 20 June: back to London
- Friday 21 June: a concert and a boat
- Saturday 22 June: Oxford
- Sunday 23 June: Bath
- Monday 24 June: the relaxed day
- Tuesday 25 June: home
Before we left
We started planning in December, six months in advance. The visa came first (forms, an appointment and then a wait), then the air tickets and then the hotels. We flew Air India, Bengaluru to Mumbai to Heathrow and back the same way twelve days later, with a baggage allowance of 46 kilos each.
The whole plan was in a Word document called “Itinerary”. It ran from Leave home at 5:30 AM on 14 June to Arrive at KIA at 5:45 AM on the 26th, and every day in between was split into Morning, Lunch, Afternoon and Evening. Most dinners had a restaurant and a time against them, and on the Wednesday it said Lunch with Craig. We got it reviewed by our colleagues at AMD and by our families, and both sent back notes.
One Friday night at the end of April, Viren booked the lot in about an hour (the Premier Inn at Paddington for the first two nights, the hub by Premier Inn on Rose Street in Edinburgh, Paddington again for the last five nights, and the flight back from Edinburgh to London City). The train tickets came the same day (London to Edinburgh via Peterborough, Coach J, seats 61 and 62, £70.40 each).
June in the UK is colder than any June back home, so there were clothes to buy. There was insurance to sort out too, twice over. The weekend before we left, I put everything in one folder as PDFs (flights, hotels, trains, the concert ticket, the tour and the policies), and we were still editing the itinerary on the tenth, four days before we flew.
The night before the flight, the bags were packed and the first line of the itinerary said Leave home at 5:30 AM. After six months of planning, that is when the feeling finally hit me - it’s actually happening.
A lot of the plan survived the trip, though not all of it. The Highlands tour turned into a day in Fife, the museum day turned into a visit to our own office, and at seven, when the plan said dinner, we were usually somewhere else.
Friday 14 June: Bengaluru to London
That morning we were inside Terminal 2 at Kempegowda, with plants trailing down from the ceiling. Our first photo of the trip is a portrait against a wall of leaves there.
We flew to Mumbai first, and then nine and a half hours to Heathrow, landing in the evening London time. The itinerary had us at the Premier Inn in Paddington by ten, which is half past two in the morning by a Bengaluru body clock, and its last line for the day just said Retire for the night.
Saturday 15 June: London in the rain
Paddington Basin and the parks
For our first full day the itinerary listed eleven places, from Big Ben to Covent Garden, and under Morning it also said to ask the hotel for places to visit.
It was raining when we stepped out. Our hotel sits on Paddington Basin, and that morning it was glass offices around grey water, with a ring of fountains going off in the wet.
On the way to Hyde Park we crossed the road outside St Mary’s Hospital. We noticed that the traffic in the UK waits for the pedestrian to cross, whereas in India crossing a road is a do or die situation.
Hyde Park was long wet grass and empty benches, with the rain stopping and starting. At the Round Pond in front of Kensington Palace, Viren crouched down to feed the pigeons, and geese and swans came over as well.
From Queensway to Covent Garden
We took the Central line from Queensway into the West End, holding paper Travelcards stamped 15 JUN 24.
We came out into proper rain, with umbrellas up outside the Palace Theatre at Cambridge Circus, and then the sun came out over Soho and the wet streets were shining. Covent Garden went exactly the way the itinerary said, Explore Covent Garden and watch street performances.
From the Mall to the Tower
Late in the afternoon we reached the Mall, still hung with Union flags from Trooping the Colour, with crowds walking up to Buckingham Palace. We got to the Elizabeth Tower, and then the rain came back as we walked along the Embankment past the London Eye.
The itinerary said dinner in Chinatown at seven, but at seven we were standing on London Bridge instead, looking down the river at Tower Bridge, with HMS Belfast moored below it, and from there we walked east through the City to the Tower of London.
Sunday 16 June: the train to Edinburgh
We checked out and went to King’s Cross. We spent some time there looking around for Harry Potter merchandise and Platform 9¾, and came away with keychains. We each had two LNER tickets for the same seat on the same train (London to Peterborough, then Peterborough to Edinburgh). Then our train was cancelled.
The next train to Edinburgh was full, but we got on it anyway, without seats, and stood at the end of the bogie beside the toilets for the entire four hours.
Typically in India this would have been the worst experience - the toilets stink, people keep moving around, there are vendors everywhere and the journey is jerky, so nothing about it is comfortable. Here it was effortless. People passing by offered us their seats, and the ride north was one smooth journey. The views were breathtaking (flat fields under the wires, wind turbines on the horizon, and the Tyne at Newcastle, with the city’s bridges lined up downstream). At Berwick we crossed the Tweed, and a few miles on we were in Scotland. We didn’t even realise we had been standing beside the toilets for four hours until we got off.
