Bye Bye India

Another post and a new country to go with it.  I left Dharmsala a few days ago and had a lovely 12 hour bus journey through the night that I didn’t sleep a wink on thanks to a combination of no legroom and a chubby monk next to me who for some reason thought that because I made polite conversation with him at the beginning that he could proceed to sleep on me for most of the journey.  He was a monk, what was I supposed to do?  The bus left at 7.30pm and by 8pm they had turned all the lights off, there went my plan to read Ranulph Feinds biography of Captain Scott (the Arctic explorer).  Instead I listened to my iPod for 12 hours and stared at the patterned seat cover in front of me, what a laugh.

I had one night and a couple of days to kill in Delhi before my flight to Bangkok, same old same old really.  I did get pissed off when on my last day I got ripped off by a rickshaw driver who nicked 100rps of my change.  Ah well, win some and you lose some, serves me right for not checking it I suppose.  I knew there was something strange about a rickshaw driver who could change a 500rps note!

I’m going to miss India.  As I walked through Paharganj at 6.30am when everyone was just waking up and the mess from the day before had yet to be burned at the side of the road I felt a strange affection for the place.  India has been wonderful, the people are generally some of the most honest and trustworthy people I have come across.  They are invariably hospitable and if you start to talk to them hours can pass while you talk about everything from the local crime rate to how much money you earn in the UK (they love that one).  Whilst the incessant questions can get annoying, some of the best times I have had have been talking to random people in a restaurant or sitting around in a park.  Once you know how to get by without being hassled every 5 minutes and bed yourself in there really is no problem in getting around and doing your thing.  The sheer size of the country means that there is so much diversity in the kinds of places you can visit, there really is somewhere for every mood you could find yourself in.  The heat at this time of year makes it bloody hard work getting around and seeing things but that is soon sorted out when you go up to the hills of Sikkim or Himachal Pradesh, those weary of ‘India’ can find themselves in what seems to be a different country sometimes when you are in Gorka populated West Bengal or the foothills surrounding Darjeeling.

In short there are countless places that I didn’t see and I’m damn sure that I will be back to see some of them at a point in the not too distant future.  Part of me wondered why I was leaving when I still had a month left on my visa.  Getting itchy feet is a funny feeling, I can’t quite explain it I just knew that I wanted a bit of a change of scenery, a bigger change than simply going up into the mountains could provide.

So I find myself in Bangkok.  Grabbed a decent guesthouse not far from the infamous Koh San Road, close enough to be in the backpacker grapevine and just far enough for a bit of peace and quiet.  Coming out of the airport was a revelation, as was the drive into the city.  In just over an hour I did not hear one car horn!  After India when the tings were going 24/7 every second it felt like I had put ear plugs in!  The driving was fairly moderated, everyone kept a fair distance apart and even obeyed the traffic lights, amazing what people can do when they put their mind to it!  I haven’t ventured too far yet, in fact I haven’t ventured anywhere.  I was too engrossed by the word ‘bacon’ on the menu for breakfast!

Not too sure what my plan is at the moment, I think I will end up going north towards Chiang Mai for a couple of weeks before going across the border into Laos.  Guess I will travel south for a bit and then either cross into Cambodia or come back to Thailand and set up shop on Ko Tao for a week or twos worth of diving.  I will let you know in more detail when I figure it out!

Missing you all

xxx

Dharmsala and then…….???

Been a good few days since I last wrote anything and even then it didn’t exactly tell you a lot about what I have been doing so before I move on I suppose I should write a bit about where I have spent the last week and a half.

Dharmsala as I am sure most of you know is the home of the Tibetan Government in Exile and His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama.  Unfortunately for me he has decided to go to Nottingham for a week to do some teaching at the ice stadium.  My efforts to try and fill in for him whilst he has been away have not been very sucessful, probably for the best thinking about it.   To be a bit more specific I am in Mcleod Ganj, a couple of km above Dharmsala but when people generally talk about Dharmsala they mean Mcleod.  As a result of the large Tibetan population, the place feels completely different to anywhere else I have been in India, a little bit like Darjeeling but much more diverse.  It is clearly a destination for Indian tourists as well as there are hundreds of them knocking about escaping the raging heat that is prevalent elsewhere in the country at the moment.

Mcleod Ganj is essentially very small.  The residential areas spread out a bit but everything is generally on 2 parallel roads and another road that runs down to the Tsuglagkhang (Dalai Lama’s Temple) and a monastary.  The roads are lined with shops selling Tibetan knick knacks, although a lot of the shops seem to be owned by Kashmiris so if you want to support the community and buy locally produced stuff then you have to look around a bit.  Any other time of the year i.e. when it isn’t the tourist high season, monks probably outnumber lay people on the streets.  Quite funny but you don’t really imagine monks to have mobile phones hanging from them!  Progress is progress I suppose!

Weather has been really good the last couple of days.  Clear views across the valley and if you look ‘behind’ the village then you can see the snow lined foothills of the Himalaya.  It’s nice to be basking in the sunshine but not covered in sweat for once.  Plenty of short walks around the hills, up to Dal Lake, the waterfall at Bagsu and Daramcote a couple of miles away, a good way to work up an appetite before coming back to one of the countless Italian restaurants that are around here.  Lord knows why they chose Italian but some of it is pretty good, makes a nice change from Channa Masala anyway.

I’ve been helping out some monks with conversational english in the afternoons over tea which has been cool.  A good way to learn a bit more about the whole situation and in particular their own personal stories, very interesting.

I’m struggling a bit with what to say really, I honestly havne’t done that much over the last week and a half.  Lots of reading and pottering around….Macleod is a great place for pottering and that is about it really.  Been good to stick my feet in the ground for a while and just stay in one place but I am beginning to get itchy feet again.

