Eastern European Tiki Tour

For Mark Mugabe’s leaving do a group of us went on an all singing all drinking tour of Eastern Europe in one day: Budapest (2 nights), Slovakia (bus ride through), Krakow (2 nights because the flight got delayed due to a recurring theme in this post: snow). Much mayhem and stacking of things.

Barcelona

Marieke’s whirlwind visit of England wouldn’t have been complete without visiting the continent, first we were off to Paris, then to Prague, but we finally settled on Barcelona. Bolting on Emily and Karl made it a merry little band – a pity the pound decided to tank just that week to a 1:1 parity with the Euro. Damn you bankers and your elaborate financial mechanisms!

Back to New Zealand

Well almost not back to New Zealand. England obviously didn’t want me to leave and proceeded to dump Russian snow all over the South of England the day before my flight. What made great snowballs and an atmospheric romantic leaving dinner above the Thames on a Sunday evening made for canceled trains, commuter mayhem, closed airports and Francis being the most stressed he has been in a very long time. Fortunately good ole faithful Royal Brunei Airlines pulled through or rather out of Heathrow Airport, and I was on my merry way to summery New Zealand. Damn you Europe and your proper winters!

Once safe and sound in Wellington I promptly submitted my migrant visa application for England and then climbed the tallest mountain in New Zealand outside of the Southern Alps – very big thanks family for organising that! I also proceeded to burn my pasty white English arse in the 35 degree heat that has been roasting Victoria. Fortunately the walk was along a river for two of the three days and much time was spent splashing about and cooling off.

Following that was a brief period of Yetibureau work, followed by much drinking in the sun at the Marlborough Wine Festival. I am on a mission to get match my skin to my hair colour -at least my shirt is a complementary contrast. Not only did the family get royally happy on wine, but Mieke and I managed to grace the front page of the Marlborough Express with our inebriated antics. Damn you Marlborough and your really really really good wine and parochial small town papers! But hooray for no snow!

Monday back at the BBC, I entered the new Media Centre building to which my department had finally moved. It was lovely to see everyone, but I spent the day in a surreal head space. Compared to the dirty and poverty stricken, sh#t covered, cow laden, teeming streets of India I had landed on the moon. The new building is all gleaming steel, hot-desking with swivel monitors, themed meeting rooms and relaxation couches. The wealth and excess is obscene in comparison. Nobody is trying to hassle me, nobody is going hungry (properly hungry), I don’t have to try and rationalise any injustices which occurred almost every moment in India.  While in India I switched off a part of me seeing such suffering almost everywhere right alongside those with wealth. Reading the Indian papers regarding climate change was eye opening.  America and many developed nations argue that developing nations must also fulfill their Kyoto obligations, but to see how simply living in India is a daily struggle for most of its inhabitants makes a mockery of hardship as known in the developed nations. There is no way that India can combat anything environmentally if developed nations cannot even bring themselves to doing it.

India is not one country, but many peoples jammed together due to the flow of history. Before travelling to India I believed that Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (Mahatma Gandhi) was the founder of the modern Indian state. Having experienced the diversity and reading Sunil Khilnani’s ‘The Idea of India’, the real founder of modern India was Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Indian Prime Minister. He was elected for three terms and it is his legacy of a secular state, modern India, and cosmopolitan and pluralism (and of course cricket – many Indians know all of the New Zealand cricket team players by heart) which defines India today. There are twenty three official languages and over one thousand regional languages and dialects spoken within its borders. Nehru attempted to prevent one religious, ethnic or class group from dominating such a diverse populace, and the state attempted affirmative action programs, secularisation of government departments and the creation of a civil service. These of course have created rub within India, riots and killings over affirmative action for the ‘untouchables’, the lowest castes, have occurred. India is the largest democracy in the world and has a mixed economy with capitalist markets and strong socialist institutions. The government owns most of the banks, power and oil companies, the national railways is the largest employer in the world with 1.6 million employees. A regular sign outside businesses is how they match their relevant government regulations and are ‘official’ or ‘legitimate’ in the eyes of the government.

