The Wobble

And so we made it to bundi. The road from ajmer was pretty ropey but for once I was glad off the multiple stops as they provided ample opportunity to go out and sample the local produce in terms of fruit or the firey hot dishes that they were throwing together on the street. Now I know that will make most people go ‘the fool is eating food off the streets’, Of course I am. I think that if you are to spend any decent length of time in this country that you will have to eat from the stalls on occasion, in fact in a lot of case the food from these vendors is safer than the stuff you get in a sit down restaurant because the ingredients are invariably bought in the nearby stalls and cooked right in front of you – you cannot get any fresher than that. As long as you make sure that you are eating in a place where all the locals trust the food well then you cannot lose really, the fact that I haven’t had any stomach complaints at all so far in almost 3 months is testament to the fact that the food is safe.

We arrived in Bundi in the late afternoon – the sun was still up so that made finding a place much easier. As it turns out most of the accommodation in this town is on the same street or immediate area so it wasn’t long at all before we found a place that was suitable to our needs. They are all called Havellis which is basically a type of house which has an open courtyard in the middle with rooms on several floors surrounding this open space that stays open up to the roof. It really gives it a nice effect, while this one had a steel grid over the ground floor to allow foot traffic above the place where I stayed in udaipur and one of the places where we had some food in Pushkar had an open court that opened all the way up to the heavens, tis a good job that it doesn’t rain too much here 🙂 .

We took off around the town exploring while they ‘prepared’ the rooms. Bundi was such a remedy to all the stuff that we encountered in Pushkar. The locals weren’t pushy at all, they were so friendly and were almost always up for a laugh. The food on the street was lovely aswell. In the centre of the town is this rather large market, in a typical indian way all similar shops are clumped together rather than being spread out e.g. there are about a dozen pharmacies next door to each other beside the bus stand. One of the streets just north off the square sells just pots – I had a great idea to take a photo of this street and send it home under the title ‘look at all these people selling pot’, but no camera!!! Dang!!! Then there was the street that sold bangles. Bangles are big business in india, an individual ladies street cred rests on what she has wrapped around her wrists. And so shari took to this street like a dog to a bone, I played the chaparone as curiously all the stalls were run by men. Now I know I don’t have a clue about bangles and what goes and what doesn’t but the lads here really took the biscuit. Within a matter of minutes every last one of the them from the whole street had gathered around the little shack that was the first shop on the street – each baying for a look at the two westerners that were the cause of all the racquet, which was just us bargaining. We were eventually told to keep it down by a man on a bike who lived in the row of houses behind the road… So with some new bangles in hand off we set back to the hotel where our rooms still weren’t ready due to the people who had it before were holding on to them while they waited for their transport out of there. This irked me a good bit as we only agreed to stay in the place if they had a bed at 5 in the afternoon it was now pushing on 11 and people were still there. It doesn’t matter if they paid to keep the room longer as we were told it was ours earlier, in finding out this fact I copped a rather unfortunate eyeful when I went to use the rooms bathroom and two elderly germans were laying on what I thought was my bed… Best to store that particular imagine under suppressed memories me thinks.

We eventually got it sorted and to bed for some much needed kip. The following day we took in the fort that dominates the city – it was really beautiful and pretty much deserted – just the way I liked it. Some of the views over the surrounding countryside were amongst the most breathtaking I have seen. I’d go so far as to say it was the most photographic place I have been but maybe it was the lack of a camera that made it feel even more so that way. Another thing about bundi which isn’t in the guidebook is how blue the place is. Jodhpur has the reputation of being the blue city but it had nothing on this place, from the fort every house was blue. Bundi is also awash with monkeys, more monkeys than you could shake a stick at, some quick thinking entrepreneurs obviously latched onto this phrase as there were some guys renting out big 5 ft bamboo sticks whos sole purpose were to beat away the brash simians when they come to steal your lunch.

Shari left for mumbai on the second day there. It was great fun traveling with her, think it was 14 days or so in total and they flew past. The next person or people in line have a big act to follow. After dropping her off at the bus stop I went for a haircut, I am getting addicted to them at this stage. The barber was a skinny man with a permanent smile on his face, his shop was pretty sparse with walls on just 3 sides opening up onto the street. He had two friends sitting in two of the empty seats, these two lads were hilarious. One guy, alot fatter and louder than the other would come out with something in broken english which he interpreted for the other two guys and they laughed, the laughed out loud grabbing all passer bys attention. I didn’t mind, it was funny. I got him to give me a nice tight haircut, the tightest it has been for quite a while.

After the haircut I made my way back to the favella. I have to admit I was feeling bummed out having parted with shari, for all the benefits of travelling on your own sometimes you need that second person there just to share a thought or the moment a sight or a sound, its so much easier to remember something when there is someone there to share it with you. So I sat in the courtyard and watched the tv, the young lad who works in the place came over to me and we started chatting. ‘Mr Phil, you want some whiskey?’, sure why not. Okay, we go, we go.

So outside onto the street and onto the back of his bike, we picked up a friend of his a wee bit further out of town. Off out into the indian countryside we went. The road runs along the side of a valley so given the time of day that it was we got a lovely view out over bundi, a true blue city, its a wonderful place. In all the time I spent admiring the view I had forgotten our mission, after around 20 minutes of the bumpiest road this side of clonlohan we pulled up out side this battered old shack of a place. It was a mess of rusted corugated iron, split into two rooms it looked abandoned but for the proprietor and his two boxes of illicit liquor. You see bundi is a dry town and alcohol is forbidden within its precincts. Even with this fact I just figured that we would stick the whiskey in my backpack and we head back to the hostel and then imbibe there away from the prying eyes of the hindi police. But no, we had to drink the whiskey there. These bottles were 600ml, thats alot of whiskey between 3 people and to make matters worse I had to drink one all by myself the other two lads sharing. Down the hatch with the whiskey, my chest was on fire and my stomach a bit queasy. The plan was to get back into town before the effects kicked in, foolish, god damn right it was. Disaster struck, the driver was out of it. He could barely stand,  with the two of us on the back he just about got the bike to start, no sooner were we up than he took off and drove us straight into the ditch across the road. Luckily enough we were all okay, ankle was a bit scraped but I could soldier through, if we had’ve gone over the other side of the road I can tell you know you wouldn’t be reading this right now. The whiskey hadn’t kicked into for me yet, I could sense a warm fuzziness kicking in but I was pretty lucid which is more that can be said for the two buckos. Rightly or wrongly I took control of the bike and spun us back into the town as slow as you like, concentrating like hell to keep it upright and at a decent enough speed that wouldn’t attract too much attention. Somehow we made it, I pulled up outside the favelli and had to carry my hotel friend into this house and put him to bed much to the disapprovement of his older sister. I went back into the courtyard to watch some tv but passed out within ten minutes, the whiskey had kicked in…

