India

More fun than Kayaking

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About the Animals

Better than Custard

The architecture and the landscapes are cool too. In some ways it is all just variations on a theme, walls and roofs then rocks, dirt and trees but it is all arranged differently to other places so there is always something to catch the eye, something new to look at. Although I must admit looking at stuff has never really been my forte, with a short attention span and an addiction to adventure I find myself getting a bit restless at times. Though I've been held back a bit for the last few days with my ability to absorb food stuffs muted and my abilities to expel them from my body enhanced ten-fold. I’ve been suffering from weakness, lethargy and the odd bout of fever. This has been my worst case yet but I'm coming out on top.....That was very bad karma to say that, less than 10 seconds after I wrote that last sentence all hell broke loose in the bathroom....bugger....welcome to India. Now I'm feeling nauseous again but this is not a new feeling in India. Last week I tried a "special Lassi" which is a yoghurt drink usually flavoured with fruit but in this case a very special and seemingly not very illegal plant is used. This is a pretty famed and seemingly popular past-time in Pushkar and it proved to be a pretty funky way to watch the sun go down on this holy town on the edge of the Rajasthan dessert. A back-drop of palaces surrounding a square lake of holy water where lots of Bhramins go and cleans themselves in muddy water each night to the sound of drums and a lone tambourine shaker. They have a really loud religious music thing at four in the morning too which is a bit of a shit for the faithless. Anyway the next evening Ashley and I went for a re-run but the waiter remembered the excessive tip we'd left him the night before (15 pence) and he made us VERY special lassi's which meant that a couple of hours later we could hardly walk and Ashley had to sleep sitting up hugging a pillow to stop the room from spinning. They say when in Rome do as the Romans do but I reckon some Romans were probably very stupid not to mention the odd Indian, so no more special lassi's for me.

From Pushkar I've come to Udaipur where the James Bond film Octypussy was shot around the stupendous palaces here. A couple of them are stuck in the middle of a lake. Today a Japanese guy who's girlfriend was pissed off with him let me take her place on the back of his Enfield (motorbike) and we went to a another lake with no palaces in it and lots of nice hills around it - motorbike ride was the best part of this excursion.

The three Canadians I started in Delhi with have now all gone in directions different to mine so now I'm travelling alone in India with 1000 Million locals, about half that number of Bajaj (vespa) motorbikes (one for each man) a whole bunch of camels and elephants (oh yeah, I went on a camel safari around Pushkar...cool), more holy cows than you can poke a stick at and it seams like about 2 million of the ubiquitous fashion senseless travelling Israeli circus (sorry Ella...not you). I had a petulant camel called Krishna who is 12 years old and steals beans from other peoples plants even though I was pulling on the reins, digging my heals in and whipping his arse. Maybe he was hungry.

Next I am off to a place called Jaisalmer over by Pakistan somewhere near where the Pakistan’s are blowing up the ground with nuclear bombs. Really, they're a bit behind the times aren't they? Wonder if I should wear a lead pouch over my bollocks! Oh yeah, I was speaking of my adventure addiction that brings me to tomorrow’s plan. You can buy a brand new 2.5 tonne, totally funky old style bike here for just 20 pounds and you can throw them on busses no worries. So what a great way to explore India. They're all black and silver and have big sprung seats and no brake cables, but instead chromed steel rods on a push pull lever system and full mudguards which you need for all the cow shit....they're so cool. Ah Life is great, the more you indulge the better it gets.

I'm in Jaisalmer now and it is quite an astounding place. The whole town, all of it, is built of honey coloured sandstone. Many of the buildings are palaces and other flash type buildings built in a time of prosperity (1100-1200 AD) with incredible ornamented balconies, arched pillars and temples etc. Whole buildings are decorated with intricate designs carved into the stone and the dry climate means it is all really well preserved. The central feature of the town is an enormous fort that I just don't have time to describe but I blew a whole roll of film on it.

Well Christmas looks like it could be a pretty solitary affair this year. Most likely scenario is that I spend it with a bunch of camels amongst some sand dunes with a few of the locals and a maybe a few other camera-clicking tourists.

Dec 28. and that prediction proved right. Started Xmas eve with some live Rajasthan music and traditional dancing girls all decked out in amazing costumes with enough gold and silver jangly bits hanging off them to sink a medium size scale model of the Titanic. This was a wee party organised by the hotel staff. The rum punch and a balaclava got me through the wee hours of the freezing desert morning. Christmas and Boxing Day I spent with a camels hump up my bum as I absorbed the serenity and tranquility of some desert landscapes.

Now I've come to Agra where the Taj Mahal is but it was closed today so I have to stay for another. Not a very nice city but it has a nice fort in it. It's red so they call it Red Fort. It is a great testimony to the capabilities of the medieval architects of India. It also demonstrates the extreme decadence of the time, traces of which are still evident in India today although much more subtle now. Perhaps more obvious today are the people whose expense this decadence is at, the people who consider themselves lucky if they can find a way to earn US$0.50 a day because that is just enough to feed their families with one meal of rice. I think there is a few hundred million of them.