I have also lost four kilograms since leaving England, and all of that was due to India. I am currently a warmed up skeleton, and when my golden tan disappears because of another crap English summer I will look like one of the Mexican skeletons during their day of the dead festival.

Travelling to India has changed me forever. If you asked me if I enjoyed it I wouldn’t say yes. If you asked me if I hated it I wouldn’t say no. Given the opportunity again, would I take it? Definitely.

Morning finally came and liberated me, and I was not looking forward to the nice hotel mission which I had said I would undertake: apparently I was to find a nice hotel for the four of us (Olly, Whetu, James who would be returning on Friday and I). A happy coincidence in the Vivek put an end to that. As I was walking down the stairwell with my pack, James who had prematurely returned to Delhi and had just spent the night on the same floor noticed the redness disappearing down the steps and chased after me. We faffed about in the morning a bit, so that I could go to the doctors and get prodded and a massive course of drugs (four blister packs of goodness). James and I have very similar travel styles (at least when it comes to monuments) and we began our two day grand tour of Delhi. Of course we first had to go to the Vedi tailors again and purchase some more tailor made shirts – man are they a bargain. We then spent a few hours running around Delhi Museum checking out how Indian civilisation began and flourished over 3000 years ago. It really hits home how Western centric museums in the West are, I cannot wait to visit China and Japan to see the history that has occurred there.

Over the two days we visited Safdarjung’s Tomb, Khan Market, the Qutub Minar, Humayun’s Tomb, India Gate, and I explored the Red Fort whilst James got lost in the alley bazaars of Old Delhi.

On the first day we wandered looking for carpets at government emporiums, I had seen two very minted silk carpets in Leh and I was hoping to get a better deal in Delhi. Fat chance, the driver refused to take us to our correct destination and instead kept dropping us at fake emporiums which as it turns out give a one kilo CNG voucher to the drivers if the bring tourists to them. The first place he took us to we complained and said that wasn’t where were trying to go, so he took us to another one which we couldn’t tell if it was real or not. Turns out it wasn’t when we finally found the Government State Emporiums. The difference being in price and quality, at the dodgy emporiums the goods are the same price but of poorer quality. However nobody that we could find had any decent carpets, so at present I am hoping Mudassir will bring me two back the two I saw at a family friends shop in Leh (if you are reading this Mudassir).

During our penultimate night in Delhi, James and I were walking through the central park at Connaught Place on the way to QBA again whilst waiting to pick up suits and shirts. We followed an Indian guy in climbing over a fence and got the best comment of the trip. Three locals were sitting on a step watching us about to leap over the barrier. The first yelled out “You can’t do that” to which is friend replied “Yes he can, he can do what he likes. This is India”. Multiple fingered personalities and anything goes sums up my Indian experience.

Friday night came and Olly and Whetu joined us at the hotel from Jaipur. They said they had a really good time yet Whetu still remained sick. As of this writing I don’t know if he has recovered, fortunately I feel as if I am on the tail end of the Delhi belly. It may not go away on its own however. Saturday morning saw Olly and me haggling taxis and having one last crazy trip to Delhi International. Whetu was supposed to have one more week in India but spat the dummy and rescheduled his flight for very early Saturday morning. James was the last to leave Delhi on the Sunday, and looked rather jet lagged at work on Monday. The flight was relatively uneventful, Olly and I talked crap and watched movies for ten hours. Kindly he and his parents let me crash at their place in Surrey before heading back London by train on Sunday morning.

Once ’safely’ in Delhi we negotiated our pre-paid taxi fare and headed of to the essential Parah Ganj again. Being old hand and having been chauffeured around for the previous two weeks in Ladakh I felt right in my element. On the way our taxi got a flat tire in the middle of the road, a friendly passing policeman made our driver stop changing it in the middle of rush hour traffic and pull over to the side. We clapped after the twenty minutes it took the driver to change the tire, he didn’t seem to want or need our help. Talk about feeling like tourists, bags strewn on the side of the road next to a beaten up old taxi on a jack with ‘the driver’ frantically trying to fix it. My notions of what is ‘ethical’ are in trouble right at this moment.

