Beach Badger (Thailand)

Early March, 2006

The sleeper train from Bangkok to Surat Thani was quite impressive, even allowing for the fact that everything in Thailand was impressing me in my starry-eyed, post-India mindset! Nice white cotton bedding is provided, a man comes and makes up your bed for you...... you don't get that in Indian sleeper second class!

The ferry to Ko Phangan was also quite pleasant. I sat on the deck in the sun, chatting with some Swedish and Danish girls, and some Canadian guys. By the time we got to the island, I had been persuaded by the Scandinavians that their destination of Hat Rin, the biggest town on the island, would be a fun thing. Now I knew from what I had read that Hat Rin would probably not be for me, (for those looking for a cultural reference point, Hat Rin would be Ko Phangan's answer to Ibiza's San Antonio). However, I decided to give it one night to see if the town could prove me wrong.....

It failed. The beachfront was packed with bar sound systems all fighting to be heard above each other, with the result being that you couldn't hear any of them; the town was just endless tacky tourist businesses, and the vibe was just plain wrong. So I made my polite excuses to the Scandies and left the next morning for my original destination, the more remote beach at Tong Nai Pan Noi on the northeast corner of the island.

Because of the varied terrain and road quality on most Thai islands, the taxis tend to be sawngthaew, which are basically pick-up trucks with two benches running lengthways in the back. On the sawngthaew I took to escape Hat Rin I met Silva, a German nurse who had come to Tong Nai Pan Noi on holiday with her boyfriend. She had split up with said boyfriend whilst at the beach, then promptly got sick with something quite nasty that laid her low for several weeks and caused her to become unreasonably thin. So Silva had really been through the wringer recently, and had some interesting things to say for herself despite feeling ill as the vehicle negotiated some of the island's more rudimentary "roads". We arranged to meet up later on, and ended up spending quite a bit of time hanging out together over the next few days.

Tong Nai Pan Noi was far more what I was looking for. Like Arambol, my favourite beach in Goa, it was a beautiful long crescent of white sand which was developed enough to be convenient to stay at, but not developed too much. I spent the next few days staying in a bamboo hut by the beach, lying in the sun, swimming in some beautifully warm, clear water, eating lovely Thai meals and relaxing in the chilled-out bars! Mmmmmm....... !!

Silva and I went several times to a restaurant called The Bamboo Hut, which was owned by a lovely Thai lady called Ken. I'm not sure about the spelling, but she was definitely called Ken, (and no she wasn't a ladyboy, I checked her Adam's apple). Ken's cooking was just wonderful, and she would come out of the kitchen after she had finished for the night and sit and chat, maybe coming on to a bar with us.

On one day I took a trip out in a longtail boat around the island with Monika and Danni from Germany. We went to Ko Ma, where we snorkeled, Bottle Beach, (only accessible by boat), where we had lunch, and Tarnsadet waterfall, where we swam. Visibility for the snorkeling wasn't good, but it was still fun and Monika demonstrated her irrational fear of sea cucumbers, (yes I suppose they do look like giant slugs). The waterfall was just wonderful! You could get right underneath the main part of the fall and it was like getting pummelled by a dozen masseurs simultaneously! Ahhhhh.....!

As easy as it would have been to stay there, I felt the need to move on after a week. I think that no matter how much you love a place when you are traveling, there's always the enticement of the unknown next place just drawing you on! It's a good thing I suppose, otherwise I'd find the first nice place and just stay there for a year. The next destination was the island of Ko Tao; I was being drawn there partly because if its reputation as a beautiful place, but also partly by my growing attraction to the idea of diving...

Four Nights In Bangkok And The World's Your Oyster... Or Fried Grasshopper (Thailand)

Early March, 2006

I spent a long and tedious night awake in Mumbai airport, waiting for my 5:20 am Cathay Pacific flight to Bangkok. The night ended with me pouring my semi-comatose self into the plane seat, and drifting between grumpy sort-of-awake and restless not-really-asleep. When I arrived in Bangkok I felt I wasn't in any kind of state to deal with yet another Asian city, but I girded my loins and, after the customs doors slid open to the real world, I steeled myself for the onslaught of hotel touts, taxi drivers, rickshaw wallahs and general Asian in-your-face-ness.