Hence I have decided to move on, not entirely sure where yet but have sorted out some of the travel arrangements.  I won’t tell you exactly where but I will say that I will be leaving India.  I have realised that my personal threshold for one country seems to be about 2 months.  I had the same feelings towards the end of the time I was in Malaysia and it isn’t anything to do with the country really.  There is still loads of stuff I want to do in India but beginning to pine for something a bit different, the food and the people and beaurocracy is beginning to get my nerves a bit.  I will be back there is no doubt about that, India is an amazing country with so much diversity but unfortunately it has breached my 2 month threshold.  The weather isn’t helping either to be honest, it is unbearably hot and humid in most of the country which makes travelling and walking around pretty uncomfortable
for the most part.

Still as I said plenty of chances to come back in the future and knocking another couple of places of the list is no bad thing.  Question is where am I going?  Jenny’s bet is on South America, Kate’s money is on Australia (although i did convince her I was going to Hawaii for a while).  I will let you all know in due course but for now I will say goodbye.

Goodbye

A Short Tirade on Certain Tourists

So a couple of weeks ago the night before Kate was due to fly back to the UK we decided to splash out on a nice (more like very nice) hotel for the evening. Now forgetting the fact that the night turned out to be pretty much a complete bust with both of us feeling sick at some point and my good self having to leave the dinner table as a result of that feeling, it got me to thinking. From the second I walked into the hotel in question, if you must know it was the Shangri-La in Delhi, I just didn’t feel comfortable. Maybe it was the doorman dressed up to the nines bidding me good day every time I went within 10 feet of him, maybe it was the large groups of well heeled businessmen who were just in the city for a meeting or two or potentially it could have been the fact that I looked like crap and thought that everyone who glanced in my direction thought was mentally composing the letter they would send to the hotel manager berating him for allowing ‘undesirable types’ into their little sanctuary of luxuriousness closed off to the claustrophobic, hot, dusty and poverty ridden outside world.

I have been lucky enough in my 22 and a half years on this fine planet to go to some amazing places and stay in some equally amazing hotels. Hardly any of these trips would not have been possible without my parents (thanks guys) and the following is no reflection on any of this, indeed I am more grateful than I could put into words.

Over the last few months, out of necessity it must be said, I have stayed in some seriously cheap places and eaten most of my food from stalls on the streets and local cafes. Whilst I have been in my fair share of cockroach ridden rooms and eaten some downright questionable food (the place next to the rat populated butchers alley in KL springs to mind) the majority of it has been superb. Some of the hostels and guesthouses I have stayed in have been absolute gems, clean comfortable rooms, rooftop restaurants and swimming pools in the odd rare case, but above all, what has made them stand out is the atmosphere in these places; a sense of ‘homeliness’ and welcoming that you just don’t get in your identi-kit international hotel. The Shangri-La had everything that would could want, your every need was looked after in some way. The rooms were large and comfortable, the pool was cool and refreshing and was very ably complimented by the spa like changing rooms, the restaurants were 5* and the staff were courteous. Why then did it feel so unwelcoming and sterile? There are simply no quirks to a place like this, nothing to make it stand out from the crowd and from its countless brothers and sisters in any large city around the world. It is a carbon copy of the western ideal for an international hotel, a place where people can come, know what they are getting and lock themselves away from whichever city they happen to find themselves in. What is the problem with this you might ask? You might say that being able to log onto the net, give over your credit card details and then turn up knowing that you have a restaurant, fluffy pillows and those little bottles of shampoo in your bathroom is a great thing, it takes the worry out of traveling. Well sorry but you are wrong. What it does is take the surprise, excitement and the slight feeling of nervousness you get when you arrive in a new place out of the equation.

It is possible to go somewhere like Delhi, Kolkata and Kuala Lumpur be met at the airport and taken to your blacked out air-conditioned car, step out of the car and straight into the air-conditioned lobby of your hotel. You can then step back into your car as and when it suits you and be driven to a couple of select sights for a mosey around with your hotel organised guide before returning back to the hotel for a quick swim and dinner in your Scottish-Cambodian fusion restaurant. Now I don’t have a problem with this so much, the individual elements are part and parcel of the world we live in (perhaps without the Scottish-Cambodian fusion restaurant, praise the lord). What I do have a problem with is that people travel thousands of miles for 12 hours or more in order to take part in this ludicrous ritual, return home and over drinks at their $8000 a year country club and begin to lecture people about how they saw the most awful things whilst they were away and something just has to be done about it. What did you see love? A couple of people begging outside of the Taj Mahal who were deftly shooed away by your guide? A woman and baby walking between the cars at a red light begging for a couple of rupees? How about next time you travel you get out of your car and walk along the streets, smelling the rotting garbage and stench of human excrement, take in the sights of countless destitute people on the streets or living under a cardboard shack at the side of the road. How about you look the legless man in the eye as he wheels himself around on a piece of ply wood with scavenged wheels attached to it or the woman who has three naked children covered in flies asleep next to her? As you walk past all the people plying their wares, the small family run cafes, chai shops and juice stalls in order to get to the nearest Starbucks or air-conditioned mall try and think about the impact you are having. Think about where your tourist dollars are going and who they are benefiting because is sure isn’t the local people. Instead some fat sweaty white guy sitting behind a desk in a high backed leather chair and stroking his fluffy white cat is thanking you for providing him with a bigger bonus and keeping his already well off shareholders happy.