29th dec. Today I set out for the Taj Mahal in fog as thick as pea soup, down a road that had got me back from the closed gates there yesterday. But somewhere amidst the fog and the meditative rhythmic clanking of my hired bike pedals I overshot by a good 5 miles. A nice bit of exercise for the morning, especially on a 2.5 tonne bike with a half flat tyre. I love riding them though, its great fun passing camel carts then swerving in under the camels necks to regain a position of relative safety from the maniac bus and rickshaw drivers. The camels are pretty cool, they don't seem to mind much.

At the Taj I couldn't even see half way across the 4 squares of garden through the fog but when I got up to the big dome thing I was pretty awe struck. Not only is it the biggest most impressively shaped lump of marble I've ever seen but the quality and detail of the carved surfaces is incredible. The whole building is covered with carved flowers, patterns and inscriptions made with inlays of beautiful stone brought from all over the world. Apparently this bloke thought his wife was pretty special so he built her the Taj for a tomb, which the taxpayers didn't like much, so his son imprisoned him for them; the same bloke that built the Red Fort just up the road. Despite this being one of the better cared for national monuments I've seen, the degree of dilapidation (relative to its apparent former glory) seems typical of India. Bit of a shame - not sure if its a lack of money or enthusiasm for their own history.

31 Dec. Now I'm in a place called Rishikesh sitting beside the Ganga (Ganges) river next to a class 2 rapid, the only one near town. I want to paddle it but I'm travelling boatless; there is some decent paddling upstream apparently. Rishikesh is at the base of the Himalayan foothills and it's the middle of winter so it is pretty cold; thermals and woolly hat in mornings and evening. I came here yesterday and it is the first place in India where I immediately sensed I could feel at home, which is a good thing because I'm staying for a month to do a yoga course. It is surrounded on three sides by steep tree-clad hills and the holy Ganga river flows through the middle of it all, the locals are mellow and genuinely friendly. I already have one of them getting me a bottle of whiskey in this town where alcohol and meat are illegal and it is really offensive to eat eggs in public. But the food is awesome, invariably either slop with lumps in it or lumps with slop in it (distinguishable by the different colours) but it tastes great. I have a cool hotel to stay in with a great view for US$10 per week.

New years eve and I ended up staying completely sober and joining in a bit of meditation at midnight but since I don't know how to do that yet I just sat there thinking about what my friends in NZ would've been doing at their midnight. If anything like last year I'm jealous I missed out. Anyway, next year I'll be back in NZ hopefully with a new Adventure Bus doing some large scale Custard stuff. So see you all then.

Merry Custard and a Happy New Year

Lots of love with extra special bits for the extra special people,

Custard.

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India has a variety of urbanised (and not so urbanised) animals, a few of which I have mentioned in passing. But here I'll give a more detailed description of the daily delights of dealing with the animals.

Starting with perhaps the most famous...'The Holy Cows' with a most astounding diet of cardboard which is supplemented with a fascinating array of side dishes including plastic (although usually a bit selective with this), paper (pink I think is the favourite), anything they can grab from the fruit and vege trolleys and the all time favourite, Dave’s banana and orange peels. I made friends with a young cow in Rishikesh (by feeding it!), a bit shy at first but after a week or two she would come bounding down the narrow street that led to my hotel each time she saw my blue fleece turn the corner. This caused some jealousy among the other cows but, being placid creatures, there were rarely any altercations.

Had a couple of close calls though, once I was buying cashew nuts and a grown up cow decided my calf muscle (no pun intended) looked like a good salt lick. After a slap on the neck she dropped her head and started bucking, fortunately, with underdeveloped horns. Then a scurry of shopkeepers came to my rescue. Another one I saw head butting a wall a couple of minutes earlier came bolting past with its hind hoof thwacking my shoulder, I think it had got sick of eating cardboard or something! Some of them get pretty big, one I saw yesterday stood eye to eye with me and I had to jump to see over the crest of its back...no shit, it was as big an auto rickshaw. It had big horns and it thought my yellow camera was a large banana...didn't get the photo. They are very good at blocking the roads and causing buses to swerve and generally not giving a shit because they're holy and nobody messes with the cows else they get 7 years in an Indian prison. Actually the cows do give lots of shit, which women wearing beautiful saris pick up with their hands, mix with straw, dry out and use for fuel in clay ovens.

Next - 9 foot long Pythons (real live ones); haven’t seen too many of these but got my photo taken with one wrapped around my neck the other day!

Monkeys; these are the only animal I really don't like cause they're bolshy and become aggressive very quickly, especially if you're carrying bananas oddly enough.

Wild Elephants; haven’t seen any but it would seem from their beach ball size piles of steaming dung full of sticks and leaves, that their digestive systems are not very thorough.

Tame painted Elephants around crowded streets; seen a few and they look so cool I forget to take photos.

Cobras; seen a couple being charmed by men who look like they'd have trouble charming anything else.

Scorpions; saw a big one in Sadia's shorts one morning in Nepal (she wasn't wearing them at the time)!

Tigers; seen none

Camels; seen them, biked past them on the streets, rode them in the desert, ate with them, slept with them, farted with them, said good bye to them. Generally pretty laid back, take it easy sort of creatures but can be a bit petulant at times.