Only there wasn't any. My experience of Asia so far - India - had not prepared me at all for the polite, clean, modern, quiet, orderly situation that I found as I walked out into Bangkok. The cab to where I was staying, (in the backpacker ghetto of Banglampho), came at a reasonable fixed-price with none of the blood-letting involved in negotiating an Indian cab. The roads from the airport were three-lane highways, not pot-holed cart-tracks. The vehicles on the road were all modern and fully intact, not the held-together-with-string-and-a- prayer-to-Shiva contraptions of the country I had just left. There were road signs, (the white-on-green design commonly found in North America), road markings, traffic rules and - crucially - not a cow to be seen. Not one. Nowhere. This was a modern city which, at first, felt more like America than Asia!

I was in culture shock for quite a few days. The smallest things were amazing to me after two months in India: being able to buy mosquito repellent (in branches of Boots, no less!), the easy availability of iced coffee and good sandwiches, the lack of hassle from people in the street. I went to Siam Centre, a large shopping mall in the western tradition, and replaced some of the now rather ratty clothes I had brought with me or bought in India. There was a Paul Frank store there; real Paul Frank, not the rip-off stuff you can get in Goa. I have to admit, I went around the stores grinning inanely at the novelty of it all, and bought some excellent new t-shirts! There is, of course, a down-side to all this consumer opportunity and western influence; check out Ronald McDonald giving the traditional Thai greeting of wai, (placing hands together as if in prayer). How nice of McDonald's to assimilate some local culture into their corporate imagery.

Speaking of food, (if indeed McDonald's qualifies), another revelation on arrival in Thailand was Thai cuisine. It is simply some of the best eating I have ever enjoyed. Even at the cheapest end of the scale, the street vendors, there is an attention to freshness and hygiene which means that eating is almost always an absolute treat here. The best Pad Thai I have ever tasted was cooked right in front of me on the street for 20 Baht, (30 pence).

However, I soon met someone who was not sharing my wide-eyed wonder at this urban paradise. Swedish Frida had come for a few weeks vacation in Thailand, and it was her first trip outside Europe or Scandinavia. She was suffering culture shock in the opposite direction, having come from the orderly environment of Gothenberg to what she perceived as the dirt, noise, pollution, hassle and chaos of Bangkok. I think she was a little confused at my starry-eyed wonder at my new playground city! However, since she'd had the grubby experience of being grabbed and hugged by an over-friendly Thai guy in a shop, I could see to some extent how she was thinking.

We spent a couple of days hanging out, visiting Wat Pho, (a Buddhist temple), to see the huge reclining Buddha and to get a Thai massage at the temple massage school. The reclining Buddha was a little disappointing. Very grand and covered in gold leaf he was, but also surrounded by scaffold for refurbishment. Even if the scaffold hadn't been there, you still couldn't get a proper look at him because he is sheltered by a building only a little bigger than he is, so it's impossible to stand far enough away to get a proper look! There were some very beautiful buildings and statues in the rest of the grounds, though.

The massage, however, was excellent! Thai massage is very much about using the masseur's whole body to manipulate yours, and you can expect to have your back walked on, elbows pressed down hard into your shoulder muscles and to have virtually every joint in your body cracked! I loved it, and left feeling totally relaxed and about two inches taller. Frida declined to have her finger joints cracked on account of the noise that it makes.

We also went to the weekend market in the north of the city, which enabled us to sample the city's excellent metro and skytrain systems. The market was interesting, and used mainly by Thais. I saw, for the first time, a stall selling classic Thai delicacies - fried insects: grasshoppers, maggots and what I swear must have been cockroaches. I was waiting for Frida to use the loo, and so had plenty of time to stand and watch in amazement as Thais came and bought this stuff by the bag load. Noticing me, an amused Thai man tried to convince me how tasty the grasshoppers were. I took his word for it, but part of me will be disappointed if I leave Thailand without crunching up one of those suckers at some point.......!