By frequenting chain hotels and walking by the small coffee bar to get to the Costa behind, you are just sticking your middle finger up at the local people who thought that with a bit of entrepreneurial spirit and hard work they could make a few bucks from the rocketing tourist trade. You are in effect discouraging people from trying to start something on their own, from turning those cheap semi-dilapidated rooms that only appeal to the budget conscious backpacker into places that for a couple of extra bucks can offer something that no chain hotel can do; atmosphere, a sense of welcoming and above all the knowledge that you are giving your money to the local community, to people who will actually benefit from it.

I’m not saying that every time people go somewhere they should spend hours searching for the small privately guesthouse. Of course there are times when that just isn’t possible, but instead of just going onto the Hilton Website, spend 5 minutes looking though Tripadvisor or scrolling through your Google results for a well run hotel that is not owned by a huge conglomerate or private investment group. Then eat within their restaurant or step outside and walk around for ten minutes until you find a restaurant where the chef hasn’t been imported from Swaziland and the food has been sourced locally.

Before people start calling me a hypocrite and the like I will say that I’m sure in the future I will stay at group owned luxury hotels. What I won’t do however, and I urge you to do the same, is allow myself to be drawn into the cocoon that they offer. I will walk around, smell the air, watch and speak to the people, buy things from well run shops that source their goods locally and eat some amazing food in small local restaurants. In other words after traveling thousands of miles and for tens of hours I will get to know the place I have traveled to.

A Trio of Holy Cities

Sorry about the lack of updates, I haven’t had much time recently, or if I have done then it has coincided with either a power cut or the phone lines being down and thus all the internet connections. I suppose this is going to be a fairly long post so you pay want to go and make yourselves a cup of tea before you start (Darjeeling of course).

So I left Darjeeling about a week and a half ago and headed back down to Kolkata for the day before getting a late night train to Bodhgaya. Bodhgaya as some of you may know is the place where Siddhārtha Gautama sat under a bodhi tree for 49 days until he gained enlightenment and became know as the Buddha or ‘enlightened one’. What you may not know is that the Buddha was born to the son of a king and destined for the life of a prince he instead turned his back on the material world and began the life of an ascetic. In due course he nearly killed himself after limiting himself to a small nut a day for nutrition and he realised that rather than completely discarding the material world he would need to follow a ‘middle way’ to enlightenment.

Anyway Bodhgaya is the home of the Mahabodhi Temple, built on the site of the bodhi tree. A truly serene site to spend a few hours walking around, reading or watching the coming and goings of the numerous monks who are knocking around. I got to talking to a group of old Indian men for about an hour one day in the grounds comparing the differences between the UK and India. They were very concerned for my moral well-being because my parents were divorced. Divorce was pretty much non-existent here and they were very concerned about the whole thing, struggling to understand how in many cases it can actually be an event that makes people happier. They didn’t look to happy when I suggested that if it was not so taboo in India then maybe so many women would not have to suffer in silence whilst being systematically abused by the husbands or stuck in a loveless marriage that was arranged by their parents.

Because Bodhgaya is so important to Buddhists, generally every country which has a large Buddhist population has built a temple here. What makes this more interesting is that each country has built their temple in the style of their home country. So the Thai Temple has a multi layered and angled roof allowing the sun to shine of the golden edges, the Japanese temple is more colourful than an episode of the tellytubbies and the Burmese temple is fairly understated, at least from the outside. I spent an hour at the Japanese complex in a beginners meditation class. Not that I thought it would be but I can now say for certain that I don’t think meditation is for me. I could barely stand up after an hour with my legs crossed and trying to to let your mind wander just makes it wander even more. But it was an interesting experience none the less. The only problem with Bodhgaya is that it was over 42C everyday and the power kept going out…hence the fans in all the buildings did the same, not a comfortable place in which to try and get some sleep.

From Bodhgaya I went to Varanasi, one of the worlds oldest cities (previously known as Benares). Mark Twain once wrote that “Benares is older than history, older than tradition, older even than legend, and looks twice as old as all of them put together.” I can fully recommend a day or two there because I honestly don’t think that there can be another city like it anywhere in the world. It is a city where the inhabitants and Indian people that travel from all over the country to visit go about their business in a whirlwind of colour and noise. Varanasi is considered a good place to die as bathing in the Ganges is supposed to wash away sin and dying here supposedly it ends the cycle transmigration. The river is lined with over 100 Ghats, most of which are used for bathing or washing with a couple used as burning ghats. There is nothing to prepare for the the shock that goes through you when you walk the through the thick acrid smoke at Manikarnika Ghat and realise that it is a result of a cremation ceremony at the side of the river. As you carry on walking that chances are that would will walk past a group of people carrying a dead body covered in a sheet and chanting in preparation for the burning. The old city itself is just a gigantic maze. Honestly I have never been anywhere where you lose your sense of direction so quickly, arriving at night with no idea how to navigate through the old lanes is a fun experience. I ended up paying a couple of kids 10rps to take me to my hotel as otherwise I would have ended up sleeping at the side of the river, money well spent in my opinion.

Got up at 5am one morning for the sunrise and to watch the hive of activity at the ghats from a boat on the river. That was amazing, definitely something I can say that everyone should do. Watching people go through their daily rituals and or cleaning process in full public view is something that even after 3 months still gets to me over here. You feel like a bit of a perv sometimes! Alas in my sleep deprived state I managed to forget my camera so I don’t have any pictures which is a shame.