Parah Ganj was Parah Ganj, still the delightful sh#t hole that I left. We checked into the Vivek Hotel and proceeded to wander around Delhi. First stop was the Vedi tailors where I was getting VS to make my beautiful suits! I had to go for a fitting and incidentally (but unsurprisingly) everyone who was there went mental buying tailor made shirts for a tenner (R1000s) each. Whetu Olly and I then rushed as fast as our little legs could carry us to the local MacDonalds at Connaught Place, the little Capitalist whores that we are. Sean protested vigorously and refused to step inside but there was no stopping us. Check our disappointment when we discovered (of course this is India) that there was no cow on the menu. Many varieties of chicken and vegetarian, they had Filet-o-Fish although Delhi is quite far from the sea… There was no Big Mac, rather a Maharaja Mac which consisted of what I think consisted of separate chickpea and chicken patties with a curry style secret Mac sauce. Thankfully I also ordered a Mc Chicken chaser which got rid of the Maharaja.

We then caught an auto-rickshaw ride with Sean’s behind hanging out of the side as in Delhi they only seat three, supposedly although we have seen at least five people not including the driver at times. On the journey a young girl deftly inserted her hand into his back pocket whilst charging through an intersection at speed. The talent, the skill, only to be thwarted by an empty pocket. The insurgents are everywhere.

The first stop was the Jama Masjid in Old Delhi which is the largest mosque in Delhi. I was suitably impressed although the fees for entrance, camera, shoe and then climbing the minaret tower for what was essentially a free religious building took the shine off. None of us at least payed the con artist at the toilets outside the mosque for their use. The view from the top of the minaret was amazing revealing Old Delhi as five storey buildings covered in dust, wires, rubbish and monkeys as far as the eye can see. Skyscrapers Delhi has very few of.

The Jama Masjid shine began to wear off, and as we were walking though the winding back streets of Old Delhi soaking up alleys of auto-parts, stationary or beads Sean and Olly decided to get a shave, and then facial massages. After waiting fourty minutes, Whetu did the sensible thing and got a massage as well. I however proceeded to swear angrily at the amount of time it was all taking and dive into a sulk. I wasn’t expecting to react in such a way, but turns out I have got quite used to travelling on my own at a pace I like. I got over it, I am sure they have too. Thankfully I became more aware of my travel sensibilities from then on. Travelling with other people is like an intense short term relationship, it involves a lot of ups, downs, stresses and compromises. Where in Ladakh Mudassir bore all of the stresses of organising things, here it was down to us kids to sort ourselves out. I think we did alright.

Our final destination, the Red Fort was shut of course, being a Monday, so we went back to Connaught Place looking for something to eat. Before finding a restaurant we stumbled across QBA, a bar that wouldn’t have been out of place in London. Its air-conditioned, leather seated goodness, half price happy hour beers until 7.30pm and Blade Runner-esque golden sundown through half closed blinds aesthetic catapulted us out of the reality that was a stairway away. Our discussions revolved initially around the incongruous and obscene when compared to the average Indians monthly salary luxury we were experiencing until the beers started flowing and then we just talked about films and crap.

Beyond the dust covered hordes working on building a better future we arrived back in Leh for two more days of rest and relaxation. The New Zealand boys (as they came to be known: Andrew, Ajay, Karl and James) proceeded, as it later turned out, to get conned by none other than the Air Deccan travel agent in Leh into believing that their flights hadn’t been correctly booked through Air Deccan. All up they probably lost one hundred and fifty pounds each, and it was also the most ingenious of the con jobs that the insurgents had come up with so far – kudos to them. None of this ‘the tourist office is that way crap’ – the elaborate scam works much better.

