Hiya,
In May Mango Mania arrives in India - yes it is the time of the year when mangoes are ripe and the whole of India goes nuts for them (well the rich people anyway). Everything that can be made out of them is. And some are even eaten as they are - especially the Alphonso variety, the king of mangoes.
And after 4 months sitting around doing nuff... meditating and stuff ... I finally managed to remind myself that travelling is about going places (and it was getting very hot in Pune) - and so I went somewhere, some places in fact, although at first I was wondering why ...
To start with something familiar kicks in - here I am on a train or a bus... then I encouter the disgusting squat toilets which look lke they have been just used by a herd of free roaming cattle which had a particularly bad beer and curry night the night before and whose aim was worse than a Peter Crouch penalty. Then the poverty - no matter what I have seen one day there is always something worse to see the next. Everyone walks round it, ignores it and builds huge very posh hotels next to it ... thats just the obscene way it is. And if you want to see the worlds biggest toilets just look out of the train window in the early morning as it pulls into a big city - endless rows of people squating down baring all (nearly all men oddly enough - I dont know where the women go)???
First stop Udaipur, which is a pretty place (well the bit around the lake and palace is at least) and spent most of the 3 days on the open air restaurant of the place I stayed looking at the views, but hardly moving cos it was so hot (over 40C in the shade) and once the palace and the odd temple had been viewed there wasnt really that much to do. So I decided to go to Jaipur...
Big mistake! Not only was Jaipur hotter than Udaipur - about 45C - (too hot to even lie under the fan comfortably), but it has to be the most scummy city I have been to in India, and you can imagine that is up against some pretty stiff competition. And since India can pride itself at being top of the world scummy city league then you may be able to imagine what Jaipur is like. Suffice to say that the description in LP of Jaipur being 'Whacky Races on acid' is about right. Traffic is constant and choking and constantly choking and when I tried to avoid it, it came looking for me! Everything is crammed in to small spaces. There are twice as many people, cars, rickshaws, cows per sq metre than in most cities in India, and more animals per sq metre than an english farm. The piles of rubbish and muck that line the streets are competed over by cows, goats, water buffalo, dogs, pigs and rats and often people as well, (cardboard is a delicacy for the pigs, cows and goats - Ive never seen humans eat it, yet) and then once they have eaten, they wallow in it. Then they follow me! I have been closely followed by people, dogs and cows (and in the mountains by monkeys) - I dont know which is worse, but it is best not to turn your back on any of them...
However I did realise that there is some value in a society that castes everyone into a specific role in life - opportunists follow the water buffalo herds as they trundle along the street and as soon as the poo hits the floor they grab it and mould it into rounds the size of chappaitis and dry it out for cooking fuel (it is normally poo of good consistency, unlike the liquid splodge left by cows - you cant spend time in India and not be an expert in poo - its everywhere - Regular washing of footwear is advisable).
Out in the villages things are not as bad although the transport can be worse. I was in a normal size jeep heading to a local market with 5 (inc driver) in the front, 6 of us in the 2nd row and about a dozen in the back (several hanging on the rear door). Now even for India I thought this was pretty full but was astounded to find that the next time we stopped to pick up passengers there was a brief discussion and no -one got on. At last I have been on a vehicle in Inida that even the locals considered was full - a first for me! Then at the next stop 2 people got out of the 2nd row ... and 4 got in. I think that in the school syllabus here, maths has been replaced by people management!
Travelling by state owned bus on the narrow winding roads in the hills of Northern India has to be about the worse transport experience I can remember - not only was I jammed in, knees crushed against the seat in front, but after about 5 minutes I was feeling like decorating the bus a queasy shade of green. Luckily it was only a 5 hour trip and I got over it in a few days (just in time to catch the next state owned bus on the narrow winding roads in the hills of Northern India...)
After trying to see the Dalai Lama and finding that he was busy, I went to Dalhousie, a place where Indian tourists go and there are hardly any foreigners, so it was kindda weird. But I did bag myself a small cottage in the hills where I stayed and meditated, and read and found I could sit on my porch gazing out at the spectacular view with one eye whilst watching England play Sri Lanka (live) at Cricket with the other. One eye is all you need to watch cricket anyway...
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Interlude
Its hot, hot , hotter here. At least in the hills it was a lot cooler, even cold. And it rained. And when it rains it rains.
Cool and wet? Reminds me of home.
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Now a bit just for the travel averse, who think an Indian is a restaurant in the high street, and a taste of India means going into an 'Indian' after a large number of beers, here is some other true stuff about India:
- Onion Bhajis - forget it, India's best food is not actually available in India! Well i did find one place that did them ... and they were rubbish, the english versions far better.
- And whilst we are on the subject they dont do poppadoms and pickles like we do either ...
- And Cobra beer doesnt exist here (cos it was invented in Bradford, England) - although Kingfisher is available (and there is an airline also called Kingfisher which astoundingly uses the same logo as the beer! - what does that say about air safety in India?)
- India has (inventively) partyly solved it transport problems by declaring that on the roads, everyone has right of way over everyone else all of the time. So there is no 'waiting' for other traffic to pass, no 'holding back' to let oncoming traffic through before overtaking, no waiting at traffic lights just because they are red ... everyone just goes for any space that is available happy in the knowledge that he has right of way over everyone else. Even more odd is that there is no road rage either. Despite everyone cutting up everyone else all of the time, no-one gets the slightest bit upset or shouts or says anything at all. And everyone having right of way works - well about 98% of the time. There are clearly some teething problems to be ironed out but I don't want to dwell on the number of dents, the odd vehicle on its side or the occasional bodies strewn across the road; it is sufficient to say that I have been repeatedly reminded by repetition that the word for 'accident' in Hindi is 'accident'! Anyway only 80,000 people a year are killed on India's roads (one every 6.5 minutes) so with a population of this size and growing this quickly it's clearly not that important...
But now (save a taxi to the airport at the dead of night) all that is behind me - I have been vegetarian (the only way to be in India) and had virtually no alcohol in the past 5 months, so to be plunged into several rounds of World Cup BBQs and beer extravaganzas very shortly which will be a challenge ... cos I will be home before the big tournament kicks off (lucky coincidence that!).
And that was all the travelling I did in 5 months. For the other four 'I' was the journey.
See ya soon
Love and Hugs
Ankur / Pete
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