Lesson 1 : You're never Alone in India (aka the Ultimate Free Market Economy)
If it could be said that I lost my heart in Africa then it must be said that I found my soul in India. Now I know at least one of my friends will be puking into their screen on reading that sentence, disgusted that I've returned from India "spouting all that spiritual shite" (Right Jan?) but hold on to your lunch while I explain myself...
If evil was a tangible thing you could reach out and grasp I could have sworn I felt it in the few days before I left for Bombay. It took me 3 weeks to realise that I was mistaken and that what I had been feeling was pure, blind, fear. My travels in Asia and particularly India, being first on the list, out me face to face with the one great fear I didn't even know I had: that of being by myself. For the first time in my life I was utterly and irreconcilably alone. So strong was the bond with home that I didn't even realise I'd left for those first 3 months in Africa. Of course you always meet other travellers but essentially you're on your own. It took a while to get used to and I'd still prefer to have a constant companion but I know I can go it alone now and that's a very empowering thing. It is perhaps a rather hilarious irony that I learned how to be alone and even to enjoy it in the world's most populous country.
But what of India? God there are so many things to say, one word that immediately comes to mind is unique; India is a thoroughly unique place. I started off being scared of it, then being able to manage it, then hating it and finally beginning to appreciate and like the place. Its too huge to quantify especially when I only saw a tiny fraction but the overall impression is of a place about to collapse under its own weight, somewhere hanging in there - just about. The crowds are the hardest thing to get used to, I mean the place is teeming. It struck me when I got to Nepal, itself not exactly empty, that it had been some time since I'd been on a street where there was room to swing a kitten.
While trying to write this retrospective I realise the futility of attempting to make generalisations on India. Its like trying to look at an elephant through a mouse hole, no matter how hard you try to its just to big and you can only see a little piece at a time. I remember things like the many Indians I saw wearing T-shirts proclaiming "A billion is enough". Or how someone once told me the reason that Hindi music is blasted at just below ear splitting volume on buses is that it helps folks sleep. Or the time this beggar approached my cab at the traffic lights in Bombay in those early days. He had a hideously disfigured hand and what I was thinking at the time was "Nice deformity, if I give you 5 rupees will you stop showing it to me?". Or the kid with elephantiasis begging his way through the trains; or the woman half of whose face was unbelievably stretched and hanging almost to her navel like a trunk - a sight so gruesome it surly could only have been created by a Hollywood horror artist, couldn't it?
Other random images include the cow in Pushkar with an extra leg growing out of its hump and the chai seller there with unfeasibly large eyeballs and a computer like voice. Not to mention the sight of people performing their daily ablutions in the muddy water which collected in the cracks of the pavement concrete of Calcutta - or more disturbingly cleaning their teeth in it. The sheer weirdness of these sights has impressed them upon my memory but I must not neglect the wonderful by concentrating solely on the distressing sights there are in India. From the cast expanse of the Bombay skyline as the sun sets, to the vivid colour to the Rajastani people against their monochrome desert backdrop, the intricate sandstone balconies of Jaisalmer to the sparkling saris of the woman in the paddy fields of the south, there is beauty in abundance.
It occurs to me that what I miss most about India are the very things that sometimes drove me mental while I was there; the crowds, the sales mantras of the hawkers on the trains…the marvellous awfulness of it all. And the Indians themselves? Well you just have to admire their resourcefulness. In PaharGanj I saw a guy flogging nice maps of India to tourists - maps which are available free at any government tourist office. Or the taxi guy in Bombay who tried to charge us over 4 times the correct fare when he saw we were getting out at the most expensive hotel in town. We made him produce the fare chart and the look on his face was pure classic. A scolding smile on my part had a produced mischievous but totally crooked "fair cop" glint in his eye. Can't blame a guy for trying I guess and there was no hard feelings on either side. No one can fail to notice how very hard people have to work for so very little. India is truly the ultimate free market economy as no matter how skilled you are there are at least a million others who can do the same job. And when you get to meet real Indians (as opposed to traders who are invariably trying to rip you off) they are intensely curious about and protective of their foreign visitors. They seem to have a real hunger for information on other countries and for the opinions of outsiders. One quite disconcerting aspect of the people, especially traders and big city dwellers, is how scarily good they are at reading other people, particularly hapless western tourists. One hell of a sales tool!