Varanasi although a great place to visit is not somewhere that you want to linger, the heat, hassle factor and general lack of things to do after the first full day all encourage to scarper fairly quickly and that is exactly what I did. Feeling the heat a bit I decided to head back up north to Dharmasala via Amritsar (the site of the Sikh Golden Temple. Caught a flight from Varanasi to Delhi (lots of points for Jet Airways….a full meal with real cutlery!) and then was then supposed to get a connecting flight to Amritsar a couple of hours later. That did not happen. First they said we had a delay of a couple of hours because there was a problem with the plane, then they said that if the plane could not be used then there was a flight coming in from Bangalore a 10pm that would have enough flying time left to take us to Amritsar. Sure enough come 9.45pm we were told our flight was cancelled and there was no other plane available. Met up a couple of British guys and after much hoo-hah managed to cancel that ticket and get a flight for the 5.45am the next day. Turned out that the guy lived in Leicester and went to Loughborough Grammer of all places, so that provided a bit of banter for a couple of hours.

I don’t know about you but when a new airport has just been built (Delhi is being completely overhauled, to the extent that the indoor bench I slept on last time is now 10m outside the front door) but I expect them to own their furniture. This is obviously not the case though. Around 3am when eventually i drifted off to sleep I got woken up by a guy who said that the bench I was sleeping on (I know a soft leather c\sofa with no arms was too good to be true) had been recalled by the rental company and had to be removed. So at 3am they went about waking up everybody and removing about 10 benches from the airport loading them up into a van outside. I think that they were just robbing the airport but there you go.

Eventually got to Amritsar and found a place that had rooftop views over the temple complex. The city loosely the Sikh equivalent of Mecca or Jerusalem so it had a real air of spirituality about it. The great thing about Sikhism is that it is an inclusive religion. Every temple has a communal kitchen that caters for the people and everyone regardless of wealth or class sits together on the floor to eat……a real difference to the caste based system that can be so prevalent elsewhere in India. The main part of the temple itself is set in the middle of a big pool and covered in around 750kg of pure gold, spectacular when the sun is shining on it. Met up with an elderly Sikh guy with a cycle rickshaw one night and got him to take me around the city the next day. Really nice guy, his grandfather was a Punjab soldier in the British army as it turned out, he turned out to be a mine of useful information. No where less than at the Martyer temple which he showed me round and explained the various different parts, including why I was meant to crawl on my hands and knees through a 2ft high tunnel!

Caught a bus from Amritsar and arrived in Dharmasala yesterday evening after 7 hours. Caught a jeep up to Mcloid Ganj (where HH Dalai Lama) usually resides. Think I am going to try and find some volunteer work here and maybe stay for around a month, haven’t looked into it yet but it shouldn’t be too difficult. Not been here long enough to write about the place yet but will do so shortly!

That in a rather large nutshell is what I’ve been up to. Will report back soon and will get some pictures up as soon as I can.

Update Shortly

Sorry there hasn’t been much news recently.  In a nutshell I went from Darjeeling>Bodagaya (via kolkata)>varanasi>amritsar (via delhi).  I had a flight cancelled and haven’t slept in around 36 hours so not really in the mood to be writing, but I will get something up shortly.

Love to all xx

Cooling Off in Darjeeling….Nay Freezing in Darjeeling

I left Kolkata on the 6^th to head up to Darjeeling. Not before time either, the humidity in Kolkata was becoming a bit of an issue, as was my rate ‘expensive’ accommodation. Had a quick look around the Victoria Memorial before I left, all very impressive. I am getting slightly sick of seeing all these gorgeous monuments, statues and buildings that after a bit of examination turn out to be dedicated to a dead British queen, or in rare cases king. There isn’t much that can be done about it now and generally I am dead against the rededicating of buildings to suit a new purpose or because they remind people of certain historical events, it just seems a shame that many of India’s best buildings and attractions were built to commemorate the death/visit/sneeze of someone who either never set foot on the shores of the country or stayed only for a short time.

The train to New Jalpaiguri was uneventful apart from waking up 2 hours earlier than I needed to (6 instead of 8am) and not being able to get back to sleep thanks to the unfortunate snoring of quite an attractive Indian girl. Took a cycle-rickshaw from NJP station into Siliguri where I found a jeep that was heading up to Darjeeling. I could have taken the famous toy-train, but that takes nearly 9 hours so that was out, I could also have taken the bus but that took 4 hours and the buses are not what would pass for road worth in the UK (the ‘mountain pass’ to Darjeeling would not be a good time for the brakes to fail’, so I took a share jeep much more comfortable, or so you would think. In something about the size of a Land Rover (some Tata 4×4, who incidentally now own Jaguar) we managed to get 13 people in, at the start. Not as bad as it sounds really and at least we were all inside rather than riding on the roof!

The journey wasn’t exactly smooth however. If you can imagine your average alpine pass in France, Italy or Austria and then cut the road width in half, take away half the tarmac so that there are holes in the road the size of Mason Crater (look it up) then you would be just about there. Oh and there happened to be a large political rally going on in Siliguri which attracted pretty much everyone from up in the valley who were obviously all coming in the opposite direction, it didn’t make for the quickest of journeys. Some of the trucks and jeeps that were coming the other way were brilliant, looking like old British Leyland trucks, people were crammed inside, on the roof, on the flatbed and pretty much anywhere they could hold on to. Flags were being waved, music played and much chanting by the occupants meant that having to wait at various switch-back bends for half an hour or so while they all passed was not all that bad. Alas that was not the end. Bearing in mind that I was the only white person in the truck, only an issue because everyone else spoke Bengali and not very good English, when the driver kept arguing with my fellow passengers about something and stopping the truck every now and then to shout even more, I wasn’t in the best position to be able to understand what was going on. Through a bit of guess work and basic conversation with one guy, the problem seemed to be a combination of the following; the driver did not want to go on because of all the traffic coming the other way, he to meet some friends/wife, or wanted to go to the rally. We stopped at a village about half way to Darjeeling (40km from Siliguri) where upon 2 more jeeps stopped behind us and then drove on and our driver got into a big argument with the traffic police, who are everywhere in India by the way. Eventually after cramming in the policeman and another 3 people jumping on the roof (a total of 17 people now) we moved on, getting to Darjeeling about 2 hours later than we should have done. Just to rub it all in a bit more, it seemed every single person apart from the tourists had left Darjeeling to go to the meeting, so everything apart from 1 crappy restaurant was closed for the day, not so good when you haven’t eaten in 20 hours. All good fun though.