The following morning I beat my own retreat from bundi – all the way to Jaipur. I don’t have a whole lot to write about jaipur. It was a big disappointment to be honest. Monikered the pink city, there is only one street in the city that is pink. The hotel was okay but the people who worked there were a little ignorant. I asked the main guy to help me pick out some places to eat, shop etc etc and he wasn’t forthcoming with any suggestions at all. On top of that it was pretty pricey. Outside the hotel you couldn’t look around the corner without getting unreal hassle from the rickshaw drivers selling tours, tours, tours. One morning I walked down the street to see how far they would follow me, they must have walked half a mile with me. I eventually succumbed and asked this cycle rickshaw dude who was easily in his 60s to take me around the place.I felt sorry for him because he looked so weak and could do with the money but in earning his corn he had to drag my fat ass around the bumpy streets of jaipur for 5 hours. It must have been an awful sight to the people on the sides of the road to see me sitting back while this 5 stone string of a man struggled to get a little bit of momentum going, I did try to tell him to let me just walk but he was having none of it. I did however insist on plenty of food and chai stops. One particular highlight was the thali I picked up right at the bus stand, just as I was writing off north indian thalis for good this one came along and strode into the top 10 meals I have had so far – so so tasty. The bread was literally straight off the oven and onto the plate while the veg had the right amount of spice with lots of garlic and ginger. I managed to pick up a new camera on this round aswell – canon ixus 75. It’ll do the job nicely. After that bit of shopping I took in a few of the sights, the city palace was okay if a little boring. There was an astrological park which had all these very strange measuring structures intended to tell the time of day and peoples fortunes, as the guidebook says its like falling into the world of Alice in wonderland. Some of these structures were almost 50 metres in height. After that place I headed on up the hill to the tiger fort where I enjoyed a nice sunset, though looking over the vast city you couldn’t help but notice the massive urban slum that lies right beneath the fort. Though its hard to feel bad when all you see are kids running around and playing to their hearts content. There must have been a hundred cricket games going on in the various streets, I almost missed the sunset as I was spending most of my time scanning through this part of the city.

After the sunset I decided to head back to the hotel, having decided it was about time to get my passport situation sorted out it was to be a week in delhi. Brother Diarmuid is coming to see me at the weekend which I am excited about, we are going to see the taj mahal in agra on saturday. In fact I am going to pick up the train tickets right now….

rgds,

Phil

Sounds a bit like the title of an essay you’d assign to an 8 year old. Hmmmmm, here it goes.
We checked out of the Raj Guru place at about 9 in the morning, after some breakfast we booted on up the road to get the bus to ajmer before catching a connecting bus to bundi. Bundi sounded like the perfect remedy to the pretty rubbish faux hippy scene that exists in pushkar, but more about bundi later.
As we approached the bus stand we could see a small mini bus pull out of the car park. The driver lets down the window and lets a roar that loosely resembled Ajmer so we ran and jumped onto the bus while it was still moving. Everyone on the bus was a local with the exception of one lady who was well into her 50s, we had an argument later on whether she was german or french so for the sakes of diplomacy we will say she was from Luxembourg… There were 2 seats available behind her so thats where we went. She was a rather contrary type and just by the way she spoke about some places I knew that my own opinion would be quite different from hers, it was still interesting enough to listen to her though. Halfways through the journey the bus conductor who was a small weedy type wearing a dirty green sweater, he looked like the only soap he ever saw was on the tv. He makes his way down in our direction and tries to charge us double what he charged everyone else. It was just 20 rupees which is about 35 cents in euroworld so I didn’t really care that much about it. The Luxembourg lady kicked up a bit of a fuss though and refused to pay the extra charge, it seemed like the right thing to do to row in behind her because yer man was basically trying to pull a fast one on us. So we stubbornly refused to pay up the extra charge, even as he sat with his open hand in front of us for a couple of miles we refused to budge on the price. After around 10 minutes of this we arrived at the final stop for this bus, twas about 100 yards down the road from the main bus stand. As I went to get off I grabbed both my bags, the lux lady was having trouble with hers being lodged under her seat and having the conductor hanging off her looking for money. So I put down my black bag carrying my passport, camera, mp3 player, credit cards etc etc on the seat beside hers and gave her a hand to get off the bus… That was the first time that bag was out of my sight on this trip and typically the last I saw off it. I don’t know why I didn’t kop it sooner that it was missing, I guess the stress of getting off the bus, getting hassled by the human weed, negotiating the indian roads, finding the bus to bundi and getting some food for the 5.5 hour journey it was about 5 minutes into the journey while tying up my backpack (now thats irony) that I asked shari if she had seen my black bag.
Think father ted when dougal hits the red button, panic sets in. We immediately got off the bus and hailed a rickshaw back to ajmer bus stand. I immediately went to the police station there – because it was a private bus they had no way of tracking the vehicle – so lesson 1 don’t travel on private buses. It was really frustrating dealing with the police – they just didn’t want to know about it. At this stage I had a fleeting hope that I could recover the bag. They though were too busy sunning themselves to give a shit, they wouldn’t even make a police report from me citing the fact that the bus had originated in pushkar so I would have to travel all the way back there to file a report. Talk about being deflated… So on a bus I jumped back to bloody pushkar. I left shari in ajmer, telling her to book into the recommended hotel there and I would call later to see if the bag turned up there.
So back to Pushkar, I made an immediate beeline to the copshop there. Inside the gate there were two of them sitting in the sun beside a table playing cards, I frantically told them my bag was missing, possibly stolen and if by any chance anyone had handed in a black bag from the return trip as lost n found. One of them, nods and says yes! I couldn’t believe it, I asked him again in the clearest, slowest most deliberate english ever ‘Has a Black Bag been handed in?’ – ‘Yes sir, this way’. In I walked hoping to see the bag sitting plump on the table with a where the feck were you look on it – but no. All I got was the grumpy seargeant who informed me there was no bag only police report possible… This is when india can be really frustrating, its a good job that i am a very patient person. After the report was filled out I went across the road to the bus stand to see if the offending bus had returned. I was accompanied by one of the policemen but I might aswell have been accompanied by the man on the moon. I told him several times to stop looking in the big buses as it was a small bus that we took, but he persevered.
I eventually figured I would be better off without this indian version of inspector clouseau and went over to the bus stands main admin dude. While talking to him a big crowd started to gather around to listen in on my plight, one guy called dillip (dunno how I seem to remember his name) had better English than most and so befriended me. I asked them if the bus had come back, they asked what kind of bus and what the conductor looked like, I told him the full story and he told me to sit tight as all the buses come back to the bus stand eventually, I figured it was worth a couple of hours. Twas during this time that I found out that the hotel recommended to us in ajmer where I was to meet shari again was actually in pushkar so I had no idea whether she would stay there or come back so pretty much I figured I would have to return back there at some stage and trawl through the listed hotels to see if I could find her, not exactly a tantalising proposition.
After a while the human weed returned minus the bus, I immediately offered to ‘reward’ him if my passport was suddenly to appear, but he didn’t bite. There was a twist in the tale though, after dropping us off the bus did a luggage drop for this special group of Hindu worshipers from all around the world who were attending a retreat in an ashram outside of pushkar. The station master figured that my bag might have been dropped there. So off down the road in search of this ashram – halfway down the road I noticed that there was a big crowd coming down the road with me – I counted 27 men, do any of these feckers ever work? I asked myself!!
We got to the ashram to find the place virtually deserted. The worshipers had all gone off for the day in a holy tour, their head guru, this really nice fella from the states told me that he would make an announcement after their ‘mass’ at 7.30 that evening for everyone to go back to their rooms and check whether the luggage was there, if that didn’t work he would go into each room personally and check himself. It was about 3 in the afternoon so I had a long wait ahead of me. To describe this place or at least compare it to something irish – think of a really small version of knock. My presence drew the attention of quite a few old ladies, they were all so lovely and they were almost moved to tears that I would get a bad impression of india because of this. They each took turns in saying little pujas ‘hindu prayers’ around me, it was quite surreal but at that stage I figured I needed all the help I could get. With hindsight I should’ve used this time to better effect as my aussie travel buddy had returned from ajmer with some great stories of her own of police stupidity etc etc and was frantically trying to track me down – but I stayed on there till almost 10 o’clock when I found out that there was no bag to be found anywhere. They did give me a lovely feed though and offered me a place to stay for the night free of charge.. I politely declined. The buses had stopped going to ajmer at that stage so I had to find a place in pushkar so so late. Up and down I walked looking for a free bed and to see if shari was in the town somewhere. I gave up eventually having searched it must have been 30 hotels. I ended up staying in a lovely little Tibetan hotel which had hot water and was a stupidly cheap 2 euros, one of the best rooms I have had so far, to bed I went and slept surprisingly soundly.