Travelling in India can be a harrowing as its rewarding - or vice versa I'm not sure which is more appropriate. Certainly I found myself many times giving thanks to whatever or whoever was watching over me and had delivered me to my destination intact mentally and whole every bit as much as physically. It remains only for me to share a few helpful cultural tips for prospective travellers.
Traffic and Transport:
Vehicles with loud horns have right of way - road signs are not a higher authority in this matter.
The bus stop is wherever the bus stops.
The number of people holding tickets in a 2nd class compartment is 8. The number of people sitting there is, on average, 28.
There is always room for one more regardless of crowds, especially if they are carrying large bags of smelly fish.
Hygiene:
The toilet is anywhere (if you're a guy) and almost anywhere (if you're a woman)
Rubbish bins are everywhere in India but known by a different name in the west viz "the ground"
On a final note it mustbe said that India is insidiously infectious, you think you hate the place and before you know it you'll be singing along with the Hindi movie favorites and wiggling your head on replies!
Aoife, Kuala Gandah, Pahang, Malaysia, 16th December 1999 Taping Std Time
So the plan to leave Mamallapuram that week fell through. I went all the way
to Madras to get a ticket on the Tuesday and as I was walking on the beach at
sundown the following day a thought struck me: it was lovely here and I didn't
want to leave. So I spent the next 2 hrs talking, thinking, plotting and
consulting guide books to scheme on a way to stay in Mamallapuram. When I
thought about it some more I figured out that as well as not wanting to leave
the place , I reall had no will to make the 3,00kms journey to Kathmandu
overland. I decided no matter what i'd fly from Calcutta to kathmandu. I
decided to go to town on the thursday to cancel my ticket for that evening and
buy a plane tickets. I nearly bounced into the restaurant once I'd made the
decidion to sta I was that happy about it. I reckoned the following wednesday
was the absolute drop dead date for leaving to go to Calcutta as I'd got a
flight for the saturday and the train would take 30hrs.
I'm no the first nor will I be the last person to be caught by Mamallapuram's
not insignificant charms. Sarah, another traveller from England had come for a
weekend and stayed 7 weeks. There's a homely feel about the place. I don't
know quite how to explain how a person can feel so exquistly happy doing
absolutly nothing but it happens Mamallapuram. Practically the only people who
can resist the urge to stay long are those near the begining of their journey
who are anxious to get up and go. Here people find what they need most rest,
relaxation, recovery, restoration and a renewal of the enthuasm needed to keep
on going. Certainly, despite the fact that I saw practically nothing of south
India the two and a half weeks I spent there were the most important of the
trip so far and vital to my enjoyment of it. I face onwards to the road ahead
with renewed vigour and healed faith in people and in India. Yes I am looking
forward to SE Asia and road beyond, yes I would come back to India, yes I
finally do like the country and no I haven't had enough time.
I have one more day left in India and thats here in Calcutta, a city I've been
for less than 5 hrs but already like. The train journey to get here was
pleasent enough , although havin had 3hrs sleep the night before I had a lot
less patience than I should have had with the Bangladeshi guy in my
compartment and his incessant conversationefforts. He was a lovely guy and
himself and the wife were travelling home following an operation to reattach
his retina. After a good nightss sleep I was much more receptive to his "In my
country..." statements and his "how is it in your country?" questions. He had
a mixed marraige, he being anglican and she being Catholic - he even worked
for the bishop!! In other news the train up the east coast took in the
recently cyclone ravaged state of Orissa. I was hoping to see some large scale
destruction but all that remained was a few toppled trees.
Anyway I got from the busy Howrah Station , across the river to the Salvation
Army with the minimum of fuss. Actually the place smelt exactly the same as
the Salvo in Bombay weird eh? I guess piety has a universal smell and for the
record its kinda musty.
Got settled and bumped into some people from England and Oz that were going to dinner. I had my first Indian meal in ages (I'd been surviving on chips and salad down south) and I couldn't believe how cheap it was.
After several hours in the city I'd seen very little of the city's infamous pollution and during the day it was much better than say Madras. As the sun went down however the smog came up and it did get quite bad. Other notes on Calcutta, there really aren't many hassles here, apart from a few beggars no one pays any attention to you which was a refreshing change from the "what country?" brigade in places like Delhi. Men here seem to be, on the whole, much taller than elsewhere in India, although the women are the same size, can anyone explain this? Also the men here seem a little more forward or at least a little more vocal. When a UFO(Unaccompanied Female Object) is spotted on the street, instead of gawping and leering like some salivating dog at a succulent steak, they actually smile and say hello. I was in two minds as to whether to respond to them, on one hand it seems inpolite not to but this is still India and it would probably lead to a situation...