Darjeeling is not what you may expect, certainly not what I expected. Built on a steep hill, it is a maze of interconnecting roads (funny that) and steps that can tire you out quite quickly, it’s also a lot bigger than I thought it would be. There is a large Nepali and Tibetan population (which I did expect) which makes for a town that is completely different to anywhere I have been so far. For one it is bloody cold. About 16C when I got here at 1.30pm, coming from 40C and high humidity in Kolkata it has been a bit of a shock. Last night I slept in trousers, a t-shirt, jumper and heaven help me my socks, and was still colder than Hilary Clinton’s personality (bada bum tsssh). Doesn’t help that I have gone uber budget here, staying in a 100rps a night room with no shower or from what I can tell running water and hot water available for 1 hour in the morning heated from a gas stove.

Once again thanks to the timing of my trip to India possibly the best thing about Darjeeling is out of my reach, the views. The cloud cover in the valley is nigh on impenetrable for most of the day, completely covering the valley on both sides. When the sun does come through however, as it did today for a couple of hours, it really is stunning. Rolling, undulating hills covered in tea plantations with small villages nestled in amongst them as far as you can see. If you look close enough then you can just about make out the Himalaya in the distance. Depending on what people say, I’m going to try and get up to Tiger Hill, a viewpoint 11km above Ghoom from where you can see the sunrise over the mountains……4am wake up though!

It would clearly be a crime of enormous proportions not to come to Darjeeling and get involved in that quintessentially English (and Indian) drink, I am talking about tea of course. Having had numerous cups of varying brews I can confirm that they are all different, albeit in a subtle way sometimes. I am heading down to one of the tea estates tomorrow to check out the factory and the fields, I will report back on what I find….probably nothing more than a bunch of tea leaves – but there you are.

Today I rode on the Darjeeling Toy Train, a world heritage site don’t you know. Winding its way up and down the mountain, it was apparently originally built to exploit the price difference of potatoes in Darjeeling and Siliguri…..bit of an extravagant way to make a profit but there you go! Anyway it is still in full working order and powered by some of the same engines as it was 60/80 years ago…i forget. In reality that means a painfully slow journey along narrow gauge tracks with steam/smoke billowing from the coal fired engine. Quite an experience though and definitely a feat of engineering. The slow pace is not actually that bad, it allows you to appreciate the views around you – the cloud cover was not too bad this morning. The valley really is stunning, would be amazing to see it in clear blue skies and the shining sun. Having say that, as I was walking down to the internet place the sun was breaking through the clouds on the horizon creating shadows of the various different crests of the hills/mountains, really beautiful. So I guess that no matter what time of year you go somewhere, there is always a positive.  The picture on the left below shows just how small the train is compared with a london carriage back in the day.

Today I have drank about 9 cups of tea, half of them lemon. I may be in danger of becoming something of an addict. Not sure the priory treats people for tea addiction however.

More in a couple of days, or even tomorrow if you are lucky and the weather keeps me indoors for most of the day.

xx

Pushkar, Corbettt NP, Kolkata

I can’t really remember where I left off last time….and more to the point the internet here is too slow to persuade me to make the effort to check, so I will ramble on from what I think is a suitable point.

Kate messing up her flights gave us an extra few days to fill but as we had already visited the ‘major’, there are obviously countless other places to visit, cities of Rajesthan a bit of creative thought was required.  The constant heat (and Kate’s fear of camels) meant there was no point going to Jaisalmer so we instead headed towards Pushkar.  For those that don’t know, and I’ll assume that is most of you, Pushkar is one of India’s holiest sites.  It is said that the city rose up from the ground after Brahma dropped a lotus flower to the earth.  Consequently it has one of the few, if not the only, Brahma temple in the world and close to 500 smaller temples dotted around the city.  Stayed in a fantastic guesthouse that had an interior courtyard surrounded by plants and fountains, the food was top-notch as well.  Pushkar was a great little place to spend a few days in.  Much quieter and laid back than many other places…..apart from when you go down to one of the ghats and get hassled by a fake priest for a blessing and ‘pushkar passport’ (piece of string around your wrist for which they demand an extortionate sum).  But the temples and general atmosphere are great.

From Pushkar we went back to delhi for 15 hours and caught another train up to Ramangar, home of the Corbett National Park.  Had a couple of nights at Tiger-Camp during which the following things happened:

a) We went on a jeep safari to find a tiger.  No sign of said tiger except tracks until we heard a bunch of deer shouting out warning calls to each other.  After sitting still in the blazing hot sun for half an hour and hearing the tiger crawl through the long grass to change position it was clear he wasn’t coming out.

b) Stood next to an elephant whilst she was being washed and scrubbed by her handlers in the river.  I won’t go into details about this as I had a few problems with it.  But watching her play around in the water for the half hour or so before the handlers started scrubbing her was really cool.

c)Missed an elephant safari because Kate was ill….no hard feelings darling.  I’m going to do it in a couple of weeks anyway.

d)Ate some pretty shocking food which seemed to make a number of people ill (inc kate).

From Ramangar it was another train journey back to Delhi for a night before Kate flew home and I caught a flight down to Kolkata. The couple of weeks with Kate were fantastic, was really nice to have some constant company for a while, and of course seeing kate after 3 months was pretty good to!  Right, now I don’t feel as if I have to explain every move over the last couple of weeks!  Having only written once since kate arrived, trying to catch up on it all is not fun.  But now for the more relaxed and interesting person that you all know and love…….potentially.