It might sound like the biggest disaster that could happen while traveling but it is far from it, I wasn’t hurt or threatened. Most people I met that day were fantastic and couldn’t do enough for me. Ultimately it was my own fault, I’d like to think it was my good nature that screwed me over but it was probably more naevity than anything else. I have travel insurance and this is exactly what I have it for, it will take about a month to replace my passport and an additional week to get another visa. I am here till may anyways to my plans as such are not affected by it. The only thing that upsets me is losing the photos I have taken since udaipur. I will nick some of sharis ones from there onwards so I guess all is not completely lost….

We met up again the following morning and this time we did make it on the bus to bundi all the way…

Pushkar is about 300 kilometres east of jaisalmer which is about 11 hours on one of indias scooby doo buses – we took a sleeper bus which left jaisalmer at 5.30 and was due to arrive in pushkar at about 4 in the morning or so. Tis really a horrible time to arrive anywhere esp as we had no accommodation booked but onwards and upwards. The trip for the most part was pretty uneventful, the seats weren’t exactly conducive to sleeping. I did manage to drop into something resembling a slumber after several hours only to be woken up by the lack of rattling – we had either
a) careered off the road into a gorge and I was on my way to the pearly gates.
b) turned onto a smooth road which stopped the bus from sounding like it was falling apart
or c) had turned up at our destination.
Now option a is unlikely, b is just ridiculous so it must have been c, but a quick glance outside showed that it was not pushkar but the neighbouring town called ajmer. The driver was at this stage running up and down the bus waking up all the intended travellers to pushkar. I kinda kopped on pretty quickly what was going on. I asked the driver (who needless to say hadn’t a word of english) why we were not in pushkar. He starts shouting last stop, last stop. I looked down at my watch and it was 3.30. Pushkar was still 15 kilometres away – not a flat 15 km either as the road between the two towns goes over what the locals called snake mountain so I wasn’t exactly willing to find out why the mountain got its name by foot.
I asked the bus driver why we were not being brought the whole way, that we had paid to go to pushkar not 9/10s of the way to pushkar. He kept shouting , he even tried to grab some peoples bags and take them off the bus. I was having none of this, the first thing I sought out was an indian passenger who spoke good english so he could translate for me. The driver and some of his cohorts were saying that we would have to cross the road and get a 4.30 government bus to pushkar as the private bus was too big to go to there. At this stage the rest of the guys going to pushkar had realised what was happening, there were 7 in total including myself and shari. Some of the fellas were really getting pissed, on the point of violence. It was shocking form on the drivers part, pure laziness more than anything. He was pretty desperate not to drop us all the way, he even offered to pay for our fare on the public bus – I did consider this offer but it was still a load of crap. Then a lightbulb appeared over my head, I grabbed the driver and ran across to the public bus stand to see the ‘mini bus’ that was to bring us the rest of the way. I should’ve seen it coming really – when the station master pointed at the minibus it was just as big if not bigger than the one we had travelled this far on. I pointed to the driver and said quite firmly – ‘ You are dropping us in Fckn Pushkar ‘ he didn’t need a translator for that, so before we knew it we were back on the bus and on the way over snake mountain with phil the hero.

The next issue was accommodation, it was 4.30 by the time we got there. luckily there were a few hardy souls up – a couple were manning a chai stop so all 7 of us ordered a cup of that sweet goodness and nestled around the little campfire set up to ward away the coldness of the desert night. We eventually mustered the energy to find a place – I followed the crowd to a place called raja towers – it was a pretty modest affair and for what we got and what else in the town that was available it was grossly overpriced, but by home standards it cost about the same as the munchies you get when rent out a dvd.

Alot of people rave on about pushkar, a chilled out paradise, a haven for travellers to recharge their batteries. It is a holy town with a ban on all meat products including eggs, no alcohol allowed within the city limits etc etc but it wasn’t because of this that I didn’t warm to the town, as it happens I have had about 5 beers since christmas day (not that I am counting or anything). I think the people the town attracts turned both me and shari off the place – there was an incredible amount of hippies or people there who just wanted to smoke their brains out. The locals have obviously adapted the town to cater for this influx so every hotel has its rooftop opened up for them to sample the local bhang lassi which is a narcotic yoghurt drink which should be illegal but the local cops (more about those lovely men later) seemingly turn a bit of a blind eye to it. The main street in the town more resembles liffey valley shopping centre than an actual religious town that would normally be off any interest – I lost count the number of times we encountered a peace loving hippie argue out really loudly with one of the local shop owners. Despite all these misgivings I had a pretty good time in pushkar. We stayed there for 4 nights plus another night (I will explain in my next entry all about that extra night), we did meet some nice locals like simon – a young lad who works in one of the hotels, he was so funny – he only got paid 2000 rupees a year from his boss from working every weekend. Tried to work it out what he earned on an hourly basis, figured it was bout 15 cents european. We spent most of our time going from rooftop to rooftop talking away about all kinds of everything, if we didn’t get on aswell as we did I’m sure pushkar would’ve lasted 1 maybe 2 nights at maximum.

On the 4th day we got up early, paid our bill and headed for the town they call bundi in south rajasthan. It sounded more like our cup of tea. We grabbed a private bus from just outside the bus stand which would take us to ajmer where we would get a link bus to bundi. It was on the bus to bundi that I noticed that I as down a bag, yes my black carry on bag with my passport, glasses, credit cards, camera, mp3 player – you name it!! All gone… cue what was probably my most interesting day in india yet. Coming soon…….

