One Night Stand

Strikes can be a good or a bad thing.

Good – A thirty yard scorcher into the  top corner. Strike, the early 90’s dance outfit with their smash song ‘U Sure Do’ , and finally when you knock all the pins down at bowling, thoughts creeping into your head that you could be a pro, whilst inexplicably high fiving everyone including the pop-corn kid and looking like a knob.

Bad – when you knock all the pins down at bowling, thoughts creeping into your head that you could be a pro, whilst inexplicably high fiving everyone including the pop-corn kid and looking like a knob. When snakes strike by launching themselves out of bushes and of course, Pete Moores, no sorry Michael PeterBarrymoores heinous game show, Strike it lucky.

For me they are an everyday occurrence.

After a night amongst a snoring symphony, I disembarked feeling radiant (angry), destination in theory Darjeeling, STRIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIKE 1 – In a complete reverse of the Man from Del Monte’s famous speech, the people from the hills say ‘NO’, they’ve helped the tourists though by putting on some entertainment and calling a ‘bandh’, nice one! That was until someone explained it meant ‘strike’. Resisting the urge to ‘strike’ out at the nearest cheery morning person, we then attempted to go to Sikkim, ”its open, great”, but the roads are blocked by the first bunch of angry Indians…..

So ended up in Shillong (schlong), a haven to nature, waterfalls and supposedly the rainiest place on planet earth! It seems precipitation was also on strike when we were there, as not a splash of rainfall…..Further to this the only thing waterfall-esque and cascading was what I’m sat on right this instant…

Newsburst. Had a go at being a taxi announcer, shouting shillong, schlong, shillong and it finally appeared the rain had arrived, although in the form of tea cups and cabbages, outbreak of birdflu (chicken for tea last night BAKAAAAAAAAA , no, that’s probably mad cow disease – um yes tangent).  Someone found a hand grenade and before the chief officer could dispose of it safely, one of his subordinates, hid it in some sand….(mental note, no more sandcastle building). Took a tour to see some root bridges, made of, um, roots. Mr Richard, our driver, drove us around for 3 hours including to the Bangladesh border before sheepishly turning around, laughing and admitting he had no idea where they were – Striiiiiiiiiike 3. Mr ‘Dick’off the Christmas card list. (Nice joke for the ladies), Men and not asking for directions, eh!

Oh well at least I had the Cabbage Cup Final to look forward to, hotel with tv – check, beer – check, curtains to nibble on when nails had gone – check, Chelsea goalkeeper- cech! So settled down and then Striiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiike 4, the hamster running the wheel on the generator had ambled off moaning that he hadn’t been given enough pellets or hadn’t had his whiskers trimmed recently. POWERCUT! The fat cheeked sod.

I WAITED PATIENTLY FOR 13 SECONDS BEFORE (darn) before asking the hotel owner in marvin gaye vocal  ”what’s going on”, ‘oh power cut sir, in a years time there won’t be any more ( a year, a year…..we won’t win anything for another 30). So i saT SULKINg wandering what to do besides sulk. Much sulking later and the game was long finished, as was I with India. Then at 11.45pm IST the TV came back on. Striiiiiiiiiiiiiiiike 5 , my motor functions gave up, I couldn’t even press the channel 63 into the remote, 3,6,36,366,663….

Thinking we’d lost. I looked for confirmation, only to catch the last 30 seconds of e.t. (extra time, not the brown midget alien), my roommate was woken by me frantically mouthing silent swear words and shaking the remote control with such vigour that it sounded like a maraca show. Woo hooooooooooooooooooooooooooo, only briefly saw the goals and none of the game, but we won, we won, we won, we won.

Thanks for listening (ignoring) that.

Back to the aptly named Silli-guri and another attempt at Darjeeling, via a night train, should’ve heeded the warning when the man opposite started doing nasal exercises followed by a thinly veiled threat from his wife ‘don’t you dare’, he dared alright, he dared to attempt a rhino’s mating call with his nostrils till 5 in the morning. It narked me off so much that I ended up following into my own routine of punching, poking and then pretending to be asleep every 5 minutes, so much poking in fact that I felt like a facebook stalker or weiner! At last the blockade and strike was over, not for Darjeeling mind, but for my backside, three toilet rolls in 24 hours and not a single blow of the hooter, say no more.