Kolkata has really suprised me, in many different ways.  It is green for a start….really green.  Trees grow alongside the roads, the ‘Maiden’ is a 3km long park in the middle of the city and as you fly in, you actually find yourself looking to find the city, rather than somewhere like delhi where the ground just turns from brown to, well a different shade of brown with buildings.  I haven’t got about the city as much as I wanted to, felt a bit lethargic the first 2 days and the humidty down here is just unbelievable, but certainly the parts I have been to have been quite nice.  Yes, the buildings are often crumbling, yes the side of the road is often covered with rudimentry shacks and yes if you look underneath the skin of the city there is quite clearly a huge amount of poverty, but there is also a bustling metropolis that is throughly modern, a population that is obviously proud of their city and a centre of learning.

Looking back into the history, you could argue that no other Indian city benefitted from British ruleas much as Kolkata (or Calcutta back then) did.  It is also quite though that no other city suffered more as a result of the empire.  The floods of refugees that came into Kolkata after partition and during the India-Pakistan war choked the city and were a major part of the reason why Kolkata gained such a reputation (justifiably) for poverty. 

Anyway, I went round the Indian museum which was dusty old and just rammed with exhibits.  Admitadly most of them were rocks or tiny tiny tiny fossils, oh and numerous human embroys at various stages of development in a jar of formeldahyde (gag), so it wasn’t the most informative of museums.  The Victoria Monument (yes, yet another Indian building dedicated to a deceased British monarch) was stunning and had a great history of Kolkata inside of it.  Other than that and general wanderings, I haven’t done a lot.  Oh I found an Italian restaurant that served risotto…it was gooooood!

Off to Darjeeling in a couple of hours on the sleeper train.  Annoyingly the train doesn’t go to DJ it goes to a town nearby, where for the last 80km you can take the narrow guage toy train (9 hours) or get a jeep (2 hours), I think I know which one I will be taking.

See you in Darjeeling….hopefully where the weather will be cooler and I get a bit of luck with the views…..which at this time of year the chances of are nigh on zero.

One Elderly Indian Man + One Pair of Scissors/Clippers = 1 Very Bad Haircut

Hello again all,

Two posts in 2 days aren’t you the lucky ones, I know that I’m certainly not! From the title of the post, you can probably judge what this is going to be about! I went to go and get my hair cut yesterday and there was, shall we say, a small mistranslation between the barber and myself. Mr barber took it on himself not to put the guard on the clippers and cut a section of my hair so short that if I had let him carry on would have made me look like, depending on your preference, A) A leukemia patient or B) A prisoner in a concentration camp. As such I decided not to let him carry on and after much shouting and apologies from Mr ‘I don’t know how the hell to cut hair’, he cut around it attempting not to make it look so bad. Sorry to tell you Mr Barber but you absolutely did not succeed.

You think that is the end of it? Oh no, not happy with making me look like a prat, he decided to make me look like a complete and utter retard. Taking it upon himself to trim the small hairs on the back of my head and around my ears (finally realising what his job title was), he proceeded to shave a curve around the top of each of my ears and at the top of my neck. What’s the problem I hear you say? Well when underneath said hair is skin the color of an albino polar bear then the effect is something that, well the effect is shit.

In other words I have been used and abused by the barber so that my hair with a little more work on it could have looked like something from the topiary competition at the Chelsea Flower Show. There are, of course some pictures for your amusement below.

Ciao xx

Delhi, Agra, Jaipur, Udaipur, Jodhpur and Kate!

Hello all!

Plenty has happened since my last post, not sure I am going to be able to get it all in. But i will try and write this the best I can whenever I have time over the next few days. (So far I’ve been trying to do this for about 7 days….)

So Delhi turned out to be much crazier than Mumbai. Pahar Ganj was a heady mixture of sweat, sewage and spices, definitely not a place where you could expect to get any time to yourself! Having said all of that I had no problems at all with anyone, apart from the rickshaw drivers who kept trying to run me over but hey you can’t expect everything right? Did a few monumenty and museumey type things for a couple of days while I adjusted to the pace a little bit and gaged what the city was about.

Kate arrived on the 15th, despite telling me that she would be here on the 14th, so I checked into the hotel that I’d booked, slightly better in class than the 400rps a night place that I was staying in before…..it had a shower! Was actually quite nice to have a real bed with sheets and air con! Picked her up at the airport the next day which all went according to plan. I did think she might have died of shock on the drive back from the airport, traffic in Delhi is not something that you want to mess about with, lord knows how no one hits each other but so far that is exactly what they manage to do There were a few sharp intakes of breath from Kate throughout the journey though.

The first day in Delhi with Kate (well the only day as she turned up a day ‘late) was spent visiting the Ghandi Smitri, place where Ghandi was assassinated. It was as you can probably imagine quite poignant and peaceful. The rooms where he spent his last 100 days were displayed as well as his glasses and sandels, all that kind of thing. There was however, the strangest exhibition upstairs. If you can imagine then it was like the Tate Modern Meets Ghandi. Loads of strange interactive displays and exhibits that quite frankly made me leave after about 10 minutes. After retreating to the air-conditioned oasis that was TGI Fridays….what’s that, curry in India? I’ve never heard such a preposterous idea….we had an early night as there was a 6.15am train the next day to Agra.