Some where in the middle of all of the chaos of biking and sh#tting and fighting and dust and noise and killing was a sanctuary called the Book Shop Cafe. In its relaxing eaves we read Tintin and Mudassir explained his belief and understanding of Islam. The discussions were enlightening, as my knowledge of Islam was very near nothing and mostly deliciously ignorant. As far as Mudassir explained Islam is an aesthetic appreciation of the Universe, based on this beauty is a very good method for living a wholesome and fulfilling life, in that it provides meaning, passion, beauty, life and death as ones wholeness of being. I am sure I have misrepresented very long and passionate discussions, but if anything I have least learnt the blatant falsity and misrepresentation that occurs in much of the Western media. Whilst they cannot be entirely blamed for this, and a quick look at how the West is portrayed in the Hindustan Times or Times of India is hilarious – we are all sex mad Christian religious nuts who have way too much money, our media certainly has no high horse on which to ride.

Religion in India at least on the surface appears to be quite different to Christianity in the West. Where Christianity is something that a person does, believes in or affiliates with; Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, Janism and the plethora of other religions in India appear to be lived and breathed by the population as both spiritual philosophies and as inevitable as gravity. Shrines are attached to every taxi, truck and building, cows walk the streets and get prayed to, half naked men walk draped in robes through train stations without causing a second look and the editorial pages wax on about the interconnectedness of life and the inevitability of death. Christianity and religion may becoming irrelevant in Western societies, but god is far from dead in the East.

Before heading back to Delhi, Will, Olly and I decided to spend our penultimate day day rafting on the Indus River. Whilst it was only grade two rapids it provided a good adrenalin rush and a welcome change from the bikes. Plus it only cost R1000 for most of a day and lunch. At one point we all jumped in the river and swam alongside the raft, a bit disconcerting when you have no idea what is coming around that next bend. At the end of the trip we played volleyball with an odd mixture of river guides and English school kids. It is possibly the last thing I would have expected to be doing if you had have asked me eight months previously.

Our Mission, which we had foolishly chosen to accept was to ride from Leh to Kargil; over two hundred kilometres in four days across a variety of terrain, the highway being in varying degrees of disrepair. Gravity was on our side as Leh is 3500 metres and Kargil is only(!) 2704 metres above sea level. However there was still plenty of room for big ups.

On day one we stopped for lunch at a town called Saspool where there was an ancient Buddhist temple with a five metre gold plated Buddah. Unfortunately but unsurprisingly we weren’t allowed to take photos of the Buddah. More impressive than he however were the cases and cases of manusccripts written over centuries by the monks that had inhabited the monastery. As with many monasteries in Ladakh now, migration from the villages into the cities has meant that the smaller monasteries are becoming little more than tourist attractions or plain abandoned as the monks move to the larger ones. So much human endeavour essentially encased forever to be rarely if ever read, to me as a bibliophile seems a travesty. Then again, are the works important as immemorial texts or is it the act of writing them and the value that they had for the authors.

At the end of day two was a monster of an uphill with fourteen switch backs. Feeling physically great for the first time since I was in Ladakh I stuck on my headphones, blasted Iron & Wine (thanks Dave) and slogged my way up. At the top of the hill I stopped at a bridge in the middle of a long straight for a breather. An army truck approached from behind and I pushed myself  off the bridge so it could easily get past. As the truck over-took me, the passenger in the middle spat out the window at me – I watched the phlegm fly right in front of my face. As the truck drove on I could see said middle passenger turning around looking back at me. I would be very interested to know exactly why this army dude was so offended by my being there, and a subsequent argument I had with the wise Sean over the incident revealed that whilst it might not be expected behaviour, he expects there to be rub when very different peoples are mixing.

Day three was spent stopped at Lamayuru. By the end of day two more of our party were in the support vehicles with a concoction of illnesses than were riding bikes. It was spent as a mixture of wandering around the village, playing Kings and Arseholes or Brahmins and Dahlits as it became known, eating and sleeping. I had my brand new sunglasses thieved by a four legged fiend and I don’t care how cute that bloody little puppy was, I wanted to perform a ‘look in the dog’ operation on its cute sunglass consuming belly. More fool me for forgetting that it was loitering waiting for the optimal moment to strike and I leaving my bag unzipped at the top. At least it took the glasses and not my passport. Turns out it had a penchant for books as James was lucky to nab it just at it tried to get a hold of his diary and run off.