This weeks new experience: Ripe Guava on the train - yummy!
This weeks weird experience: Conversations on the divine with a Millonaire Irish guy who was a monk in Sri Lanka and is now blowing an inheritance by funding a project to build a sculpture park in Wicklow. All of the works so far have been 3 tonne Ganesh statues. One in progress has Ganesh with an ullean pipe, paddy cap, claddagh ring and his trusty rat companion with a bodhran and a pint of Guiness. Abandon all hope!!
Fast forward to today: 7:30am and the city of Calcutta was telling me it was time to rise - the windows were quite thin in the Salvo. Being as I had crashed at 8:30pm after dinner the previous night I didn't mind too much. I walked and walked all day, attempts to get to the Botanical gardens to see the wrolds largest Banyan tree failed due to lack of ferry service. We (me and two ozzie chicks) did find the Marble Palace, after seeing a whole lot of the city before getting to it! Well its close to midnight now and judging by the reaction of the guy from Carlow sitting next to me, I must be the only Irish person in Calcutta not on some sort of saint mission. However I've just helped a Nigerian soccer star keep up with his correspondence by introducing him to the wonders of HoTMail.
Aoife (cyber cyaint), Calcutta, East India, Friday 26th Nov 23:45 IST
The train from Delhi takes 36 hours to cover 2,200kms to Chennai(Madras to ye colonials). This is not as grueling as you might think even if it did take 40hrs due to delays but I was well as truely ready to get off the machine by the time we got down south. The train itself was full of men, there probably wasn't enough women to make a ladies compartment so I was glad to have the company of Kristina from Vancover for the duration. She turned out to be headed for the same town and we hung around till a few days ago when she left to go to Kerala. The second day went slowly on the train and by early in the third morning you could feel the humidity and we woke up to altogether more tropical scenery.
We got to Madras round lunchtime and commenced the haggle and walk away technique always necessary to bring down the price of rickshaws. Well we got as far as the walk away when Kristina fell over on her ankle backpack and all and twisted it quite badly. We eventually got our act together and got to the bus stand for a two hour hell journey on a crowded bus in the heat and the traffic and the pollution with horns and indian music blaring. Our nerves were well and truely frazzled by the time we got to the fishing village cum tourist town that is Mamallapuram.
After getting settled we met Madras Mark while having dinner. A strange mixture, Madras Mark is half english, half irish and half swedish and comes to Mamallapuram every weekend to escape Chennai where he has lived for 4 months. Anyway he turned out to have been a nurse in a previous incarnation and volenteered to keep a watchful medical eye on Kristinas worsening ankle. The next day I left Kristina with her Joanna Trollope to rest her ankle and went off sight seeing with Mark who'd rented a motorbike. The day can only be described as totally cool. I gotta say I've become quite a bike fan here. Motorcycles Rock! Partly because of the close contact with the outdoors and the wind in your hair but mostly because its damn dangerous. Speeding over the bumpy rural roads of Tamil Nadu was one of the nicest days yet. And better still people in the villages actaully smile at you. The scenary in this part of the world is, I'm told, very similiar to Vietnam. Certainly the palm trees and paddy fields were quite unlike anything I'd seen up north.
Mark has been coming to India for 20 years and it was great to get some insights from someone who hasn't turned into one of those "been there, done that, refused to buy the t-shirt on principal, you-shoulda-been-here-10-yrs-ago" merchants that almost everyone whose been here more than twice seems to turn into. Meanwhile back at the ranch Kristinas ankle was improving but still needed to rest so we spent the next day relaxing by the pool in a swanky resort 4kms up the coast aptly named Ideal Beach. I thought I'd be fine being as I was in the pool all day but I got cremated and also suffered with a bit of heat exhausion that night. One day I'll get the hang of this sun thing...
By Wednesday I was ready to brave the city and meet Dominica who'd arrived in India late Sunday night and was anxious to get out and about. Due to various circumstances I ended up having a very stressful day in the city, running around being late for everything and everyone. The day ended better with me purchasing some ultra trendy designer specs on the cheap to replace my blue ones which have never been the same since I rolled them up with a tent in Tanzania. After Mark took me and Dominica to the movies.