Another night train, another meeting for the ‘Institute of Snoring Research’ this time they’d assembled there loudest snorers in the sub-continent’ to see how many decibels could be reached, whether the train would de-rail and how an innocent subject would react, well I reacted by answering one of Austin Powers legendary questions ‘Who throws a shoe anyway?’ The answer was me, well more precisely a flip flop, Striiiiiiiiiiiiiike 6, in your snoring face.

February 29^th, Leap Year, my hammock leaped out of my sight into a street kids bag. Wow, what are the chances (1 in 4)…

Varanasi, then and quite an amazing place, here a sideshow bob look-alike warranted more attention than a naked Indian man brushing his teeth with his fingers. Life and death here is played out around the mighty River Ganges. Bathing and washing are commonplace in the river, but so is Burning of the dead on the ghats by the side of the river, walking down the narrow alleys you were sometimes pinned either by bulls or a funeral procession with the dead carried on a stretcher. I took this as a good time to do my laundry and have since had 9 re-incarnations and a strange desire to run up to cows and call them divine. Luckily the bulls saw through my ”possessed” guise and continued to hate me. Thinking I’d successfully walked past one without so much as an angry snort, I laughed to myself, instinctively the bull flicked his tail right in my bullocks! One of the highlights here is taking a boat ride to view the Ganges and ghats in their full glory, guess what? But noooooooooooo, Striiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiike 7, the boatowners had to go and screw it up (thanks goonies). Enough strikes, I’m out of here, onto one final night train and I swear one of the ‘snorers’ stuck an amplifier, a ferry coming into dock and a  bean can up his nose, tied some string to another bean can, and then put that one in my ear…

I’m now on holiday from my holiday in Russia, sorry I mean Goa. Ended up having a ramble in Arambol, a hippy enclave in the 60’s  now bearing more than a striking resemblance to an Ivan Drago training camp…

(Note: For this section please imagine Russian accent)

(Not yet…) There seems to be a huge stand off developing between the ruskies and the hippies, with the sickle and hammer folk, walking around going (Now…) ‘what is, hurghppy ‘, whilst the hippies, bemoaning them for ruining the vibe and possibly controlling the weed monopoly. The ladies seem to think they’re here for the ‘Smirnoff calendar’ doing all these seductive poses i.e. lying in the sand rubbing their boobs, whilst boyfriend built like a small tractor, mouths,(Again…) ‘argggh good, more breast veronica, more breast’ (or something). There you go my daily observation, think I’ve been in the sun too long today, wibbldy whoopa. I’ve been running the last two days, much to the disgust of the blissed out hippies (think the Russians like it though, (Do accent now) ‘arggghh good, boy make quick run,’ even more so when I mumbled that my legs killed (one more time…) ‘whaaaaaaaaat this good , legs that kill. you make fine comrade)

It’s not all lying around though waiting for theRussian mafia to put a horses head next to me as I sunbathe, the hippies are fighting back with such pastimes as….

Re-birthing??? What on earth, how could that possibly work, I mean sure the skin loosens over a periods of time (striiiiiiiiike 8 – good taste) but a fully grown human would never fit back inside, especially with all those beads and dreadlocks.

Past Life Chanelling???? Turning your past life into TV channels? Sounds good, where’s the address for channel 5.

Re-awakening????? with, wait for it, Damiano! The blokes blatantly called Damien and just added an ‘o’ to make him sound cool and spiritual. Don’t know why anyone would want to be re-awakened, I’m pretty angry the first time round.

So, my tan is ace but don’t worry I’m still getting punished for my indulgence. Having fallen asleep yesterday to the sound of crashing waves soothing my soul of its entirety of bad vibes (thanks Damiano) a freak wave rolled over me, casting me afloat, feeling a bit like Kate Winslet on that door (in my case a sarong) in Titanic, I turned to not see Leonardo Di Crapio, but  an Indian chap smiling at me, do you know what he said?

 ‘ big wave, wet huh’….

 ‘Really? I didn’t see it? I said, picking the seaweed from my nostrils and hermit crabs from my ears….

That’s it then, last day in Smelly Delhi today…

Much Spiritual Love Briggs(o)

Xxx (not kisses or a Vin Petrol film, but another three strikes…)

And so begins the holiday from a holiday, just me, lots of dogs And-a-man (budum tisch!)

I suppose I should’ve heeded the warnings on the flight from India to the Andamans Islands, as I watched the two pilots exchanging pleasantries and handing over newspapers outside of the cockpit before disappearing inside the toilet for 10 minutes each. Then it kind of clicked, what the? Who was actually flying the plane………….?