Dogs; these range from almost cute to the most mangy miserable looking creatures you've ever seen, all longing for a bit of love and affection from their human counterparts. Introduced to keep the rat population down they do a better job of keeping tourists up at night with their incessant barking. If you actually find one nice enough to pat of if you just give some food to one it will become your best friend 'til the end of the street in which space you will have been paraded with a dignified prance, head and tail held high, and due care taken to attract as much attention as possible (with out loosing dignity) from all its doggy mates.

Water Buffalo; Very big creatures that like to play in the mud. they pull ploughs, provide milk and taste good in Momos.

Donkeys; carry heavy stuff and get treated like shit.

There are of course many other animals of lesser significance in day to day life, for example, eagles, vultures (these are huge), parakeets, almost no cats, squirrels, pigs, warthogs, and goats who all roam their relative domains from smog filled skies to shit filled drains. But a bird on the wing and a pig in shit still have their freedom. It is the humans that seem most trapped in these urban jungles.

India is such a fascinating place, I could write forever about all the things that capture my western imagination by their striking contrast to my preconceptions of logic and what a civilisation can actually be defined as. Indian politics are absolutely fascinating in this respect. They revolve primarily around religion and corruption and seem to me to have very little to do with running a country.

But enough for now, just got a bit carried away cause KTM email is cheap in the off season. Not sure when I will write next, have to go find a home and job in the UK.

Love and Custard

Dave

PS. Below is a passage that someone sent to me but I find it quite pertinent as I conclude another phase of my travels:

It is a melancholy of my own, compounded of many simples, extracted from many objects, and indeed the sundry contemplation of my travels, which, by often rumination, wraps me in a most humorous sadness.

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Being the only one of the group who'd been to Asia before, the next day I found myself giving advice on left hand/right hand etiquette, how to flag a taxi and book trains. We did a tour of Bombay and saw Ghandis house, the hanging gardens where bad people were hung to be eaten by crows. I assume this means there soul won’t be reborn because they missed out on the traditional cremation ... an ultimate punishment. We saw some other not very interesting sights and then got lost trying to find the famous red light district. By that night I was on a train to the first interesting sounding place that is roughly in the direction of Nepal. 

Indians are the most incredibly helpful people, look confused for 2 seconds and someone will offer to help, even if they don't speak English, and will always give an answer even if it means pointing you in completely the wrong direction or just agreeing to everything you say. Anyway, I ended up in a city (Jalgaon) of about 300,000 Indians and only 2 other tourists that I saw very briefly on a day when the tourist attraction 60km south was closed and the Garniesh festival (Elephant God) celebrations were beginning. For the size of this city it is by far the friendliest I have ever been in ... today was perhaps the highlight of all the months I have spent in Asia during my travels. 

I was a celebrity on a day of celebration; everyone was going bizerk in the streets with drums and other funny instruments and big, fantastically crafted statues of this deity and they all wanted me to dance with them while they showered me with fistfuls of red powder and filmed me for TV and stopped whole parades to take official photos. I was then taken on a scooter tour of the city (squished between the driver and the other bloke who also spoke virtually no English at all) to see all the best statues, to meet the president (don’t know what he is president of but he seemed very important) and to be bought cigarettes and drink (turned down the drink but smoked a smoke to be polite). People even got me to sign 100 rupee notes when I finished dancing in their parades. I had trouble imitating their dancing style but they seemed to like the result I achieved anyway. The whole day was just overwhelming. Lonely planet hardly even mentions this city but then I'm discovering lots of things that they seemed to have missed, just talk to the locals.

Next day I visited some 2000 year old temples that have an inside but the outside is a big cliff face. Pretty incredible achievement, especially all the immaculate carvings of Buddha inside. No second chances, one mistake and you'd have to carve the whole thing further back into the cliff. Huge big rooms with arched cathedral like ceilings and astonishing fine art and/or carved figures in the walls and pillars. The next day was one of long punishing travel. I was joined on the train by two of the most beautiful women I have ever met, they just sat next to me and started talking. This in itself is unusual for Indian women so I felt very privileged. They knew about as much English as I know Hindi (about 20 words) but that didn't stop us sustaining an interesting conversation. One is Muslim, 26, a school teacher and is married with one child. The other (with amazing soft brown eyes that made me melt on the inside) is Hindu, 24 and a 'bachelor' as they put it, waiting for her parents to find her a husband. I was thinking of introducing myself to them. And that was the highlight of that day. Oh, and finding an advertisement on the inside of the train toilet door for a herbal remedy to tighten up your vagina to a "virgin standard" after child birth.

Next day in Mandu I was breath taken by semi ruined temples that, by visual grandeur, just make modern architects look silly. Explored whole cities of ancient decadence and blew rolls of film. Today is another travel day, presently hanging out waiting for a train. I seem to be getting all the cities where a firm grasp of English is a rare commodity, as are tourists (monsoon season perhaps!), which makes the whole experience that much more interesting. Will be in Nepal in a week to celebrate my birthday with some old friends.

That’s it for now.

From Custard