8.30 starts are not my friend, as a result it took me a little while to get into the whole camel safari swing of things. To be honest I wasn’t sure what to expect from the whole expedition as it wasn’t one of my must do things on my trip around the world, figured if the people I was hanging out with were on for it that I wouldn’t say no to it. You do hear some unpleasant reports back though from most people about pains in bottoms and the sheer bad smells that the grumpy camels emit constantly. We didn’t get to the camels till about 11, for the first couple of hours we took a jeep ride around to a few temples in the immediate jaisalmer area. To be honest they were nothing special at all, I was more preoccupied with how I was going to cope with the big hairy ships of the desert instead.
There were just 3 of us in the group – the other guy Ivan, was also a melbournite so that gave himself and shari something to instantly relate to each other. As they nattered away about all things australian I took it handy in the back seat trying to catch up on some zzzs between occasional glances out the window over the thar desert.
We started the camel trek itself at 11 or just after, my camel was called raja. Our guides were two local village men. The main guy Badir seemed like any other indian guy to start with but as the trek progressed we really became great friends. The lad looked like he was in his late thirties at least so you can imagine my shock to discover that he was just a month older than me. Now I know I am not a cub anymore but jays twas a wee bit of a shock. After the briefest of ‘How to make yer camel stop and go’ tutorials we were set and off we went. It is now that I debunk or at least make some attempt to explain why I didn’t have the same problems that other people had on their trips, I reckon I didn’t get saddle sore because of all the times I had to peddle my way through jobstown on the way to work and maybe I could tolerate the smell a wee bit better than most having shared a house with barry for 5 or so years – not saying thats definitely the truth but it would go someway to explaining it.
We stopped for lunch at about 1.30 and sat under the shade of a lone tree in the middle of the desert, it was a fantastic setting. The meal badir prepared for us with such meagre resources was pretty phenomenal. It was so so so spicey though, the most I have encountered in the entire country by far. I went through at least 3 bananas, not chewing them but using them as a makeshift lip balm. I thought I was gonna die, but what a way it would’ve been to go – ‘Phil was happy when he died, His belly was full’!!!
After lunch we made our way to the sand dunes. Now they are not really something I thought about as tourist attraction, I mean how different cuold they be to the sanddunes you find off the west coast of ireland – how wrong can you be? It was beautiful – the only thing I kept on thinking to myself (and outloud I admit) was that it looked like a scene from the side of a Hazelbrook farm box of icecream, a land made completely of butterscotch icecream!! We were let off to explore the sanddunes just intime for another spellbinding sunset. Being in the desert the pollution wasn’t nearly as bad as other places so it gave it a much more natural effect. We had some dinner later before sleeping under the stars.
I have to say that I was in my element, we booked for just 1 night and ended up staying for 3 days out on the safari. It was such a relief to get away from the honk honk honkness of the indian towns and roads – some of the lorry horns are ridiculously loud and they play some of the most bizaare jingles. I saw a car the other day reversing that was smaller than a micra, it had its own personalised reversing music – Silent Night!! This country is NUTS!!!
So another day on the camels, Camels are great creatures. Riding them is like playing wolfenstein or one of those 1st player shooters where you can see the gun aiming out the front of you, they just bob along occasionally stopping for the odd mouthful of bushweed. They pee incessantly aswell, whatever about racehorses, camels really do take the biscuit (note the way that I refused to use the word piss, I thought that might be a bit too obvious or even crude, don’t want to offend anyone on this family blog 🙂 ). We stopped into the camel guides village where we go such an amount of attention from his family and neighbours, all the kids were pleading for pictures, school pens, ruppees or just plain chocolate. They settled for a half an hour of mainly shari playing with them – a couple of the younger lads hung around me asking for photos or were bemused by my terrible attempts at magic tricks.
We headed on that evening to the more tourist oriented sam sands. A spectacular set of sanddunes for another night under the stars. With the best of intentions to head for Bikaner the following morning we requested an earlier than normal return to jaisalmer but when we got to the hotel there was nothing that could have moved me enough to get to the bus on time. So another night in the cool little town. We decided to alter our itinerary slightly aswell, rather than head north to bikaner we decided to head east to pushkar and so booked an overnight bus to get us there. Like everthing else it was not a normal bus trip, nothing is normal here but you are going to have to wait for the next entry to read all about it – and 2 more entries before I get to the major major drama….

later,Phil

Jaisalmer for those that don’t know lies plump in the the thar desert which spans the border between india and pakistan. For an indian town it is quite small with a population of about 20,000 people. It is a major tourist destination in rajasthan with people making it a must go place to visit if you want to take a camel safari into the desert. With all the tourists heading there it fuels a pretty insistent tout scene. The first guy we met bought us chai at the bus stop in jodhpur – never one to turn down a freebe it was fairly obvious straight up that he was just a tout and not a new found best friend. We drank the chai and got on the bus. Just before we reached our destination another guy boards the bus – another tout, he makes a beeline straight to the two of us sitting quitely minding our own business at the back of the bus. He handed us a brochure which was literally identical to the one the first guy gave us – word for word. It even marked the hotel in the same part of the city – major scam alert. I really despise touts, horrible horrible people who would sell their granny if they thought they could get a cent for her but sometimes they are an element of travelling that you just have to put up with because they are pretty much everywhere.
Apart from the touts though it was a rather entertaining bus journey. This young fella – said he was 20 but he could’ve been any age, wearing a fake leather coat sat down beside us, bemoaned the fact that he couldn’t speak english that well and then spent the next hour at least talking away to us with pretty decent english, he just wouldn’t shut up though. He was a network engineer with the local telecoms company on his way out to a town short of our destination to sort out a problem. At the first chance we got we had to seperate ourselves from him because the barrage coming from his mouth was incessant!! Luckily enough at one of the stops along the way two old men sat between us and him. After another hour or so a guy sitting infront of us started to either make a phone call or tried to receive one. AT least 20 if not thirty times he goes ‘hello’, ‘hello’, ‘hello’ – our telecoms engineer friend leans over to get my attention ‘Hey pheeel, pheeel, NETWORK PROBLEMS!!!!, at which point he folds over laughing. The guy infront wasn’t too impressed but sure what can ya do?
As we stepped off the bus we could already see the touts jostling for position, rising dust of the ground as they clamoured to be the first person to welcome us to their town. There were 3 guys from one hotel, 2 from another and a couple of rickshaw drivers. I litterally had to treat them like children to get them to settle down, I told them to shut the ‘hell’ up (you know right well I didn’t say hell!!), that the next person to speak lost the game and that we were not visiting their hotel. I figured the fairest thing to do at this stage was to take a rickshaw to both hotels to see if they were decent and then pick the best one. To rub in my sense of authority I even got the two main protagonists to hug which made for a pretty bizaare yet funny scene. We ended up staying at the first place we looked at, it had tv in the room so that was enough for me 🙂

Some R and R was called for so after a pot of chai and some rest on the bed we decided that we would go have a look at what jaisalmer the town was like. It reminded me alot of the old part of san sebastian, the streets were really narrow lined on either side by sharply rising sandstone buildings, it was still unmistakeably india. Every shop owner pleaded with us to go into their shops and see what they had to sell, promising us indian price, the streets were full of cows and cow muck while the darker dead ends invariably smelt of urine – never spent much time lurking around those ones… Going around the shops with Shari was great fun, she was a proper little shopaholic with a rather crazy obsession with bangles – build that freakin bridge girl!!! We barely passed a shop without going into it and seeing what we could bargain for, most of the time we did it just for our own entertainment but without ever ridiculing the guys in the store, that would be just disrespectful and completely unnecesary. I have lost count the number of times we have left shops with hugs, handshakes or massive smiles.
After our little wander around the fort some chai was called for – you never have to go far without seeing a congregation (mostly men) hanging out somewhere. You can be sure that they are either drinking chai or just plain hot milk. Down we sat and became as is now standard the focus of everyones attention, shari got trigger happy with her camera and took some really nice photos of the whole scene. There is even a video of me interviewing some indian air force dudes who had come into town from their base for the lovely chai – not sure if that footage will ever see the light of day, jeremy paxman can rest easy in his bed!!
It was at this stage that our (and everyone elses) attention was grabbed suddenly by this super loud soundsystem that was banging out some god awful hindi music to the delight of a fairly sizable mob. Didn’t have a clue what was going on but curiosity certainly drew us towards the lights – as we got closer we could see that it was a group of completely unhibited men from teenage years to 50s 60s dancing around like buffoons while their wives daughters etc stood around with stone like expressions, it seems only the men are allowed to have fun in this town. Before I know it I get swallowed up into the middle of the frenzy – I managed to offload most of the stuff I was carrying in the tackle to shari before joining in the mayhem. These people were proper crazy, none of your half measures here. It was shortlived though, I could feel one guy get a little too close, fecker had his hand in his pocket and was giving the security chain that attaches my wallet to my trousers a stern testing. I managed to wiggle myself free with my dignity (well almost) and my wallet intact – slightly rattled I searched out shari with the hope of us heading back to the hotel for some much required kippage. At this very moment I became aware of this crazy manic man of about 50 years of age – he was dressed like a homeless but had perfect english. He was folded over laughing, tears rolling down over his grey stubble having witnessed the events for the last 10 minutes. His laugh was incredible, so loud, so forceful it contorted his body time and again. Shari has this on her camera, it is so funny and bizaare (get it up on youtube already girl, have to share it with the people). I mentioned the need to get some beer to bring back to the hotel, yer man overheard and says ‘Yes, let us have a drink’, he followed us up to the beer shop quoting lines from John Keats ‘Ode to a Grecian Urn’ – a really bizaare individual. We bailed on him pretty sharpish and headed off (in the wrong direction).
What really did us in was we forgot the exact name of the hotel – it was called samrat, but we were asking people where sangram hotel was – wouldn’t you know there was an actual place called sangram so everytime we asked we were pointed further and further away. On this little adventure we stumbled across a different hotel that was decked out hundreds of chairs, lots of food and drink but just a handful of people there it seemed to consume all the goodness – we asked two elderly gentlemen what was going on here – in broken english they explained to us that it was a local wedding and that they were waiting for the rest of the wedding party to arrive back before they tucked into the grub. The seemed pretty impatient, but it definitely did explain the scene we had witnessed about an hour previously.
Before we gave up on finding the hotel by ourselves we came across the wedding party once more, this time the energy had gone. It was much later and the mobile disco more resembled a funeral procession rather than a wedding party.