The Indian Movie Experience pt 2:
Right, I'm really starting to worry that I'm developing a taste for Hindi Movies. The film this time was the year's smash hit "Taal" the usual masala movie/ill fated love story featuring the former Miss India and some block rockin' song and dance numbers.
The Plot: Rich boy meets peasent girl in mountinous ashram. They fall in love, she and father go to find hero in Bombay (I was quite chuffed that I recognised some of the scenery!) their fathers have some sort of an argy and a few slaps are exchanged and everyone is broken hearted. Before the song routine is over peasant girl has turned from mountain maiden to rauchy MTV international star and about to marry her producer. Re-enter rich boy who's still pinning for her. Just when all is lost he gets her attention by hospitalising himself when he resues the scarf she gave him from his burning palatial home. Heroines slimy producer boyfriend heroically steps aside and everyone lives happily ever after. Great Stuff! I've even bought the sound track...
It was worth viewing solely for the unintentionally hilarious seduction by coke bottle routine at the beginning featuring copious ammounts of product placement. Also Himachal Pradesh has never looked so good and not that I'm the type to be swayed by advertising but I really want to go an see some mountains now.
Next morning while I was getting the bus into town to meet Dominica I began to feel odd. I felt faint and various body parts were going numb. When I got to town I rang Dom and said I needed to collapse quickly. However few rickshaw drivers knew where she was staying so we arranged to meet in the nearby Sheraton hotel. I rather hastily paid the driver and made use of the facilities, although the sensor controlled light kept going off while I was in mid puke in the stalls. I love modern technology! Got to Dominica's mate's rather flash house and what followed was a vomitfest lasting all afternoon. It mightened have been so bad if there had been anything in my stomach! Poor Dominica - I'm sure its not really what you want to see on your first week of holidays. Well whatever it was it cleared up by the evening and the next day I got the first bus to Mamallapuram with Mark after he finished work and thats where I'm going to stay till I have to go to Calcutta later this week. Dammit it's my holiday and I'll veg if I want to!
Aoife, Mamallapuram, South India, Monday 15th November, 19:17IST
"Leavin', on a jet train....."
Well an express train anyway and boy am I delighted. I'm headed south to Tamil Nadu after a week and a half of being stuck in possibly the noisest, dirtiest, hassliest part of Delhi. Y'know the type of area the guide books probably describe as "lively" or "colourful", my choice of adjective might be "headwreaking".
We've all heard of the infamous "Delhi Belly" so ever the innovator I succombed to a bout of "Delhi Flu".
Apparently loads of people come down with it here when the weather changes. How it affects local I don't know, but it kept me in bed mostly sleeping for the better part of 5 days without any appetite or at times will to live. Ok, thats perhaps a little melodramatic but it certainly wasn't helped by my paranoia that I was being killed slowly by something horrid and tropical. So I got myself checked out and was then throughly aggrived to be feeling so rotton on something as common as the flu. The intervening days spent recovering at the Hotel California, erm I mean Hotel Navrang have got be some of the weirdest in what is rapidly becoming a twilight zone-esque trip. From conversations with reams of Kasmiri salesmen trying to sell me tickets to well Kasmir, to Japanese hippies, to two guys from Liverpool looking for a chick called Yoko, to an ex mental patient from Denmark, to a "self-aware" and sometimes self righteous priestly guy from Kildare who was on his 5th trip to India. When he told me that "India is what it is" I almost strangled him but he turned out to be an alright guy in the end. Just yesterday one of the guys at the hotel asked me to cancel my ticket and work there for a while. A japenese girl whom I'd talked to had done the same and had just left the previous day after spending two months in Dehli. I was almost tempted but for god sake I'd just spent the previous evening in a jam session with a danish guy on flute, a japanese guy on digeridoo and me on indian drum things making the kind of music that only sounds good to those playing it and those on drugs - I had to get out of there before my hair started to matt up. I can't even play indian drums. Normality, how are ya?
I went through several permutations as to what to do next while sweating the hours away in my hotel room. I came the closest yet to feeling like going home altogether, but I did what every sensible independent adult should do when they feel like crap - I called my mammy. I alomost decided to give up on India entirely, finally the fever started to fade...