At the hub by Premier Inn on Rose Street, we found that our room had just one bed instead of two. There were no other rooms left, so we went room hunting in the nearby hotels. It was a tense situation, but I had just walked out of the station into Edinburgh, and I was blown away by its beauty, so much so that the tension didn’t feel like anything. I kept saying - “How can anyone be sad in a place like this?” We ended up at Fraser Suites, on St Giles Street just off the Royal Mile, and the trip continued.
At quarter to nine we went back out to the Royal Mile in broad daylight, since in June the sun sets in Edinburgh after ten. We took our first selfie in Scotland under a Saltire flying near the Tron Kirk.
Monday 17 June: Edinburgh
The Old Town
Monday started at St Giles’ Cathedral on the Royal Mile.
EPCC and George Square
My MSc is in High Performance Computing, run by EPCC. So Tour the University of Edinburgh in the itinerary meant walking into my own department for the first time, after nine months of it being a laptop screen in Bengaluru.
EPCC is in the Bayes Centre. Jemma, the student coordinator, met us there and gave us a wonderful tour of the whole facility, and we met Weronika, who directs the MSc programme, along with some of the other professors. I got my student ID card, and with it access to the Bayes Centre. Then we took turns under the EPCC sign at the door.
Getting my ID card and having lunch at the canteen, and later at a place nearby, really hit home that I am a student at this prestigious university. I have only ever studied online, so that physical experience put everything into perspective, and it was an awesome campus to finally walk around.
In the afternoon we walked around George Square, in the middle of the central campus.
Calton Hill
From the top, the city runs all the way down to Leith, and past it the Firth of Forth opens out towards the North Sea, with Fife on the far shore. Seeing that breathtaking view, I felt alive. I went down into vajrasana to bow down to this beautiful and majestic scene, and I said it out loud - “This is what it means to be alive.” We stayed an hour.
When we walked back across North Bridge, the Old Town’s tenements were lit gold by the low sun under a dark sky.
Tuesday 18 June: St Andrews and Fife
The itinerary for Tuesday said Take a guided tour to the Scottish Highlands (8 AM - 6 PM). Visit Loch Ness, Glencoe, and the Highlands. That only changed because Craig, our colleague in Edinburgh, mentioned that Fort William might be a much easier tour of the Highlands than Loch Ness in such a short time. Instead, the day became a Timberbush Tours trip called “St Andrews & The Fishing Villages of Fife”, leaving from the top of the Royal Mile. At six that morning it was already broad daylight over the rooftops outside our window.
The first stop was South Queensferry. While we stood on the shore there, the Maid of the Forth went under the Forth Bridge, which is the photo at the top of this page.
Then the bus crossed into Fife and went along the fishing villages of the East Neuk, and at Elie it was low tide.
St Andrews
We reached St Andrews just after a shower, with the streets still wet. We went to see the cathedral. Our ticket had warned that the cathedral and the castle were closed for health and safety, and the grounds were fenced off in places, right down between the gravestones.
Falkland
The last stop was Falkland. Falkland Palace is in the middle of the village, and behind its walls is the oldest real tennis court still played on anywhere. Then the bus took us back to Edinburgh.
Wednesday 19 June: Technopole and Rosslyn
Viren and I both work at AMD, which has an office at Edinburgh Technopole, near Penicuik. So on Wednesday morning we went to visit the AMD campus there and meet our colleague. We found the AMD logo on the front window and stood under it for a photo.
That colleague was Craig Wilson, the same Craig who had changed our Tuesday, and we met him at the office door. He had one more suggestion - Rosslyn Chapel was a couple of kilometres down the road, and the chapel and the area around it were worth seeing.
We didn’t go into the chapel, and walked around the outside instead.
Back in the Old Town, a street circus was performing on the Royal Mile beside St Giles’, and we ended up in a photo with two of the performers, each of us holding one of their hula hoops.
In the evening we walked down Victoria Street to the Grassmarket, and back up on the Royal Mile we came across a laughing statue of Oor Wullie. Viren tried his best to imitate the laugh.
Thursday 20 June: back to London
Thursday was our last morning in Scotland, and we went past the Bayes Centre one more time. In the afternoon we flew BA CityFlyer to London City. Then it was back across London to the same Premier Inn at Paddington.
Viren and I did not agree on many things, and since this was the first time I had lived with someone apart from my parents, it was an experience in sharing my space with another person. We established ground rules and operated along them, and for the most part it was as smooth as it could get. That night at the hotel, the UoE hoodie and T-shirt I had bought from the university’s merchandise got laid out on the bed. I bought them to remember the visit and to feel that I am a student of UoE, since my programme is a distance-learning one.
Friday 21 June: a concert and a boat
Bloomsbury and King’s Cross
Friday’s plan was the Tower of London in the morning, a concert at one and Hyde Park in the afternoon, and only the concert survived.