Our second day in Jaisalmer was a lazy one – we booked ourselves onto a camel safari the following day with the guys from the hotel. They were a proper sleazy bunch, the head honcho fancying himself as a proper ladies man (could do with losing a few stone and maybe gaining some hair) – on one occasion he walks up the steps of the hotel, unbuttoning his shirt before doing 3 pressups against the wall infront of a few german girls who were staying there. It was proper david brent stuff and very very amusing. After breakfast we wandered around the town, while waiting for shari to finish up some email stuff I sat outside on the street. The nearest shop owner called me over but I politely declined. Not taking the hint he comes over to me and halfheartedly tries to get me to go into his shop to buy some stuff. I explained to him that if I bought something in every shop I walked past, given the intended length of my journey I don’t think that I would get very far… So he quickly conceeded and wouldn’t just plain bugger off. He had a more pressing issue which he needed my help with – he began to tell me about this american girl that had been in the town a few days previously – who had left her email and worst off all the feeling of unrequited love in the pit of this lads stomach. What he wanted from me funnily enough was for me to compose him a poem that he could write to this girl to convince her to come back to jaisalmer and shack up with him on a more permenant basis. It was pretty funny, its definitely a new one on me that I would be considered an authority on this subject. Time and again I tried to tell him this but he wouldn’t take no, twas only the arrival of some other tourists that took an interest in his shop that relieved me of his presence. Maybe a sale holds more sway here than a womans heart. Oh well….
Lunch was also quite an event, we decided to go with the recommendation from the guidebook for a place called Vyas which promised some homecooked goodness. Too good an offer to pass down, what we didn’t realise though was how literal the description was. We stuggled up some seriously leg crunching stairs to be met by a young boy called raju – he was about 10 years old. We asked him if we could head on upstairs to watch the sunset over the golden fort while we ate our dinner at which point the boys grandmother though at this stage she was nothing more than a coarse disembodied voice from around the kitchen corner informed us that ‘sunset not possible today’ – gonna be a long one so!! We were directed towards the residential families own dining table which had a full view of proceedings, twas alittle awkward at first but we soon grew to like the place. We ordered some rajasthani thali and some kashmiri biryani – which for those who don’t know is steamed rice mixed with lots and lots of fruit. Tastes really really nice.. The food was good but watching the grandmother and the grandson interact was the real treat – when she finally did appear she seemed to have some problem with her back that rendered her almost right angled to the ground in a simian like pose. He rough voice really betrayed her really lovely nature. The Power went out halfway through but they were well prepared for such an event, out with some typical campsite equipment – a gas stove pretty much and with the help of some torches they completed the meal for us.
The rest of the day we just lazed around, taking in the really beautiful town, its views and the funny people that worked in each of the shops. We left the following morning for our 1 night, 2 day safari in the desert…

There was no private bus to jodhpur from mount abu so we had to get the public bus which basically means you pay less but that the bus yer on is not quite of the same pristine quality that I have come to expect!! This trip involved a little stop in a town called abu road – we got ourselves into a little bit of bother here. As soon as the bus stopped the rest of the people on the bus got off, now this raised my suspicion that the bus was going no further. I asked shari to double check with someone outside whether we needed to change buses to get to jodhpur. Twasn’t long before we were pulling our backpacks out from under the rusty worn seats, onto our backs and off the bus running after a bus that was pulling off. We got on eventually and took our seats at the back, the ticket inspector was not happy though – we had the wrong tickets. Normally I would’ve just accepted our fate and stumped out the extra rupees to get us to jodhpur but that wasn’t right – twas a matter of principle. It was this principle that landed us on the side of the road on the edge of the thar desert, sitting with some indian women who were admiring sharis endless collection of bangles, waiting for the right bus to come along to collect us. Luckily that didn’t take too long and wouldn’t you know it was the exact same bus that we got off in the station about 40 minutes beforehand. Ach I suppose you kinda have to laugh.

The trip to jodhpur took about 6-7 hours – can be hard to remember how long trips take, at this stage I measure time on buses by the amount of times my bum goes numb, so this trip took 4 bumnums. The lonely planet is a scaremonger at the best of times, its description of jodhpur and the reception you can expect here I found was way off the mark. I was expecting a pirhana fish like attack from rickshaw drivers, touts etc etc but it was pretty hassle free. We got a driver who happily dropped us to the place we chose to stay without going for commission. The homestay was quite an effort, the people who lived there freely mingled with the people that stayed there to such an extent that we were shown a room that had a little girl in there doing her homework. Quite bizaare. The rooftop at this place was beautiful – on one side you had a perfect view of the dominant fort they call Mehrangarh and in the distance you can see the Maharjahs current residence and exclusive hotel – Jodhpur Palace. These are the two main attractions with regards to actual buildings in this town so I reckoned taking 3 days here to see the two of them before heading west again.

The fort was pretty cool – I didn’t take to it quite the same way as the one in kumblegarh – it was pretty crowded but the views of the blue city (which is actually blue – its meant to repell insects) were spectacular. There were lots of guns, cannons, pictures and stories of great battles which satiated the inner child in me. The second day in jodhpur I explored with shari – we went our own ways the first day which was fine, tis nice to get a bit of space on yer own every now and again. The second day was much more fun. First of all we took to the local market which was great fun – twas like we were on an unofficial mission to eat and drink as much for free. So many stalls offer you samples for free or some chai if you go into their shop – all in all it was a very friendly atmosphere. I even had to translate a message as gaelige written in an omlette shop comments book, what ya think of that paddy joe? The market itself was rampacked full of stalls with huge baskets selling fresh fruit, vegtables, herbs, pots, pans, sweets, spices, teas you name it – one guy asked me if I wanted some tea, I politely declined with smile and an acknowledging nod, he then shouts after me over about 100 people ‘Maybe you would like some viagra sir??’ Cue all those 100 people breaking into hysterics..twas funny I have to admit. The v stuff gets advertised alot in these parts – pretty difficult to draw a veritable conclusion as to why!!
We ventured on past the market till we got to the end of the old city – from here we took a walk thru a park before grabbing a rickshaw up to the palace. There was a private function in the main hotel and despite all our protestations about how important and famous we were they wouldn’t let us in – I think the fact that we showed up in a beat up rickshaw didn’t help our case too much. There is a museum exhibit there also which we had a look at – it was fairly crap but we did manage to get some homemade naan from the kitchen that was looking after the wedding (apparently elizabeth hurley got married in this place last year). The tandoor (oven) they used was basically a steel barrel which heated from the bottom got dough stuck to the inside walls until it cooked up. Very nice indeed…