"Dammit I'm going to Madras, this chick is not going to let Delhi beat her" [Cue fanfare]
The truimph lasted for about 30 seconds then [cue nausea] "Ok, ok lord I know when I'm beat...I promise never to leave europe again...I've learned my lesson...I swear"
Activities pre-virus should be mentioned. The night I arrived I met up with Sharad a local net contact. It was worth it just of the AC in the car but I got a good look around Dehli at night with all the Brit monuments lit up. It was quite amusing to see that Sharad looked even more uncomfortable and out of place than I did in PaharGanj. It must have seemed like the equivalant of someone taking a vacation in tallaght to him. This was further reinforced by the doctor that I saw who said he himself had only once been to Paharganj and that was to pick up a patient only a few months ago. Sharad would have shown me the local nightlife but I wasn't really up to it at any stage.
I did however catch a Hindi movie "Mother", thus doing my duty if the rest of the trip. I had a local dude to translate the difficult bits but it was more or less understandable. It was a comedy in the Carry-On sort of tradition but without the naughty double-entendres. Actaully I quite enjoyed it songs, dances and all. The lead actress reminded me of Audrey Hepburn and it was curious to note that every on screen looked whiter than I do.
Righto, thats enough of that sort of thing,
Aoife, New Delhi, 3rd Nov 99, 14:25IST
I should have known there'd be trouble if I was on my own for long enough....
"Excuse me miss can I ask you a question?" [oh god here we go, whats this guy trying to sell? ] "What are Skinheads?" [eh?]
And with that young Bobby and his mate Jack had got my attention on my first morning in Jaipur. In fact it was my first morning alone, having said goodbye to Jay my travelling companion of few days, in Pushkar. It turns out the boys were on their way to germany and were worried after news of a Sikh guy being mobbed and killed that week. I later learned that this sort of approach is a common ploy to win the trust of foreign tourists. I'm beginning to think that I'd better get out of India or at least out of the north and the touristy areas before I lose my faith in humanity.
Anyway we got to chatting and bobby offered to take me to a few sights in Jaipur on his bike, which he did and it was very cool. I'm now convinced that there's only one way to see India and thats on the back of a vespa. I went to see the Birla temple, built entirely of carrera mable from Italy and financed by what must be an incredibly wealthy family. After I saw the monkey temple and this was the first time that I had any inkling of the spiritual centre that is India. I was the only tourist there and the place was unbelieveably peaceful. I enjoyed watching the monkeys folicking in the pool not to mention the all to easy on the eye young saddhu swimming in the sacred pool...with the fresh smell of the water and the utter quiet of the place I got to thinking this might be the definition of innocence and paradise.
Anyway afterwards Bobby took me for some chai in his office and this is where it all gets a bit hairy. It turned out to be a jewelery shop and I'd no intenion of getting anything there as I was going to do my purchasing at a place that Jay had recommended...except it turned out the place where I was currently having tea was none other than "Vishu Gems" the shop Jay had recommened. Quite a coincedence given the number of silver shops in Jaipur. Anyway I saw a few things I liked and as soon the lads were out of earshot the main salesman says to me "I don't like those guys they are looking for commission, I'll meet you at your hotel at 8:30 tonight..pretend to be sick or something". Well naturally I didn't want to pay commission so thats exactly what I did...
What followed was a rather headwrecking evening of cloak and dagger operations and a not inconsierable ammount of amature dramatics on my part. On two seperate occasions Jack came to "see if I was alright" (mar dhea) once within minutes of being visited by Aslam, the main sales dude who'd been quite friendly with Jay and wanted to see me buying without the commision. All highly comic in retrospect but all I felt that doing at several points in the evening was getting the next bus out of the place. The deal was concluded at around midnight and I even got to see the workshop were the silver was being made. However to see 10 skinny guys working through the night in a tiny airless, smokefilled room did nothing to make me feel good about the inexpensive stuff I'd just bought. Working out the payment the next day was equally as cloak and dagger-y and took up most of the day. Suffice to say that by 5pm I'd had enough of Jaipur and got the first bus to Agra.
I'd been told a lot about how hassly Agra was and was pleasantly surprised at how chilled out it was - well the cheap area I was staying in, near the Taj itself was quite relaxed. I went to see Agra fort first and wasn't expecting my first view of the Taj from there. To my mind that was the most impressive view ie from a distance. I went to the Taj itself but I have to say the heat and the crowds and the touts detracted sigificantly from my sense of awe. Also I'd kind of expected the sun to go down behind the Taj , but it faces north/south. I appreciated it much more the next morning, when it was practically deserted by indian standards (only a couple of hundred people).