In the morning we went to Bloomsbury, past the Cruciform Building, to the Computer Science department of UCL on Gower Street. After that we went up to King’s Cross, to Google’s building beside the station, just because we have a friend who works at Google.
Ragas with Soul
We had a good lunch and then went for the afternoon concert at St Martin-in-the-Fields on Trafalgar Square, part of Darbar’s “Ragas with Soul” series. Harmeet Virdee played sitar and Junaid Ali tabla. I play the sitar myself, and this was the only booking on the whole trip that had anything to do with it.
The concert was fantastic. It was an afternoon concert, so he played Bhimpalasi. The smooth aalap and then the rhythmic jod and jhala put the two of us in a trance. The acoustics of the church itself were no slouch either, and the hall was beautiful and intimate, with us sitting close to the performers.
Afterwards I went up and took a photo with Harmeet.
Down the river to Greenwich
From beside the London Eye we took a boat down the Thames to Greenwich. From the water London comes past in order - the Royal Festival Hall, the chimney of Tate Modern with St Paul’s dome across the water, then the City’s towers bunching together, with the Shard going up past everything on the south bank. We passed HMS Belfast and then went under Tower Bridge itself. At Greenwich the boat came in beside the Old Royal Naval College. We had a Maltesers waffle there, and even that simple dessert was delicious.
By seven we were back in town, south of the river, at an outdoor table with Ning and Harry, our AMD colleagues in London, and it was still broad daylight.
Saturday 22 June: Oxford
Oxford was a day trip from Paddington, about an hour each way. A poster at the station suggested a visit to Oxford University’s world-famous Gardens, Libraries & Museums.
We started under Tom Tower at Christ Church. In the afternoon I bought my mother a handbag, and a purse with the university’s crest on it. Then we found a shop full of anime figures, which was fantastic. I had been watching Demon Slayer, and I spotted the earring that Tanjiro wears and bought it. After that came the Covered Market, with bunting strung under its painted roof.
In the evening Viren’s cousin joined us for dinner. At the station afterwards the three of us fitted into one selfie in front of the Saïd Business School, and we took the train back.
Sunday 23 June: Bath
On Sunday we took the train from Paddington to Bath Spa. The first place we found was The Bath Chocolate Company, just by the station on Railway Street. We had the best hot chocolate ever there.
Just past Bath Abbey we came to Pulteney Bridge. By then we were parched from walking around, and a lemonade stall by the road there was a saviour. Its chalkboard asked Sweet, medium or sour?, and the man behind it raised a whole jug for the photo, with Viren beside him.
In the afternoon we walked west along the river and up to the Circus and the Royal Crescent, and we were back at Paddington in the evening.
Monday 24 June: the relaxed day
The last full day was marked Relaxed Day in the itinerary, with shopping in the afternoon, and that is what we did. We spent it buying souvenirs to take back home and sweets to distribute to friends, family and colleagues.
On Oxford Street, Harmonie London was singing gospel at a keyboard on the pavement, with the crowds and the buses going past behind her. We stopped, and I filmed a bit of it.
Dishoom was recommended to us by many people as the “go to” Indian place in London, so we queued outside the one on Kingly Street, just off Carnaby Street. While we waited we held a card that began Humble apologies for the wait and promised Tipples and Chai. We ordered the fried okra, and since we had just come there from India, we found the food bland, lacking the right spice and taste.
In Mayfair, a Ralph Lauren shop on Bond Street had a giant Wimbledon crest over its front a week before the tournament, and inside I bought a sweater for my father.
Tuesday 25 June: home
We checked out on Tuesday morning and flew home the way we had come, Heathrow to Mumbai to Bengaluru.
Viren and I had a lot of philosophical questions on this trip. Coming from Bengaluru, we are used to the pollution, the noise, the chaos and the traffic. It is an overload on the senses which you don’t even know about until you go to a place like the UK, where you immediately realise what you have been quietly ignoring. The traffic there is structured, and the buildings and their paints have coherence. Even the simplest desserts were delicious, like the ice creams in Edinburgh and the Maltesers waffle in Greenwich, and people dressed elegantly and wore exquisite perfumes, so much so that their gentle presence lingered even after they had left.
So why can’t India be more like this? Because in India there are too many layers of friction to get anything done, and people aren’t incentivised to be kind, whereas every stranger we met in the UK went out of their way to be kind - the train to Edinburgh was just one example.
Viren agreed with all of it, and put it in his own words. In India we are big fish in small ponds, but in the UK we are small fish in a big pond, with ample space to grow and less systemic resistance.
We landed back at KIA in Bengaluru early on Wednesday morning. Stepping outside the terminal, the first thing that hit my nose was the smell of the soil, the old red farming soil smell that India is known for. It brought back the familiar feeling of being home, but the tug of war in my head between the UK and India is still going.