It was also in Lamayuru that Will, a nice lad from Sussex who went to Oxford learnt about his alter-ego ‘Whetu’, who went to Waikato Polytechnic, got a degree in hospitality, has set up franchises of children with different mothers (three at the last count) and loves nothing better to do than watch rugby and drink beer. I am not sure what inspired the construction, whether it was Whetu’s ability to utter only mono-syllables, is capacity for accents or the complete incongruous contrary notion of the whole thing. I think people just got bored.

The last day turned into holiday breaking point. Instead of doing the leg spread across two days we were now attempting it in one. This meant an early start, but unfortunately for Whetu, he came down with the worst sickness this day and delayed us by two hours. He tried soldiering on up the first incline but within half an hour had the last part of his cycling trip driven away. As the day progressed his stomach pains got worse and worse until we had to send the van on ahead to Kargil where he could get proper medical treatment.

By around 2pm we managed to reach the mid-point of our journey at Mulbekh where we would have been spending the third night. An eight hundred year old carved Buddah greeted us for lunch, but unfortunately for him none of us were in an appreciating mood. As the second leg started ‘Red Fox’ aka Andrew (each of our bikes had some inspirational wild animal plus adjective name) and his toe clips started to set an intense pace. Andrew had been in diarrhoea hell up until this point and only on this day did his true colours start to shine. Unfortunately for everyone the third rest day had meant that we had consumed most of the water and proceeded to completely run out 15km from the finish line. Chaos ensued and what was supposed to be an epic trip turned into and epic trip plus seething slow burning pain and anguish. Hmmmmm… India isn’t easy.

The final ride into Kargil at sunset was epic. The town of Kargil is predominantly Muslim and on the other side of the river to our approach. As we were descending towards it the initial view of the river valley, city and surrounding mountains forced us to stop and absorb. The road was equally spectacular in its ability to be the main road between Leh and Kargil yet remain a completely destroyed dirt track. Apparently in two or three years time the road is going to be a two lane each way highway but right now I am not seeing that happening. The hotel at the end of the journey had hot water (an Indian luxury) and curry which made for not-eating on my part. At about this stage I have begun to spit the dummy on curry for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Not only cannot I not either hold down, stomach or prevent from pissing sh#t, but just the smell makes me feel nauseous.

The trip down Khardung La was exhilarating to say the least. Safety concerns meant that I didn’t quite open it up as much as I could – during all of the days cycling I saw three trucks lying at the bottom of Ladahki ravines – but it was a crazy downhill experience none the less. What quantifies as the world’s highest (or contestably second highest) pass for the last fifteen kilometres is nothing but a dirt road complete with streams, pot holes, giant bicycle breaking boulders and freakish hair pin corners. Adrenalin city. At one point I overtook an army truck that had left before we began our descent to the cheering and waving of the military men crammed in the back. At the half way base camp I got a few claps and salutes, I must have looked somewhat insane. Given that I had no energy to peddle uphill, the down acted as some form of cathartic release – I am free and flowing through the universe!

Then the days blurred into each other, lying in bed next to Olly, both of us wondering why the hell we were in India. I half expected the baby from Trainspotting to come out crawling along the roof as we rotated turns with the bathroom for projecting from which ever end was necessary. Having sleep interrupted every hour at a high altitude is prime hallucinatory territory. The first day where I was really sick I couldn’t tell when I was asleep and dreaming or awake, the day became one morass of suffering. Each night at around  two am as people deserted the streets, packs of wild dogs would begin roaming and howling through the town. The screams and death throes of unfortunate old cows or donkeys would peel through the night transporting us straight to the eight circle of Hell. The night after Khardung La, and having just thrown up a mouthful of curry at the dinner table which I had foolishly tried to eat, I decided that it wasn’t something that was ‘just going to go away’. Fran gave me a course of informal anti-diarrhoea medication which had the effect of a Delhi traffic rule. The following morning I went to a doctors who prescribed me what turned out to be ultra-heavy duty antibiotics and after one day I was back to some form of regularity. Just in time as then began the proper cycle: four days and over two hundred kilometres from Leh to Kargil.