Jodhpur was a funny kind of town, I didn’t like it at all the first night I arrived. It was noisy and the pollution seemed so much worse than even mumbai, but walking through the markets and down the sidestreets made such a difference to my impression of the place. A lot of people go flocking to the main sites before buggering off somewhere else which is fine when you are stuck for time but you definitely miss out on a massive aspect of india this way – the streets and the side streets is where the most fun is to be had.
After 3 nights we took the bus to Jaisalmer with the vague ambition of some camel related activities…

Later,
Phil

I was standing at the bus stop in udaipur for about 20 minutes before anyone had turned up. Initially I just ordered a chai from the guys along the road, before throwing on the recently acquired warm clothes, sitting down and waiting for the bloody thing to arrive. The first person to turn up was this dude from Belgium called Jonas. I was not messing before when I said that this guy was marks doppleganger – I seriously had to do a double take, freaky stuff. The street hawker had given me two cups of chai as he had no change for a 10 rupee note – was probably just a sneaky way to get me to purchase two cups of the sweet sweet drink. I didn’t mind as it gave me a kind of offering that I could give to jonas to get talking and pretty much have someone to talk to on the way to mount abu.

While travelling meeting someone like this is a really good way to save money, you get a chance to make sure that the person neither is insane or inane and if they are not you can share costs such as taxis, meals and accomodation. The trip to mount abu was a reasonable 6 hour journey. The last 2 hours were spent negotiating hairpins as the road weaved its way up into the mountains. The town itself stands at 1400 metres while the surrounding hills and mountains dwarf this by at least another 300 metres. The town is one of the most popular holiday/honeymoon destinations for indians themselves, its incredibly picturesque and gives a kind of volcanic impression with a small lake in the middle of the town surrounded by steep rising hills which then quickly fall into the greater rajasthani valley. Almost every building was a hotel so most people there were tourists of some description. It was also the first place I have been in this country which actually had ecological processes in place such as no plastic allowed, there was waste management, many hotels ran off solar power and shock horror there were even some rubbish bins along the side of the road.

The hotel we stayed in was called the Shri Ganesh. A typically indian name but also the last place you would ever to expect to see a massive poster of Fermanagh sitting ontop of the front door, which is exactly what greeted me. This immediately gave me something to relate to the people there. It was a family run guesthouse, the only member of the family not working there was over working in belfast – hence the connection. It turned out that the mother and father had gone over last year to visit him. While the father seemed to like ireland when I asked the mother if she like it she just replied with a flat ‘No’, no explanation was forthcoming so I left her at it.

As you can probably guess, mt abu is made for trekking, climbing and lots of hill walking. It might come as a bit of a shock to some people who know me but I actually really love bombing around the place be it in wicklow in glendalough, the aran islands or even just back at home at lough sheelin. The hotel ran guided tours from 8 in the morning but I never got up in time for those. Instead I decided to tackle the peaks by myself. Yes it is a little nuts to go off walking in a place thats not only unfamiliar but is also home to many wild bears, tigers and the odd crocodile – what could possibly go wrong. Given the cup like shape of the area you never lost sight of the town so finding your bearings was never a problem. I made my way towards a temple that was marked on the map which was at a reasonable height – when I got there I really had a thirst for more. I climbed up the rocks, through the thickest bush I have ever come across having to cover several yards on my stomach at times attempting to make it to the highest point I could see which was marked with a red flag, at one stage I went to look up to check my route only to be met full on the top off the head with a bloody cactus, took blood n all – to sound all macho and hard I will not say that it was just a scratch and that it could well have been the strong sun in my eyes that made me see red on my fingers, but I think it should be left at – yeah the blood was gushing out of my head, I am hard, me!!! Reaching the top of the mountain was a great feeling, the view was panoramic to beat the band. You could see the town surrounding the lovely green lake, at the same height around you could see many different local peaks in the the distance you could see all 1400 metres down to the rajasthani valley which given that its in dusty old india was fairly well shrouded in a thick smog. Looking through a pair of sunglasses you could see the thickness of the polution that envelopes this country – even at the height I was at you could see it reacher higher still. I have heard that the only place that you can go to in the country to get away from it is the mighty himalayas, as it only disperses fully at 3000 metres or so.

On my way back down from my little adventure I had to ask for the help of a local farmer boy who guided me back onto the right path that led back to the village. After giving the lad a few rupees (he asked for 7 which was an unusual number, sounded almost like a rate – he got 10), I trotted back down towards the town. On my way I came across a most wonderful sight, for a few minutes I could hear kids singing but could not see them. Eventually I turned a corner to find about 20 5-14 year old kids in a tiny school, practising a play thru hindi under the guidance of their teacher. Now when I say school, this place was one metal sheet propped up by 4 rusty posts to act as nothing more than shelter from rain or sun. They had just one blackboard but no pens or paper to write with. The teacher saw me standing and taking this all in so he invited me and explained about how the kids were poor and couldn’t afford to go to a proper school, he explained the lesson he was giving and told me about their ages and other small info like that. I told him that my own father was a teacher and would love to have seen such a phenomenon – kids actually wanting to be in school and wanting to learn!! I took a photo of them all and its one I will defo keep for the scrapbook – if yer lucky I might even throw it up here.

Sunset is a big event here and is the culmunation of most day trippers days before they board the buses back to whereever they came from. There is even a site in town dedicated to the sunset, set up for the travelling hoards. On the side of the mountain they have constructed a fully functional terrace which wouldn’t look out of place on the town side of breffni park – when I was there at least a couple of hundred people stood and cheered, chanted while the sun took its daily dip into the horizon. It was incredibly surreal. I have pictures and I promise I will get them up on this page within the next week.

I stayed for 3 nights in mount abu – its a really enjoyable escape from the craziness that went before and the madness that was to come. Jonas headed on towards jaipur which was due east – unfortunately I was headed due west – onto jodhpur. I met a lovely if a little crazy australian girl called Shari in the hotel who on her summer holidays from college was on a 2 month trip around the sub continent. For the next week or so our plans were pretty much identical so off we headed west into the thar desert.

thanks for all the comments, keep them coming!!!

Phil

Udaipur is a beautiful city. Most of the town is painted white or at least whitewashed. In the middle of the town there is a semi artificial lake which in turn has a very fancy hotel and a palace in the middle of it. The surrounding countryside is a mixture of bony hills and desert wasteland, it really has an Arabian feel to the place. The place where I was staying had this amazing rooftop restaurant which had a nice view over the lake, for the first couple of hours I just sat there and took in the city and the surrounding countryside. The owner of the place immediately set about selling us some local tours to places of interest – I was waaay too tired to contemplate anything stressful after the epic journey from chennai but one place did trigger an interest, Chumblegarh which is a massive fort 84 km north of udaipur. Myself and mal booked a driver to get us up there the following day so we could take it reasonably handy on our first day.