In a final note I must mention that I left Pushkar quite late in the day and about a half hour into the journey I was greeted by what must be one of the most spectacularly beautiful sights of the journey so far : the town of Ajmer just at nightfall from the hillside around. The reflections of the town on the lake and the string of lights leading off into the hills was a sight to behold indeed.
Aoife, Paharganj, New Dehli, 27th Oct 99, 16:00 IST
Udaipur was great, although I did bugger all in terms of touristy things. Mainly I just hung out at my guest house talking and whiling away the hours looking at the lake with other western tourists all trying to distract themselves from the reality that they were in India. I reckon the town must have its own microclimate as its much cooler/overcast than other places in the area. The movie Octopussy was shot here eons ago and all the restaurants there show it nightly. I must watch that someday, apperently the rickshaw driving hasn't got better.
After having been rested and suffiently recovered from the shock of arriving, I felt brave enough after 4 days to head on and chose the desert/border town of Jaisalmer. I only found out when I got there that Pakistan had undergone a militaty coup! We (I was hanging around with 3 english guys) decided to get a super extra deluxe no music no video bus for the overnight journey (there was no direct train link). As it turned out this was not the advantage you might think it was as the horn of the bus blared all night. This the first rule of the road in India: "He with the loudest horn goes first" regardless of normal traffic rules.
I'd seen a bus rearending a jeep in Bombay and found it incredible that this was the only accident - in fact I've turned quite religious everytime I go on the road these days. Perhaps this is the reason India is a spiritual center??
So we arrived in Jaisalmer rather tired and it being a desert city, rather hot. I slept most of the first day and we elected to go on a one night camel safari into the Thar Desert the next day. I walked around a bit and despite being fleeced in the market (never buy jewelary from gypsies named after Hindu deities) I very much liked the town, it was very chilled out and not hassly. The Camels here were infinitly better behaved than their Kenyan counterparts and they actually trotted as well which was cool but a little sore. Girls: A camelproof bra has not yet been invented, trust me.
We spent the night looking for shooting stars and enjoying the sky and the dung beetles (I never knew they could fly!). I woke just as the sky was beginning to get lighter and I could have sworn I heard a voice, well not quite a voice more a telepathic message. The voice told me to study operator theory. I had no idea they had such mathematically aware deserts around here. Perhaps I'll do that some day...perhaps its just the Larium...perhaps I'm just going completely bonkers...india does that to you I'm told...
After Jaisalmer I decided to give Jodhpur a miss and go straight to Pushkar. This was not as simple as it might have been. The only rail link from Jaisalmer is a night train to Jodhpur from there we'd get a bus to Pushkar. Only the army had commandered the entire train, so we got a non deluxe, VERY loud music, very crowded night bus to Jodhpur. We arrived there at 4am and there wasn't another bus in sight even though we'd been assured a connection would be easy...to cut a long journey short, two local buses and 12hrs later we arrived utterly destroyed in Pushkar. I slept most of yesterday, it seems kinda pretty round here though.
On to the "Golden Triangle" of tourism, Jaipur, Agra and Dehli after this.
Ha! Seasoned world traveller me arse! I'm more than willing to admit that India had me entirely beat for a while. I'm slowly getting used to it now and getting out of Bombay certinly helped. I had a job to decide where to go, with only myself to please and a bewildering choice of locations. Amoong places I considered going were: Goa - never before on my itenerary due to its "wussy" nature, Kerala - seemed like a lovely spot but very far away (40hrs by train) and probably humid, Gokarn in Karnataka - again good hideaway spot but reckoned I might never get north if I went there. Given that I was feeling at the time like I'd never come to India again, I decided to stick to the orginal plan of doing the quintessential tourist india Rajasthan run: Udaipur, Jodhpur, Jaisalmer, Jaipur, Ajmer and/or Pushkar, Agra and Delhi.
Attention Nerds! Attention Nerds! - O'Reilly books for sale by the truckload in Bombay 200-400 Rupees (thats under a fiver to you and me).
After Delhi I may head south in a mad dash to meet up with some people in Madras via Hyderabad possibly, or if I'm feeling lazy I'll just loll around the northern hill stations untill I feel like going to Nepal.