Back row: Will (aka Whetu), Olly, Mudassir.
Front row: Fran, Ella, Sean, James (aka Jim), Ajay (aka Andy), Andrew (aka Red Fox), Karl.

The time spent in Leh was a blur of diarrhoea, reacting to the high altitude and mountain biking. The first day all was well. I unloaded my stuff and met up with the rest of the crew: Mudassir and Fran, Sean and Ella, Olly, Will, James, Andrew, Carl and Ajay.  I managed to walk with the others to the Shanti Stupar, a Buddhist shrine created in the 1980s by Japanese Buddhists. Lunch was a delicious palak paneer, which is a spinach and cottage cheese curry. In the afternoon we explored the north of the village, which when compared to the town centre seemed positively clean and quiet.

Leh is a town of around thirty thousand people in the summer (when the snows and rivers don’t make it inaccessible) and is fast becoming the tourist destination of far Northern India. The first truck only made it to Ladakh around 1970. When the first plane landed in the 80s many local villages rushed out to the airport with bundles of hay for the great flying beast that had come to visit them. The result of Indianisation and globalisation on Leh is nothing short of dramatic – here the old is rapidly being consumed by the new, yet vestiges of the traditional culture and life still show. It is hard being confronted by this mini clash of civilisations. Mudassir comes from a very successful Ladakhi family and has been afforded the opportunity to study at Cambridge and become a brilliant aeronautics engineer. Without his influence bringing us here it is likely none of us would have ever visited Ladakh. Yet when there it is immediately evident that our mere presence and the relative wealth which we are bringing into the country are irreversibly changing the local society. In Huxley’s ‘A Brave New World’ the hero visits (and gets lost) in the human tourist zoo set up in Central America where the primitives live in their primeval state to serve as a reminder of why the ‘advanced’ civilisation is the best. Is it fair to expose a culture to outside influence? Do the people within that culture not deserve the opportunity, as the Amish in the U.S.A. do, to at least experience the outside world for themselves and make an informed decision? Can we prescribe notions of development to them where we see rampant abuse and excess, or is it necessary to have the Ladakhi’s make decisions (and mistakes) themselves? Is it an inevitably that societies will merge, push and pull at the edges. In the case of ‘Indian’ society [which is a whole other kettle of fish for the epilogue] it is strong enough to receive and give. Ladakhi society has the appearance of being overrun by mainly Indian but also Western influence.

In the 80s the Indian government changed Ladakhi education dramatically by introducing school systems which segregated children by both their age and their religion. For the first years the curriculum was taught in Hindi (not the local language) but then dramatically switched to English. A test in English that was either pass or fail meant that the majority of children were failing this new system. This interruption of the traditional way in which children are raised has had a massive impact on Ladakhi society, where the traditional customs, language and ethics are being eroded.

Currently corruption means that central and long term planning are non-existent and the town is in dire threat of becoming a tourist sink hole built and collapsing in on top of itself. Public spaces, amenities, congestion and pollution don’t appear to be factors worth noting; if it doesn’t fulfil short-term gain, then what is it for?

The view of the country side was a welcome change from the chaos of Delhi, women in the fields harvesting tea, chimney stacks for making red bricks protruding like ant colonies and the occasional small village dotted amongst miles and miles of green fields. But no where is there not a sign of human detritus even in the postcard country. On the train I once again had that sinking feeling of ‘what on earth am I doing in India and what on earth is there to do in Jaipur?’. I held me breath for five hours until I got there.

Fortunately nothing went wrong in Jaipur. In fact everything went right, and this is why I am in India! Upon stepping off the train I went to the local tourist office and they hooked me up with a friendly guide called Naim who showed me around three local hotels and helped me to negotiate the one I wanted for a good price. They asked for R1500, I got them down to R1000 and Naim said I could get them down to R900 if I tried. Haggling is brilliant when it is obviously working. It was also a lot more expensive than what I had slept in previously but the difference to my mental state was enormous. Naim and I then haggled over rates for a guide and I agreed to R1600. I spent the afternoon travelling with Naim, quietly and not so quietly stressing that I was spending more than I had planned.

