As I finally set off from Goa, heading north, I stopped to pick up a hitchhiking farmer carrying a set of buckets. We travelled in silence, and when we go to his turnoff, he patted me on the shoulder to stop, and thanked me with a silent handshake. Next stop was at the Goa/Maharasthra border. Alcohol is cheapest in Goa and illegal in Pushkar, where I am headed. For $3, I bought a bottle of Indian vodka. The shop had this wonderfully weird clock in the window View image (the head nods from side to side).

Making progress on Indian roads was slower than I thought, having stopped for lunch at a restaurant that served "Chicken Lolipop" View image, I was hard pressed to reach the stepped mountains of the Western Ghat by evening. As the sun disappeared, I thought I was alone in the wilderness. But this is India, and one is never alone. As I stopped for a photo, a family appeared and disappeared, giggling; their heads loaded with long grass bundles. View image

It was dark when I got to the hill station resort of Mahableshwar, I was cold for the first time in a month, dressed only in a t-shirt at 4000 ft altitude, and my eyes were full of evening insects which stung and made it very hard to see or control the bike. I had red that the Mumbai middle classes swarm here for cool weekend breaks from the big city, but I was not prepared for the prices. I could not find a room for under Rp. 1000 ($22) which is ten times what one would normally pay in India! I kept trying and found myself driving by a beautiful Raj-era building called "Mumbai Gymkana Club". On a whim, I went to enquire, and they offered me an exceptional deal. If I didn't mind sleeping in their "conference room", which meant having a 10-bed room all to myself, they would let me stay for just Rp. 200!

The room was amazing. The ten beds pushed together into one 50-foot stretch. View image. It was a strange and beautiful place, 120 years old, with enormous rooms and incredibly high cielings. View image. It even had a 12 foot billard table, an empty and hardly used reminder of a very different period in India's history, when the English ran the show completely. Thanks to Ghandi, places like this are now relics used for fun by Indian families, weekending from Mumbai.

After a bucket shower to clean off the road grime -- after each on the bike, I look like a coal miner, with white rings around my eyes where my sunglasses were -- and went into town for some nourishment. In India all restaurants are either "Pure Veg." or "Non-Veg." or both, with separate seating areas. Non-Veg. is what I need to look for if I want to drink a beer, or eat meat or eggs. I've been thinking one should print a T-shirt for tourists: "PURE VEG." -- as it's the one place where vegetarianism is the majority, the status quo, and not different and difficult. A chance for vegetarians to announce themselves with pride.
After realizing I had not seen one white face since Goa, and that I was the only western tourist in Mahableshwar, I eventually found my beer and my fish from outer space View image, and sat watching the modern Mumbai middle classes. I was not impressed. They seem somehow mundane, unattractive, and altogether less interesting or alive than their poorer, provincial counterparts. The families are bored-looking father and mother, and their two (or three) bored-looking children in western clothing. This feeling has been confirmed repetedly on my travels since that evening. Indian exhuberance, beauty and color seems to be limited to those who have less, rather than more. Or perhaps it's just that the Indian middle classes remind me of the majority of my own stuck, afraid and bored people, back home in the West.
On the way back to my palacial accomodation, I passed this rubbish bin (a rare sight in India, where trash is EVERYWHERE),and thought the monkey idea was charming, as was the seemingly unlimited scope of the "Use Me" request:View image

After lying on each of my ten beds to see which felt most comfortable, I settled down for a much needed sleep -- enjoying, for the first time in India, the warmth of woolen blankets.