Arrived in Port (Tony/Lionel) Blair and got a taste of stardom as I began to appreciate what it must be like to be famous and be hands on with fans. The only problem being I’m not famous and the fan was attached to the roof, I put my hand in it and spurted claret everywhere. Ouch.

Visited a jail built by the British to house any Indians with thoughts of independence or freedom from British rule, Seems we were a bit naughty up to only 80 years ago…Still didn’t seem to bother an Indian family outside who tried to marry me off to their daughter in exchange for email addresses and a few photo’s. Also saw Ross (from friends) Island, expecting a Jurassic Park type paleontology fest, was disappointed to see more British rule now being pooed on by deer and pea(poo?)cocks (hold on, isn’t peacocks a bit rude).

Um, yep. So to Havelock, where we were assured security wouldn’t be a problem….

The whole idea was to get away from the human zoo that is India, away from the beggars, touts and traffic. Seemingly though the Andamans (still belonging to India) had other ideas, sure human hassle was low, but I hadn’t counted on the animals, who decided that I wouldn’t be able to relax and they were going to gang up on me in some form of animal karma.

1) The Cockerel. (or cock)

I had a cockerel living under my beach hut which as you can imagine is f*cking terrific if you like being woken at precisely 5.14am. The beaked twerp couldn’t even be bothered to complete his sentences i.e. “cockle-doodle-d…….oh bollocks, that’ll do, it’s too early, I’ve probably done enough to wake that hippy above me up”.

2. Bulls (again)

I tried to make amends with the bull fraternity after a previous nasty altercation by taking one’s picture as he lie basking in the sun. He doesn’t like that, hops to his trotters and starts ambling over for a ruck, leaving me ambling quick smart over to my bicycle.

3. Snakes

Strolling down to the beach and singing along with the birds, I heard a rustle in the leaves , good maraca accompaniment  I thought, until I realised the musician in question was a big hairy (ok, not hairy) snake. Even though green I assumed it wasn’t good for the environment and threw sticks at it, until it turned, angrily rearing up (at least I think it did, I was long gone, screaming like a banshee as I ran for the beach).

4. Clown fish

Yes, the one’s from Nemo. Completely humourless. They confront you if you snorkel above their dens, bases, homes in protection of Nemo’s. Easily shoed away by a flailing limb, they return seconds later with a nasty stare in order to protect their offspring and future star’s for ‘Finding Nemo 2: Here’s over there behind the Sea Cucumber ’’.

5. Hermit crabs

Far from being agoraphobes, they love the outdoors and can sniff out a samosa from 500m away. They encroach on your beach spot with the goal of nabbing a spicy snack. Then when you spot them, they simply hide in their shells. Oh, yep, of course, no hermit crabs round here, no one’s moving, just these shells. You turn away and there they are, inching forward again. The best fun was to confuse them by then placing the samosa behind them, causing all sorts of direction arguments between the male and female species. Life here is a bit simple.

6. Dogs

The animal world aggrieved. This was all too much for the dogs. Having shown off to other travelers about my method for losing a pack of chasing dogs ‘a neat cut across them with a bicycle….’ As per usual on my cycle home from the beach I pass a pack of dogs, all content licking their balls and sniffing each others bums until I whiz past, sure enough the whirling of wheels and smell of fresh sunburnt skin, sets off some small alarm in their head and say’s ‘íll chase that’…

Usually I laugh, and let them run alongside safe in the knowledge I have the bike swerve up my sleeve, I pull it out and yes, he’s gone, woo-hoo. I look down and he’s on the other side, snapping and snarling, Scooby dooby do-n’t do that. Fear increasing, I pedal faster swerving from side to side, strangely, he loves this, leaving me wandering if my legs are insured or indeed, coated in winalot. Then salvation, a local bus and leg freedom for me foreveeeeeeeer. Absolutely, unbelievably, the barking must have been a message to a bug who commits harikari by flying straight into my eye. If he survived the impact surely he would have drowned as the tears began to well in my eyes. My eyes blurred, the bus honked, I closed my good eye, partly to stop the bus driver thinking I was winking at him and partly to accept my fate as a huge human cake mould on the side of Andaman Island public transport. Whoosh – and like a kid kissing a girl with braces, I could taste the metal. No re-arranged face, no dog hanging from my knee caps, I went to bed that night clutching a WWF application (the animal one, not the hulk Hogan fan club).

