“…insisted that despite the huge amounts of energy the Large Hadron Collider will produce, it posed no risk to the safety of the planet.”

Is that a line out Mars Attacks or what!

“Professor Otto Rössler, a German chemist at the Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen…” is quoted in the Telegraph as saying “[m]y own calculations have shown that it is quite plausible that these little black holes survive and will grow exponentially and eat the planet from the inside.”

I much prefer Gail Collins’ view in the New York Times:

“…fretting about black holes is more fun than worrying about global warming; it feels very cutting edge and does not require recycling.”

I’m off to Whole Foods to by me some organically produced mini black hole repellant!

Why, you may ask, the question ‘what is mathematics?’ Having finished one opus: Bertrand Russell’s History of Western Philosophy, and attempted (but failed after only chapter 4) another: Roger Penrose’s The Road to Reality, of the ideas which we have, mathematics and numbers are very mysterious.

To highlight this mysteriousness I shall ask a question: do (Euclidean) triangles exist? This is a shape which is made up of three points connected by three lines whose internal angles add up to 180 degrees. Any triangle which you draw is not a perfect triangle; there is texture and imperfections in the paper, thickness of the ink and inaccuracy in human reproduction. Even if we use lasers at nano-technology scale, our triangles are still constrained by atomic particles. If we try and ‘prove’ a triangle using other means: algebra, set theory, axiomatic logic; then we are merely changing the language with which we choose to describe it. It is this seemingly metaphysical quality of things like the triangle example which led Plato to conceive of the theory of perfect forms, which have a level of existence separate to the physical reality we can touch and the mental world where we conceive ideas. These forms exist outside of time and our ability to understand them and are only revealed as we start to unravel the Universe. The perfect triangle existed since before the beginning of the Universe and physical reality, and it is only in our attempt to grasp at it mentally that we are alerted to its existence. It may seem absurd - disembodied triangles floating around the heavens - but the following question will highlight the importance of explaining what triangles and other mathematical concepts are.

“Why does reality have the appearance of obeying rules; rules which have the appearance of obeying mathematics?”

For example, in chemistry the periodic table, valence and thus chemical reaction, is based around the number of protons that reside in the nucleus of an atom. When an atom has eight protons it is ‘complete’ and doesn’t need to attract any electrons. There are elements with eight protons and they tend to be un-reactive - the ‘noble gases’ helium, neon and argon.  If an atom has one proton, such as hydrogen, then it will tend to try and find other elements with which it can make up the magic eight, whether it is one chlorine (HCL) atom or two oxygen atoms (H₂0). Whilst valence is now seen as a simplistic way of describing atomic interaction, this example highlights how our understanding of the natural world appears to obey numbers.

The creation of complicated linguistic and mathematical explanations for things we perceive in the natural world can be explained by describing the way in which humans formulate ideas: through a continual reiterative process of experiencing and simulating the world into novel combinations. If you were to take a temporal (meaning right now) snapshot of your brains it would reveal neuronal processes which are simulating many things. As we think of a chair, and maintain as meditation attempts solely the idea of the chair and no other mental distractions or concepts, our simulation will become as close to the pure notion of a chair as our mental state can achieve. In the same way our snapshot of our brains when thinking of the number two will be neuronal processes performing a simulation. The two processes are equivalent, both are simulations which represent something else. The something else in the case of a chair and the number two are easy to understand as the relate to tangible objects which we can perceive through our senses; we can experience a chair which we can later simulate, we can experience two chairs and simulate the idea of the quantity of two.

The fact that these are just simulations and don’t prove their subjects existence is only self-evident when we use more abstract simulations, for example ‘justice’ and a ‘quadratic equation’ (ax²+bx+ab=0). Both these simulations have little perceptible existence outside of other simulations. Justice is based on notions of how we feel when interacting with other human beings, past events and current circumstances and our other notions of good, fairness, right and wrong. The quadratic equation outlined here contains letters and numbers in algebra, which themselves are based on certain axioms which in turn are based on the rules such as those which underpin the number two (read Wikipedia for an extended explanation of what algebra is). The quadratic equation can represent a graph with x and y axes on which a curve sits. This curve in turn can represent something which we perceive and simulate, such as the trajectory of a chair being defenestrated. Neither of these representations are the perfect form of the quadratic equation; just like the perfect form of justice, the perfect quadratic equation does not exist outside of our simulation.

To finish and return to the earlier example of the science of the small the indeterministic quantum mechanics may be the science which is the harbinger of the destruction of physics as we know it. Whilst we still describe quantum mechanics in mathematical terms it would seem a logical step to take, given languages acknowledged separation from reality, for us to realise that the mathematics of physics is ultimately divorced from reality as well. A good description but never the same thing.

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.

We eventually arrived in Agra, six hours later on what should have been a two hour ride. It was a welcome change from the chaos of Delhi, yet still Indian chaos. We found a hotel near to the Taj Mahal, settled in and the paid an auto-rickshaw driver to take us to north of the river where we could watch the sunset over the Taj Mahal from the bank on the other side. Quite an ingenious con was arranged here, locals had set up a field nearby where a sign said R100 for foreigners and R10 for locals to view the Taj Mahal, yet if we walked down the road in front of their gate we came to the same spot in the river from which to get a view. A few hapless tourists were to be seen running around in the ’special’ area – suckers.

The Taj Mahal is easily the most impressive building I have seen up until now. The sheer scale of such an ornate monument is awesome, and that it is just a tomb adds mystique to the whole structure. As we stood admiring in the failing sunlight local children kept mobbing us asking for their pictures to be taken, and then wanting to see themselves on the digital camera screen. In the distance up the river was what looked like the horror at the end of Apocalypse Now, smoke from many fires drifting across the jungle and stone steps which led down to the waterside.

That evening we went for dinner with the Danish couple who we met on the train, at a restauran atop a local hotel. Dinner was unremarkable but the beer was fantastic, served in teapots with teacups, presumably to get around any licensing laws. When I proceeded to drink directly from the spout the waiters came and told me off.

We woke up early the following morning to see the Taj Mahal up close at day break. It was the birthday of the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan who built the Taj Mahal as a tomb for his wife, and from 2pm that day entry was free, otherwise the fee was R700. We decided to go in the morning anyhow as the crowds were going to be a lot less (which they were). Looking across to the building from our roof top hotel at dawn a war was breaking out across the city between armies of monkeys and packs of dogs. Barking and squealing peeled off in the still morning as each animal tried to gain the upper hand, dogs trying to eat monkeys, monkeys doing monkey things.

The Taj Mahal itself was even more impressive viewed up close than from afar. It apparently took trillions of dollars to construct in today’s currency, and all for the love of the Mughal emperor’s wife. When it was completed Shah Jahan was usurped and imprisoned in the Agra fort by his son. He at least still had a window view of his wife’s grave from his prison.

We also visited the Agra fort, which while not as impressive as the Amber fort in Jaipur was nonetheless quite amazing. By this stage of the trip I had become quite good at fending off the insurgents and on the bridge walking up to the entrance of the fort I walked with purpose fending of granite elephant, postcard and whip(!) sellers, con artists, ‘tourist guides’ and beggars with the palms of my hand. Jonah Lomu eat  your heart out.

After ticking the Taj Mahal and Agra fort boxes we proceeded to spend the remainder of the day before heading to the train station hanging out in Pizza Hutt, about all Whetu and my stomaches could tolerate in the way of food at this stage. Whetu and Olly then headed by train to Jaipur whilst I waited another hour or so to catch my eighty two rupee train back to Delhi.

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?