We made it to Agra with no problems, except almost being conned into having our ticket ‘checked’ as it was an e-ticket. Not being on the top of my game at that time of the morning (no time for coffee), the guy who had been standing next to the security guards got us as far as the road outside and the various dodgy travel agents before I realised what was going on, but common sense managed to strike me and we went back to the station. Agra, as I am sure you all well know is the home of the Taj Mahal. What it is not home to however is a clean, unpolluted, nice smelling atmosphere. My god the place stinks. Garbage all around the streets, semi-open sewers, cow shit everywhere and the like. Ok, so we were not staying in the nicest part, budget and all that, but even so. The hotel anyway was ok, although it was about 40C and we had no air-con, the room was essentially a hot box, not something that made adjusting to the heat any easier for Kate. It did have stunning views of the Taj from the rooftop though, the best in town so I had heard. Amazing to see the sun go down and the color of the building change, eventually becoming a dark silhouette on the star lit sky. The first day was spent visiting Akbar’s Mausoleum and Agra Fort, both very cool in their own way. Some of the structures that are in this country acting as tombs or symbols of love are just insane when you see them in the flesh, so bloody big! Oh and we popped into the Oberoi hotel for a drink and lunch, I don’t think that opulent is quite the word I am looking for! Stupidly expensive lunch by Indian standards for what was very average food, the way they drowned the salad in dressing reminded me of LS6 in Leeds. The below picture is the view we had from the roof of the hotel:

The next day we got up to get to the Taj for 6am, the quietest and coolest part of the day, it was at least 40C in Agra. Despite appearences in photos and what not it really does seem quite ‘small’ in real life (the water in front especially), small but absolutely perfectly formed. It is truly stunning and set in some lovely grounds. Oh I forgot to mention that Kate was ill the day we went, a bit of a reaction to the heat, tiredness and food I think and she managed to be sick ON THE Taj….ok, not quite on the Taj, just outside of it, but still I think I should be allowed a bit of creative license here and there!

We decided that there was no point in staying in Agra for the extra night we had booked, especially in the sauna like room, so we hopped on a bus to Jaipur. Very grateful to Ramu at the bus stop who was a world of knowledge about decent places to stay and about cities in general. He sorted out a hotel for us as our original booking didn’t start until the day after and the place was lovely. Having Kate around is actually working out quite well, all these ‘luxury’ establishments that we are staying in! Well at least they have a shower.

Jaipur is a great place, we were staying just outside the centre, so away from the main hustle and bustle but only a short auto-rickshaw ride away. Beautiful sand stone havelis within the old town and the atmosphere of one big market place. The palace in the city was suitably opulent but perhaps the best thing and certainly the most revealing was the huge outdoor observatory dating from the late 1700s. Massive architectural instruments of astronomy were used to calculate the position of the heavenly bodies, it also boasts what is considered to be the worlds largest sundial that when read accurately, can be used to tell the time to an accuracy of about 2 seconds in local time. Many of the instruments have naturally been refurbished, a process that is still going on. The monkey temple, dedicated to the sun god afforded fantastic views over the city and an interesting walk up thanks to the hundreds of monkeys that were knocking around. All very friendly…except when they realised that you are carrying a bag of peanuts in your pocket and they decide that they would like said peanuts! We also visited the Amber Palace/Fort just outside of the city. An amazing building which for once had an equally good audio tour to explain it all for you. The style in which the rulers of the various parts of India used to live is quality, it makes an old English country house look like something out of Shameless. The use of gold, mirror, jewels, fabric and the like just seem to come together somehow. There was one room covered with thousands of tiny mirrors, that, when dark can be entirely lit by a single candle and the resulting reflections from the mirrors. The driver we had hired for 2 days usually works for businessmen coming over to Jaipur to buy jewels and what not (Jaipur is the centre of the jewel trade in India). He took us to a shop that allowed us to see where they actually cut and polish the rough stones from which the final article is then made, very interesting. It was good dose of reality however when we realised one of the workers must have been no more than 11 years old and was on a shift rotation, the small workshop was running 24 hours a day.

I’m wary of babbling and trying to cram in too much detail, but hopefully this is working out as some kind of outline from which you can imagine what we have been doing!

Oh before we leave Jaipur, we visited potentially the most amazing jewelery shop I have ever seen. No windows, just a security guard and a big door. Once the code had been entered to get in, all the lights came on and all you could see were masses of glittering stones and pieces of gold and silver. Much of the jewelerry of obviously based on Indian taste, much to big and heavy to wear in the UK but some of the detail just blew you away. Not to mention the size of the rubys, emeralds and diamonds that were on display! I quickly removed Kate from the shop and set upon the slightly less exilerating task of finding a shop that would sell me some decent boxer shorts.

Then we come a slight mistake. Somewhere, personally I blame it on Kate, I had managed to gain a day, i.e. I thought it was the 19th when actually it was the 20th. Now that would not usually be much of a problem except for the fact that I had booked first class overnight tickets on the train from Jaipur to Udaipur for the 19th and had reservations at a 4 bedroom colonial house in the countryside for the 20th and 21st. About 6pm I checked my email and found one from the guys who ran the house asking me why I hadn’t arrived at the train station as their driver had been waiting for 3 hours earlier in the day. Naturally this was all a bit of a shock and upon checking the dates and the train tickets I realised that I had made a slight boo boo. Cutting a long and painfully frustrating process short, I had to cut my losses and buy some rather expensive plane tickets to Udaipur for the next day and hope that the people at Devra would be kind enough to allow us to move the reservation back a day. That they were, with no extra charge and the place was amazing. Again, I won’t bore you with the details (or more of them), but the hosue was brilliant. Placed on a hill overlooking the lake and the lake palace in the distance, the rooms were massive, food great and the whole place had a feeling of calm. It helped that we were the only people there and had the best room as well! Being in somewhere so nice, not to mention someones house, did not stop Kate from putting her foot through one of the wooden sun beds and breaking one of the slights clean in half though….can’t take that girl anywhere.

