Prolific British television presenter and host James May traverses through India in his latest series James May: Our Man in India, the third in the James May: Our Man in series which has so far touched upon Italy and Japan. Currently streaming on Prime Video, the travel documentary series, comprising three episodes, has the man looking relaxed and having fun in a country that he has visited multiple times before. The Telegraph caught up with May, the former co-host of Top Gear, over a video call.
You have been to India quite a few times before. What was your reaction to the idea that this edition of the show — James May: Our Man in India — was going to bring you here?
I was very pleased. I sort of knew they were going to say: 'Please do India' because we are sort of slightly obsessed with India in Britain at any rate (laughs). I think the West on the whole is slightly obsessed, slightly baffled, and even slightly scared of India. So it was a bit of a no-brainer, to be honest.
You say that Britain is obsessed as well as baffled with India. Has it been able to move beyond the idea of Indian cuisine being limited to chicken tikka masala?
For a long time in the West, we slightly misunderstood India. To be honest, it is still a little bit of a Raj fantasy. Some people still think a bit like that and a lot of it has been based entirely on the experience of eating a lot of Indian food in Britain. But Indian food in Britain has developed almost like a separate strain of Indian cooking. You could almost call it 'British Indian' food rather than 'Indian Indian' food. It is similar but it is not the same.
I do think that a lot of people probably go to India and think it will be full of mystics and yogis and people doing Bollywood dance routines and then they will get to eat a chicken tikka masala or a bowl of dal on the street. You do get those things, obviously, but it is a perfectly normal, modern country as well. It is quite interesting when you meet young people in these countries that I go to. I have done three so far — Italy, Japan and India — and when you meet people who are in their 20s and 30s, particularly, people who are young professionals and students, they are pretty much the same everywhere. That generation, I think, are truly global citizens, but they are coloured by their background. They are Indian or Japanese or Italian or British or whatever. But they sort of think and act in the same way, very broadly.
What was this experience in India like? Did anything, even with your interest in and knowledge of the country, take you by surprise?
I wasn't surprised in the sense of being shocked by anything in particular. But I like the way that India, especially when you are in the towns and the cities, gives the impression of being very random. And that is another cliche. People say: 'Oh, you go to India. It is so chaotic.' But actually, it isn't. It works very smoothly. I mean it helps that we had local people to help us. All our fixers were locals and experts. Things happen in a very different way there but they still happen. It is very difficult to explain, but it is kind of a method to the madness, in that sense.
People think that Indians are a bit mad, they are a bit eccentric, but they are not really. They are perfectly pragmatic, just like everybody else is. But you get the impression mainly because it is busy and it is noisy and things like traffic flow in a very random way. And there don't seem to be very many rules about things. You have shops on the roads where half the things are inside the shop and half on the pavement outside.
It all makes perfect sense once you are used to it. I don't think travelling in India is as difficult as some people make it to be. As long as you have a reasonably open mind and a bit of pocket money with you, you can go around, you can eat food, go and get a haircut, go to the movies, just do everything you do everywhere else and it is all just perfectly normal. It is just done in a slightly more Indian way.
Have you been to Kolkata?
Yes, a few times, and even with this show. I did a bit more just sort of straightforward wandering around the streets in Kolkata this time, especially in the evenings, and not necessarily working or filming. We would just go out and find interesting little places to eat, see the little markets and just get sort of carried along.
I like Kolkata. Mumbai is intensely busy and Delhi is a little bit more old-fashioned but when you go to Kolkata, it actually in a way feels more Indian than those places and in little things. There are still more of the yellow taxis in Kolkata, the roads look slightly different there, and there are very colourful markets. I saw people playing Carom under a flyover there.
I think that if one has never been to India before, then Kolkata would be closer to what you would expect than, say, Mumbai. Mumbai feels very contemporary... shiny tall glass buildings and business being done at a very intense pace. Kolkata is slightly more traditional.
India is very diverse as everyone knows and things change every couple of hundred kilometres, if not less. Wherever you have been, have you found anything common that binds the country?
Rickshaw horns! (Laughs) It ought to be one of India's official languages. It does have meaning... it is not just people blowing the horn. It is all coded!
This time, I spent more time in very small villages in Rajasthan and even in the Sunderbans, and I found that there was a sort of consistency. They don't all look the same, they are quite different but there is a consistent peaceful feel to them. I was about to say Zen, but that's the wrong country! (Laughs) But do you know what I mean? They have a sort of feeling of permanence about them which is very reassuring and they are quite relaxing and pleasant to hang out in.