The old part of Jaipur is a walled city with nine gates built in 1727 A.D. The walls and every building within the old walls is painted pink. Each of the nine gates is a horrendous traffic jam as strangely the walls weren’t built with modern transport in mind. Apparently there has been a drought in Jaipur for the last few years so the city has stopped painting the walls each year and spend the money on supplying basic services for people. Earlier this year there were a series of bombings all in quick succession which nobody has claimed responsibility for and the CIB (Central Intelligence Bureau) hasn’t any leads.

The first two places we visited were the Central Museum and the Observatory. The Central Museum and palace were interesting but as major attractions go not that impressive and well over priced at R300. The saving grace of the entry fee is that it also allows me to get into Jaigar fort. The observatory is a schizophrenic set of Escher drawings realised into massive three dimensional form, mainly for astronomical purposes, although I have read that the purpose of many are indecipherable. About to spit the dummy I said to Naim that I wanted to break schedule and head to the Amber Fort, a giant palace and fortress complex fifteen kilometres north of Jaipur. He reluctantly agreed (as it would mean more travelling the following day) and we headed up there. Upon arriving I immediately got the travellers high – that feeling of awe in the presence of something impressive that you could not see anywhere else. The Amber Fort is a massive thick walled palace surrounded by gardens, walls snaking over the surrounding hills and other giant forts. The interior consists of a rabbit warren of rooms and interior courtyards which regressed me to the age of eight as I ran around exploring.

On the way back we stopped at the Jal Mahal, a lake with a palace on an island in the centre. The drought that is effecting the region has meant the lake has shrunk within the last year, and an entire new promenade has been built along what used to be lake land. I’m not sure what they will do if the lake fills up again. There were no insects for swatting at the lake, only a swarm of small begging children.

Feeling a lot better about both being in Jaipur and India Naim then took me to visit relatives, friends and associates in various trades. I now know about rug making (didn’t buy a rug), shaving camels (didn’t buy a shaved camel) and silver jewellery which Naim insists is real silver (might have bought some not not-fake silver jewellery). Travelling back to the hotel I asked Naim if I could buy him a drink, which he no longer does, but he then offered for me to come and eat dinner with him, his close family, his not so close family, and the entire neighbourhood that evening. Absolutely delighted and over the moon, I calmly said I would love too.

Dinner was at eight thirty in the evening. The meal was a lovely lamb curry slow cooked in a giant pot which was able to feed about thirty people. All of the men and boys sat around in a room on a rug with legs crossed and newspaper spread out before them. The cook and his helpers then brought chibati and the curry out in platters which we then gorged ourselves on. I have never eaten so much good curry in my life! Naim introduced me to his younger brother Neo and son Ion (I’m not sure on the spelling so phonetic will have to do). After dinner Naim’s whole family, wife Jasmine, daughters Sanna and Summa, and Ion all piled in his car and he dropped me back at the hotel, first stopping to buy all of us pineapple juice.

The following day Naim was busy looking after ‘two German doctors’ so being the manager he sent a lackey to show me around. Unfortunately his English was not as good as Naim’s but it didn’t really matter as all I had to do was point at a map, say where I wanted to go and off we went. I thoroughly recommend Naim as a guide in Jaipur:
Naim Khan
Mobile: 982801784
Email: sanatravels@mail.com
He can also be contacted by visiting the tourist office at the Jaipur railway station.

In Jaipur I visited the following sites: the old pink city, City Palace, the Observatory, Jal Mahal, Amber Fort, Hawa Mahal, Jaigarh Fort, Nahargarh Fort and the Madhvendra Bhawan palace, the central museum in the Albert Hall, Lakshmi Narain Mandir, and central park with statue circle.

The Hawa Mahal is an impressive building for princesses to watch activities on the street below while facing a direction which funnels wind and created air conditioning.