After a while we set out to explore the town itself. Right in the middle there is a jain temple which was okay but nothing too memorable, beside it was the Maharashtra’s palace which was fantastic, if a little crowded. We spent a few hours just wandering around this huge building which had some wonderful views over the city – taking pictures required an expensive fee which being a cavan man was never going to happen but I managed to sneak one or two including one in a room which is designed to look like a hall of mirrors but in fact was just a load of identical rooms joined together, a bit head wrecking at first esp when you are wondering why you cannot see your reflection…

We had an early start the next day so after swallowing a few beers with some aussie guys we met along the way it was off to bed. The drive up to the fort was horrible. The beer here contains glycerol which is a preservative with the added side effect of giving you horrible headaches, on top of that idiot boy decided to skip breakfast in order to get a few more minutes in bed and compounds the misery by taking his malaria medication which as an antibiotic taken on an empty stomach gives you woeful heartburn and nausea. You can imagine what the roads were like… We made it up there after about 2 hours. I had to just sit down for 10 minutes in the car park to get myself together before entering the fort.

The fort itself was amazing. The main structure alone would’ve been worth the trip – perched over a thousand metres up it had wondrous 360 degree views over the local landscape. Surrounding this was a 35km heavily fortified wall giving it massive grounds. There are also 350 individual temples in the complex aswell as a village and individual dwellings that are scattered here and there. These farmer dwellings are very simple very small mud huts with a straw rooftop. The best thing about this place was the lack of tourists, it gets about 100 per day which for the size of it is nothing. The sense of abandonment, kinda like you are after discovering the place yourself. We spent 3-4 hours in this place, you could easily spend more.
On the way back to udaipur we called into another jain temple which was lovely in itself but the fort was too hard an act to follow.

The following day was an easy day for me, mal my aussie travelling companion was heading off to Bikaner in northern rajasthan, I didn’t go because I have more time and there are things between here and there that i want to see. In udaipur it is alot colder than down south, esp after sunset when the temperatures plummet to freezing point. I hadn’t expected this temperature drop so I was freezing my nuts off the first day or two. On this third day I made it my sole mission to buy some decent winter gear. Down to the tibetan market in town (reckoned they should know about chilly weather) where I picked up a granddad cardigan, the dodgiest badaclava every, I commissioned a tailor to make me a jumper out of the thickest material he had in his shop and to top it all off I bought this big granny shawl. In euros this all came to approximately 10 euros. Bargain!!! though the flip side of that is that when fully kitted out I look like I could join the mujahadeen.

I went to a dance performance that night with some kiwi girls i met in the hotel. After the episode in Kerala I was incredibly wary but I was reassured that it was only an hour long so if it was crap I wouldn’t have to endure it that long. It was far from crap though, all the performers were very talented, the spinning, the dancing, one woman balanced 10 pots on her head which in itself is incredibly impressive as the pots together were much taller than herself but on top off that off she goes to do a jig on a carpet covered in broken glass – I mean how do you learn that you can do that?

My last day in udaipur before heading for some trekking in mount abu I took a trip to the monsoon palace which along with the palace on the lake played prominent roles in Octopussy. The monsoon palace was the residence of the baddie and also where roger moore stayed while the palace on the lake was where octopussy and her troop of beautiful but deadly assassins lived – of course I don’t remember this from waay back when I watched it years back – every restaurant in this town showed the film at least once a day – invariably if you walked the streets at around 7 in the evening you would hear the chimes off the bond theme tune, made it all very surreal at times… Back to the monsoon palace, its an 8km walk out of town, the last 3km are along a winding almost vertical road so with the heat it took the guts of 3 hours to make it. Needless to say the view from up top was phenomenal, I would’ve loved to stay for sunset but I don’t like walking out in the desert on my own after nightfall – who knows what might be lurking. Back in town there was a Muslim festival commemorating the death of Mohammed’s nephew in some great battle years back – they run through the streets beating knives off their chest, sometimes drawing blood. Its quite extreme to say the least, I was hanging out with the kiwi girls at this stage and they found this unsettling as there were mobs marauding through the streets and they had heard that some western girls had gotten groped or worse on such occasions before. So we headed out of town for dinner to a place which had a beautiful view of the city at night. The food was amazing there aswell, cashew nut curry. Beautiful!!!

I left udaipur the next morning for mount abu – 6 hour bus, yipee. Though I did get to spend it with this belgian dude called Jonas who no messing is Mark Gaffney. Wait till you see the photos, its freaking me out!!!

later,
Phil

Feeling fully recovered from the little bug that I had picked up I decided that it was time to make the big move up to the north of the country. I had had enough of temples and beaches for the time being – its about time that I saw some deserts and mountains. Getting from the south to the north is an awful lot trickier than you can imagine, I could’ve taken the easy way out and booked a cheap, ryanair style flight from chennai to dehli and do the whole trip in a matter of hours – but that just doesn’t seem right. So I booked a train ticket from Chennai to a town in the middle of Maharastra called Jalgaon which is a good jumping off point for the world famous buddhist caves of Ajanta (Google it).
The train was due to leave chennai at 9.30 the following morning. The two english girls I was hanging out with were also on their way to chennai before heading over to bangalore to catch their flight back to the cold weather in Norfolk. We grabbed the afternoon bus from Mamallapuram to chennai which took about 2 hours. It was a nice spin all along the coast. That night for the first time since st stephens day I was able to have a drink in a bar in chennai, accompanied by the two girls we walked into a place called 35mm (a film reference, which by the way I forgot to mention in the last entry, I got asked twice to appear in a film, as an extra while I was in mamallapuram. The shoot was in a place called paradise beach just north of pondicherry but unfortunately I couldn’t get to it due to my debilitating condition and the need to be monitered by the doctor – majorly bummed about that – reckon it would’ve been legendary!!)
The bars in india are an incredibly seedy affair. First thing you notice is the smoke, and they all smoke like troopers. The second thing you notice is that there are no women – this made the girls feel very uncomfortable esp when nature called. Finally they really skimp on the lightbulbs which leaves the place looking very dark and sinister. Its quite difficult to enjoy yer drink in such occasions but we perservered. The following morning I bade farewell to the girls with promises of couches in norwich, london and wherever I end up in 18 months time. My impressions of chennai are limited to be honest – on the face of it tis hard to distinguish it from other indian cities but one thing I did notice is that the motorcyclists all seemed to wear helmets which definitely makes it unique here…

The train to jalgaon was 24 hours – I travelled sleeper class which basically means you sleep in a 3 tier bunk with no AC, its a basic setup but manageable all the same. Everyone else in the carriage was indian which in a way was nice but sometimes its good to have a westerner there so that you can share your tales from the road.

I arrived in Jalgaon at about 8.30 in the morning and immediately made for the hotel plaza which was right beside the train station. I was knackered at this stage, the train was noisy so I didn’t get the best sleep in the world – all thoughts for a sleep were banished though when I got to the hotel. The most enthusiastic of hotel managers convinced me that it was a much better idea to go see the caves of Ajanta in the morning before the tourist buses get there and that I should jump on the next bus down there – so before I know it I was on a rust bucket full of schoolkids heading towards this mystical caves.