(I’m going to write to Lilt – with this as an idea for an advert. The dog drinks some lilt spies a tourists and then gives chase benny hill style up and down palm fringed hills – slogan – keeps the tourists fresh/cool.) See I’m not being lazy out here.

It could be you…..The islands dangers were not yet over though as every once in a while a snapping sound can be heard, followed shortly by a huge crashing sound. Fireworks? bull charges? Snake drum classes? No, coconuts falling and crashing indiscriminately on huts, dinner plates and supposedly 150 unlucky humans a year.

Butterflies surround you, lots. Making you think you’re in a Timothei advert.

Everyone rides around with construction hats on making you wonder where the giant construction site is. Turns out they are just cheaper than bike helmets.

Did some diving which was great, using the aquariums description of fish to help identify them. The following are all true(ish)

The Trigger (Ryan Baker) fish. Apparently difficult to swallow, true – kept swimming away and eating almost everything – false didn’t fancy my fin.

Guitar fishes – look and sound nothing like guitars.

The Grouper fish, is slightly slimy (true – kept swimming up to other fish open mouthed – expecting a snog?) and has the ability to reverse sex (not a new position – to change organs (not musical).

The Cake star, whilst also being a good name for a band has no anus and therefore expels poo from its mouth.

The Lobster, so called because they are great at lobbing the octopus (keeper) in fish football matches.

Also saw shark, turtle (not teenage anymore, but still hero as opposed to ninja), sea snake and octopus who had his hands in many pies and a Sting Ray (the reverse of Sting’s real name: Ray Sting).

Diving continued as we took on the locals at football, all keen to demonstrate how hard and far they could kick the ball before all swarming after it. Every time our team got within a sniff of goal the opposition elder/captain/bully called offside, picked up the ball, booted the free-kick into mars/oblivion and sat back with a satisfied grin, arms folded across his chest. Sensing injustice, I was about to thread an intricate through ball to the village kid, who up until now and had been twiddling his thumbs. Then I noticed the big bully go to raise his arm, thinking he wasn’t about to test his b.o. levels for the day, I neglected the pass and simply ran the whole length of the field, with only rick wallers brother to beat, I gently nutmegged him and began to dart around the side, that was until I was body checked and ended up scratching my head amongst a herd of goats. He wanted to play on, I wanted on elephant to sit on him.

Ended up on (Martin O) Neil Island where it appeared that the animals had stolen my valentines cards. Again hired a bike (Edgar) and thought of more advertising slogans for the Andaman Tourist board.

‘The Andamans, where life is so slow, you don’t need brakes’. This of course applied to bicycles, where I was confronted by a man pulling a cart, being the friendly tourist I moved over down a grass verge before applying some pressure on the brakes. They’d only gone and kept to their word. Tw*ts. Now veering between chickens, bemused farmers and goats, I tried to maintain the friendly tourist by waving whilst careering towards a cow, wide eyed in disbelief. He barely offered a moo as I abandoned bike and extinguished the smoke from my flip flops.

As in many Indian cities you are usually greeted by the sight of lots of bare bums as you enter train stations etc. Thinking it a bit rude, I suffered a similar problem and had to rush to the roadside with only a wicker basket to cover my modesty. Surprisingly ravers didn’t gather and start having it as it appeared to be a full moon party with my pearly white buttocks as the disco light.

Soooooooooo, a great time then. Back in India now and the city of Kolkata. Nothing has changed, a friendly local today asked me if I was here alone. ‘Yes, I’m traveling alone’. I I replied…‘Why, do you not have many friends’, he asked genuinely.  Stifling laughter and sadness, I replied ‘according to facebook yes, right now, no. Will you be my friend? And that was it, buddies for life.

This morning I got caught in a thunder storm, again still suffering with a stummy upset. Lacking toilet paper, I instead used sheets from my diary, taking special care to wipe on the lightening flashes, so to illuminate my behind and not get paper cuts as I jumped on each of the claps of thunder. So, whilst it’s not all fun and games I suppose I’m learning some worldly stuff over here and I’m now terrific at Frisbee.

Sorry, all of the above is longer than a roll of soft, strong and long Andrex which was so ironically missing this morning.

 Off to Darjeeling now, a bit like Captain Planet I’m taking (temperature as opposed to pollution) down to zero and leaving this 28 degree heat behind. Good job I packed all those thermals…..um.

Peace, love and Imodium.

Animal lover Briggsy xxx