Jaigarh Fort contains the world’s largest cannon and impressive views over the surrounding lands. Same as Amber Fort it was a maze of internal rooms and squares.

From atop the Madhvendra Bhawan palace could be seen a view over all of Jaipur, or as much as could be seen that wasn’t clouded in pollution.

The central museum in the Albert Hall was the Jaipur equivalent of the British Musuem with exhibits from India and all over the world.

The Lakshmi Narain Mandir is a pure white marble temple amidst all of the dirt that is Jaipur, and unfortunately could only be viewed from the street.

Having done my dash of running around site seeing in Jaipur I waited at the train station for my ride back to Delhi. Sitting on the platform I felt like a Bollywood superstar, people always stopping to stare at me, little kids lingering until I gave them a smile and then coming up and shaking my hand. The train ride back was uneventful although I did get taught how to eat the meal by a lovely women sitting next to me. On the ride it really hit home at the difference in level of wealth between me as a member of a developed country and the others riding in first class. I pulled out my laptop to write and caused a minor commotion on the seats around me. Another passenger who I had been talking to asked me how much I earned a month and when I told him R500,000 I immediately felt embarrassed, I told him that I must have got a zero wrong in the calculation and that it maybe R50,000.

Upon my arrival in Delhi I got a roller coaster rickshaw ride to the airport, and slept on the couches. I met a lovely graphic Designer called Danny who was a real American Indian, his family was from Hyderabad but he was currently living in Houston, Texas. When he asked for my last name and remarked on Paul and Saul from the bible I asked him if he was Christian. We proceeded to discuss religion and philosophy for a couple of hours until neither of us could keep our eyes open.

Domestic Delhi Airport Terminal is utter chaos. There is a method to the madness but the loopholes in that method are so wide that they might not as well bothered. The steps to boarding a plan are:

1. Arrive at terminal, in separate building get ticket, which is just an A4 printed out page.
2. Use said page to get into actual departure building.
3. Put large luggage (but not hand luggage) through large scanner.
4. Take luggage to check in desks (note flaw, could now take bomb/drugs/midget friend out of hand luggage and place in large luggage).
5. Check in large luggage and get boarding pass.
6. Proceed to second security check in where they scan hand luggage. Interestingly there is one queue for men and one for women. Of course the men’s lane is much faster.
7. Now being in the security enclosed departure terminal near the gates, we have to leave our hand luggage inside while we are escorted one by one out of this terminal to the large luggage to confirm that they have our bag/s for the flight(!). Yes they had mine.
8. At this point I don’t know what happens, although I think they drive a bus up to the gate and then drive everyone across the tarmac towards the plane.

The reason I do not know is that I was on the only flight into Leh to be canceled at this time of year in a very long time! Of all the places at which I was going to have my first travel disaster this was possibly the worst. Not only are the systems a shambles which makes getting information difficult, but when they are bringing a plane’s worth of large luggage into the terminal trolley by trolley and my bag is on the very last trolley; well I was not a happy boy. I have never felt such a feeling of relief when I saw my little Rangatiratanga flag poking out from underneath some dirty great suitcase. At this point I was befriended by two frantic French boys, Nicholas and Regis who had overheard me saying to the Air Decca flight staff that I had a hotel arranged. We agreed to buddy up, power in numbers and hopefully we would be put on a newly arranged flight in the morning. Of course it is the Indian way, they promise a new flight in the morning to get us out of the terminal and then tell us when we have left the building that it isn’t happening. All of the flights were booked for the next two days so the three of us desperately clung to the notion that we would be able to get there by this magical mystical non-existent new flight.

When it was confirmed that there was no such flight I rescheduled mine for three days time. Nicholas and Regis managed (amazingly) to get a refund and booked a three day bus to Leh! They then left that afternoon, yet I will still beat them there. I am very grateful to them as not only did we go for a beer and berate Sarkozy but they also paid for two beds in a room which they then didn’t sleep in. Plan B first came into being and then turned into two days in the pink city of Jaipur. I booked my train tickets, had a three person room all to myself and flights arranged to Ladakh three days later. What could possibly go wrong?