Bombay wasn't all bad though, through the pollution and haze the predominant smell is of incense lingering on the air, and the evening at Chowpatty beach was simply lovely. Watching the sun go down behind the skyscrapers and tucking into a delicious Bhel Puri made it all worthwhile. Also got a chance to check out the cave carvings on Elephanta island, just an hours boat ride from Bombay but a haven from the madness of the city. I should also record that for every tout and beggar trying to hassle you there are at least as many people who will go out of there way for you and will be kind and helpful, almost embarrassingly so.
I arrived here last night, and have spent today resting and getting myself organised. There's a Jain festival in the town for the next few days I reckon I'll go check that out late. Stay tuned I might just survive this yet....
The week in London came and went and I still didn't have time to catch up with myself and before I knew what was happening I found myself in Bombay. But I'm getting a head of myself...
It took me 26hrs from the door of the Sable Lodge in Harare to my aunts house in London and the jouney itself merits a little attention. I met ausie Scott and we shared a cab to the sirport where he gave me a spear he had belonging to me, which came in 3 parts, the metal bits I packed in my suitcase and carried the wooden middle myself. Having left a full bag with Bermuda Scott to carry back to london I was quite shocked to see that I was still 7kgs over the baggage allowance, due to my Malawi chair which weighed 10kgs. Luckily they checked it in and I didn't get causght for excess baggage. On the plane to Harare I got talking to the woman beside me who was Ugandan but living in Tanzania. On hearing that I had a 5 hr wait in Nairobi and no cash I couldn't prevent her from giving my 500 shillings (approx 6 quid) so I could "have something to eat and drink - 5hrs is too long" she insisted. In Nairobi airport I got chatting to a guy who I'd thought was the best looking Japanese fella I'd ever seen. He turned out to be Chinese - oops...
After talking with a few sundry others, a south african chick going to work in Dubai and a woman from Westport who was in Nairobi on business for Ericssons and who knew Warren, I had a farily uneventful flight to Amsterdam, where I discovered I'd left my spear in Nairobi airport - damn and double damn!
On arrival exhausted to Heathrow I found that KLM had helpfully
lost my bags along with the luggage of practially everyone else on the flight who had transferred at any stage. There ensue3d much confusion and a 2hr wait for the next flight to come in. My pack was on it but my chair was nowhere to be seen. I was just about to give up when I spotted it not on the luggage wheels but on the floor outside the lift - go figure!
Struggled the few yards to the tube at heathrow with the 17kg back pack and a 10kg chair, struggled across the platform at Hammersmith to the district line, struggled across the platform to the central line at Mile End. From the LED at Mile End station " No Central Line trains today due to engineering works ". Yipee! What followed was a rather hilarious attempt to get myself, the pack and the chair (balanced on my head) up the stairs, out the door, down the road, across the traffic lights and back over the road to the couresty bus. I got some strange looks....
Random events from London: Drinkies with Warren on sunday, "Stars Wars" with the ever lovely Bermuda on monday, dinner with Tim and Sorrell on tuesday, visit to the Greenwich Meridian with assorted relatives on Wednesday, chance meetings with Miss Feather and drinkies with Eoin and Toni on thursday, PANIC on friday, followed by train to Manchester with Virgin once they manged to find a driver.
I arrived at Manchester station around 2am, the station smelled of glue and everyone there appeared to be drunk. I decided to go to the airport ASAP. Spent a few hours trying to sleep but gave up and had a long wait for the plane which was delayed about and hour. Singapore Airlines are cool, the flight was overbooked so along with all the other single travellers many of whom were backpackers headed to Bombay I got bumped up to Business class. I didn't want to leave the plane, I had my own tv screen and my own motorised reclining armchair - RESULT! So what did I do in the face of all this luxery? Well about half hour into the flight I spilled an entire glass for OJ on myself which went all over my seat and my trousers (or should I say Scotts ex-trousers) which marked me out as resident moran for the airline stewards for the rest of the flight. All class, all the time, thats me. I improvised and wore an airline blanket as a sarong untill my trousers dried. All this proving the old adage: You can lead a backpaker to business class but you can't make them civilised
I met up with a few travellers in the immigration and bank qs in the airport. Even found someone to share a room with in the shape of Bo from Aberdeen. We spent all day sleeping yesterday and have ventured out only a few hours ago. She leaves for Nepal on friday, I'm still trying to decide where to go. I gotton get out of here, the heat and humidity is a killer. Come back africa all is forgiven.....
Aoife, Mumbai, India, 4th October 14:10 Indian Std Time