Udaipur is definitely my favourite place so far in India, maybe favourite is not quite the word as it is much calmer, quieter and less polluted than many places but it really is beautiful. The City Palace is stunning inside and would be even if it wasn’t for the crystal gallery. This gallery contained such items as a crystal bed, crystal tables, crystal chairs, crystal pipes, crystal plates and well, more crystal. It was ordered from England many years ago by one of the rulers, unfortunately he died (at 25) before any of it arrived and it laid packed up in boxes for tens of years before being unpacked and displayed here. The largest collection in the world apparently and you can understand the claim.

The Lake Palace, now a luxury hotel that costs about $600 a night in a room that doesn’t even have a lake view (quite an achievement for a hotel that is situated IN a lake), is suitably pretty. We didn’t get a chance to go over, the only way is either to book for dinner (about 40 quid a head for a buffet) or to have a room, neither of which were within our limited financial reach. We did manage to see the 1934 Rolls Royce that was used in the Bond film Octopussy though, much of the filming was done in Udaipur, so that was quite cool.

From Udaipur we flew to Jodpur and the contrast could not have been more stark. Streets so narrow that some Americans could probably not walk down them, crammed with cows, scooters, auto-rickshaws and market stalls. Not to mention garbage of every type and some very pleasant open sewers. There really is not much to tell about our couple of nights there. We went to see Merengagh (spelling?) fort before we left which was great, but apart from that we spent all our time trying to figure out where to go next as I haven’t really sorted anything out. As such we ended up in Pushkar today, backtracking a bit but a destination in its own right. I will explain all aboyut Pushkar next time as my fingers are hurting and I need to go and check if Kate is awake for dinner yet!

Sorry about the length of time between this and my last post but I’ve been rather busy! I will try better in the following days and weeks.

If you had made it this far, first of all congratulations and second of all you will be pleased to know there are now about 100-150 photos of India now up on Flickr. I haven’t labelled them yet, but they are there! Mumbai, Delhi, Agra, Jaipur, Jodpur and Udaipur all present and correct.

Ciao xx

Mumbai and Onwards to Delhi

Hello all,

So I’m in Delhi now, but I guess I should recount a few things that happened in Mumbai.  To be honest there isn’t an awful lot to tell.  I spent a lot of time just walking around and exploring, observing things I guess, rather than actually going to any particular sights.  I managed to get into the Prince of Wales Museum eventually, not that is was completely worth it.  Some fantastic temple rock carvings and incredibly detailed orante ivory tusks but apart from that it wasn’t the most interesting of places.  There are only so many daggers/knives/tea pots that you can look at in one sitting!

I went over to Elephanta Island for a couple of hours, 9km off the cost of Mumbai.  How long do you think that should take by boat?  15/20 minutes maybe?  Nope, an hour!  I don’t think I have ever been on a slower boat, and it wasn’t exactly small either.  You could run 9km in less time than it took us to get there.  Elephanta is basically a series of cave temples, not very big, built into the basalt rock of a relatively small island.  Rather than lots of detailed carvings, most of the sculptures were big representations of Shiva and the like.  Many of the caves didn’t actually have anything in them though, in fact it was really only the first cave with the large Shiva that was worth the trek to see, but you don’t know these things until you get there I suppose!  Got my first taste of the higher prices that foreigners pay out here as well, 20 rps for Indian nationals and 250rps for everyone else, the cheek!

Had a good couple of nights with a couple of English guys, some Dutch girls and some guys from Holland.  When you get a big group of people like that, you could be in a bar anywhere in the world, makes a nice ‘escape’ actually from the dusty, polluted world outside!

I left Mumbai to go to Delhi on Friday morning.  Got to the airport alright and then managed to miss my flight thanks to them not changing the status on the departures board to anything that resembled an indication that the flight was about to leave.  Oh and when I did realise, with a fair bit of time remaining until the flight left, security held me up for about 25 minutes trying to find something that didn’t exist in my bag.  They x-rayed my books individually for christs sake!  Who x-rays a book?!  Impossible to argue with them though, security in Indian aiports is crazy.  Even with the representative from the airline there they wouldn’t budge.   So I missed the flight.  Managed to get another one for a couple of hours later (for 65 quid, grrrrr) and got into Delhi yesterday afternoon.

I’m staying in the Paharganj area of the city, not far from the centre.  What a difference to Mumbai!  Crowded, noisy, dirty, numerous cows and other animals just wandering the streets and a plethora of very cheap rooms!  If you want to then you can go as low as about 120-150rps a night (1.50-2 pounds), it is however pretty basic!  I couldn’t find the place I was meant to be staying so just walked into a random place of the street, but pretty decent.  350rps a night, but it is clean(ish) and has a decent rooftop restaurant.

Haven’t gone around too much yet, just about to head down to Connaught Place to explore for a bit and try and find the hotel that Kate and I are staying in from Monday.

Health wise, I’m alright.  Getting used to the constant fumes, pollution, dush and other assorted smells (there are many) takes a while, I’m still not there yet.  A couple of dodgy days that I can’t decide whether they were due to the food I ate (veg lasagne last night…pretty good) or the local beer, only Kingfisher but it has all kinds of assorted additives and chemicals in it over here apparently.  I will carry on experimenting and try to isolate the cause….on second thoughts I might just go to the chemist and stock up on Loperamide!

I still haven’t found anywhere that has computers modern enough to allow me to upload my photos, I’ll keep trying but I’m not as hopeful as I once was!  Will try and find a mall or something.

Hope everyone is well, oh my new indian number is up but it is being a bit dodgy so I am alternating between that and my english number for now until I get it sorted.

Ciao

xx