It was one unmercifully hot day – the hottest I have come across so far. It was at least mid 30s – the surrounding terrain was scorched so there was little or no shelter or shade from the sun. The countryside here is full of small rolling hills and flat plains, cotton seems to be the biggest crop with several processing plants spotted en route. The outstanding physical feature is a large set of hills that lie east off the road – sure enough that was where the caves were. It is estimated that they were carved way back in 200-300 AD but they were lost until a british expedition found them at the start of the last century. It puzzled me that they could remain unfound when the hills that they are in are such a dominant feature of the local countryside. Anyways that aside, after beating away the annoying touts I made my way into the river gorge and explored the wonderful caves. There were 26 in total, each like a little chapel dedicated to buddha. The majority of the tourists were indian with some foreigners mixed in for good measure. There were even some buddhist monks in their robes runnign around with their canon taking pictures which I thought was quite funny. To get away from the tourists its possible to take a 45 minute climb up to the top of the gorge to the point where the british expedition originally found this place – it must have been some thrill for them to see it. I can only imagine what it would look like in the middle of the monsoon when the river was at full flow with the waterfalls coming over the top – I sure you can get a little idea what its like from the pictures below.

I got Back to the hotel at about 6 and went straight to bed – knackered. Managed to get my ticket on the following mornings train to Ahmedabad which is the capital of the state of gujarat. I also booked my onward ticked to Udaipur leaving 4 hours after I arrive in Ahmedabad – no point hanging around I figured. The only class available was 2nd class AC – the trip in total would take 22 hours including the layover – so its pretty tough going. I met an australian guy called Mal White on the platform, as chance would have it we were taking the exact same route and he was booked into the bunk just across from me aswell so finally I had someone I could natter away to. The carriage was a major step up from the sleeper carriages, they even provide you pillows and blankets galore, the trouble is that the windows are thick and tinted so it gives you a quite obscured view of whats outside – to be honest it made it look like a nuclear waste ground. (Oh and marie – kites!! Millions of them!!! Every town we passed kids were playing with kites, some national festival. To be honest marie in navan knows more about it than I do so you can ask her 😉 ). I ended up leaving the carriage for quite a while around sunset and sat out on the open step watching the country side go by. It is quite a thrill to suddenly pass over a bridged river as you suddenly get the impression that there is nothing under your feet, you need ot keep a tight grasp on the door handles as it can be disorientating, but totally thrilling it has to be said!!

Ahmedabad is one crazy town. It took myself and Mal 30 minutes to cross the street and walk 20 yards – crazy – there was no footpath – twas like being stuck in a raging orgy of rickshaws buses and bikes – the fumes made the air dense and nausiating. We were looking for an internet cafe but soon gave up that ghost to just find somewhere to eat. We walked down the main street of the town which was mental – people every where, almost got run down at least a million times. I have never seen so many shops that just sell light bulbs, nothing else, light bulbs!! They must be forever getting bright ideas.. We eventually made it to the top of the street and a quick turn right got us to the restaurant that our guidebook recommended. And what a place, it was like a different planet. Twas like putting the four seasons in the middle of jobstown. The food was delicious and so set us up for the journey up to udaipur – the southern gateway to Rajasthan. Completely buggered we arrived at 7 in the morning, I had a recommendation from the english girls to check out Nukkads place in the centre of the old town – one bowl of museli into me and I was off for a much required snooze…

The Ajanta Caves

Try and say that five times, try and remember how to pronounce it so you know when to jump off a chennai bound bus – I had a little difficulty executing this last simple task and ended up having to walk from the local motorway (sound familiar, cough cough 😉 into the small fishing village and only true travellers enclave on the eastern coast of india. I was on the antibiotics at this stage so I wanted to find somewhere middlin fast to stay so I could hole up and get rid of the chest infection.

The first place I saw, I took it. I managed to negotiate a price down from 300 rupees per night down to 200 on the proviso that I would be staying there for a week. Now if you saw this room you wouldn’t put your suckler calfs into this place, had enough after one sleepless night and moved down the road to a much nicer place that was just a tiny bit dearer. It had tv, hot water, it was clean and had access to the swimming pool next door – so I decided to make this my home for a week.

To be honest I didn’t nothing all week – the most strenuous activity involved heading to the back of the town to see the caves, the wonderful rock carvings and watch the sunset over the deccan plains. In the town itself there is a world heritage listed temple that lies just on the shore. It was beautiful – I managed to visit it one evening just before sunset and it trully was a fantastic setting.

For the rest of the week I hung out with the two english girls, invariably getting up at about 12 in the morning before going for some porridge, heading to the beach for an hour or so before grabbing lunch reading a book before getting even more food that night. Sounds like pure slothery and it was but I feel that given the condition I was in that I should be forgiven at least a little bit.

There is this really great medical clinic in mamallapuram which I went into 3 or 4 times to get myself sorted. The main doctor there was this young woman called Indira Gandhi who really went out of her way to look after me. Her nurses were gas, they were all tiny, one of them was micro small. They were running around the place, giving out to each other, dramatically putting hands on hips and stomping their feet. At one stage there was one of them putting drops in my eyes, another taking my blood pressure and another one sticking a thermometer under my tongue. Because my eyes were persistently sore the doctor took a blood test incase I had dengue fever which was pretty common in that area, its a nasty but treatable disease so it was definitely better to be safe than sorry. They had the results in a couple of hours and they just showed up a bacterial infection that I had picked up from either a fellow traveller or an insect bite. Back onto the antibiotics this time for 7 days along with various other pills to protect my stomach and drops for the eyes. I was better within a couple of days.
Paying for this kind of service was also inevitably a unique process. There is no fixed price. The clinic was set up in a travellers enclave intentionally so that they could over charge tourists so that they could treat the poorer more needy people of which there are so many in this country. They were completely honest and upfront about this and their service equalled if not totally surpassed any experience I have had back at home – so I paid them enough to cover the costs of my own medication plus the same amount again which I thought was fair and was gratefully accepted.

The poverty is something which just doesn’t go away – its omnipresent – you see such shocking examples of depravity on a daily/hourly basis, from kids defacating on the streets to whole familys sleeping on the poor excuses for pavements, in mamallapuram it is just as obvious as anywhere – you are never allowed to hide away in your travellers bubble for very long and neither should you. In one of the books I am reading about india the author talks about people developing city eyes where they gloss over this pitch black darkest of elements, I find myself doing this time and time again. It frustrates me sometimes but I reckon its just a defence mechanism, to allow yourself to absorb all that is happening in your environment would be suicide, it would drive you crazy? How can you reconcile yourself with the fact that I am probably carrying enough cash in my money belt than they will see in many many years of living on the streets but biving money to these people is not the best way to deal with the situation, there is a dark sinister element at play which you don’t see or consider when a small child is tugging at your hand and pointing at their malnourished mouth. The sad truth is that this child is just being pimped out by its boss, a slave to some gangster who takes all what they can gather and gives them maybe a handful of rice at the end of the day so that they can go back out on the streets again the following day. I try as a result to give them some food instead, an opened packet of biscuits or a sandwich – something that they cannot sell back to the shop owner in order to garner more rupees for their boss. Its difficult to think of a proper solution that could help these people, they are stuck in a vicious circle to be dependent on these monsters, they may have been kidnapped or orphaned and have no other way of surviving. I have thought about volunteering my time to help at some stage and hopefully I will get the opportunity to give back at some stage. I feel I need to learn a bit more first…

I left mamallapuram with the girls last sunday on the way to chennai. I booked my train up north. In order to get to Rajasthan I would have to get 1 24 hour train to Jalgaon in the state of maharastra, north east of Mumbai – there are some funky caves there that are meant to be really worth the stopover. After one night there I will grab another train this time for 12 hours to the city of Ahmedabad, the capital of Gujurat state, before finally jumping on another train to Udaipur which is the southern gateway to the magnificence that is Rajasthan…

Later,
Phil