So having loved Bangkok, and planning to stop there again when I pass back through to northern Thailand, I bought a ticket for the sleeper train south to Surat Thani and a boat to the island of Ko Phangan - and back to the beach!

Last Days In India...

End of February, beginning of March 2006

The train ride back to Delhi was spent in the pleasant company of a Danish couple and their small daughter, and a very interesting Indian man who owned a carpet manufacturing company. He was on his way to a trade show in Delhi, and had been pretty much all over the world with his business including London, where he supplies John Lewis. It was really interesting to talk to an Indian who has a wider perspective on the world, and can talk about India with a greater understanding of how a foreigner sees it, (most Indians can't afford to travel abroad). I was travelling in an AC 2-tier sleeper, which is a couple of classes above the non-AC sleeper I usually use. I guess that extra money buys you a "different class" of co-passenger; I certainly learned a lot more from that conversation than those of the more usual "What your country? Where is your wife?" variety.....

Back in Delhi at my hotel I met Eva and Laura, clothes designers who had just arrived in Delhi to go to the same trade show as the man on the train. It turned out that they live in London just round the corner from me. We had breakfast together, after which I set off to meet Sam, (above, with Mr. Dasje), and Miti, friends from work who were in Delhi to visit family. We had lunch at The Imperial Hotel, (a top-end Delhi establishment, and a very welcome hike in food quality for my stomach!), then we set off for Miti's family home in Hauz Kaus in south Delhi.

Haus Kaus is a very cute little area which consists of a deer park, some ruins, a few very nice boutique shops and Miti's family home, which was designed by his architect brother. I think for the first time in India I was able to look in the shop windows without someone pouncing and trying to hard-sell me whatever was behind them! We had a lovely meal of barbecued mackerel and fish curry with Miti's family, then it was time for me to get a cab back to the hotel.

A cab was called and duly arrived. However, when the driver saw that the passenger was old whitey here, the old Indian taxi/tuk-tuk driver's story for a foreigner suddenly came out..... that his meter was broken, that he had no fare chart to look at and that he wanted an exorbitant flat-rate price. I am used to negotiating through these situations myself, but this time I had a secret weapon - local allies! While we were talking to the driver, Miti's brother Obbi, who had called the cab, simply took the keys out of the cab ignition, walked back in the house and called the cab company to complain about this treatment of his guest! The scoundrel driver was left shouting outside, but he didn't dare follow to try to retrieve his keys...

With the keys held to ransom a more reasonable rate was negotiated, and I took off for my hotel wondering if he was actually going to take me to some random other place just out of spite! He didn't though, and I think he got the message that sometimes a tourist will bite back when you try to rip them off, (or at least his Indian friend will on his behalf!).

The next day I met up with Max again, and also with Danni and Barbara who had been to Pushka. It was great to see them again, and we spent the next couple of days hanging out in Delhi until it was time for me to leave India for Thailand.


Barbara, Danni and I walked around chaotic Old Delhi for a bit, past a mosque where we were the only westerners in sight and formed something of a freak-show attraction, as so often happens. It was the usual mixture of people begging, pulling at bits of you to get your attention, and others asking you over and over where you are from and if you are married, (yes, yet again!). It's amazing that no matter how many westerners visit India, large parts of the population routinely behave as if they've never seen anyone from outside India before.

Frankly, myself and the girls were all a bit short on patience having managed to skip lunch, and all the random attention was a bit much. In addition to that, it was the same day that George Bush was visiting Delhi. There were demonstrations in other parts of the city against the visit, and feelings seemed to be running high around the mosque area too so we decided to leave that part of town. Later that day I was asked by a cab driver what I thought of Bush, and was pleased to have the opportunity to use the phrase "Puzzled Chimp" at least once during my visit to the subcontinent.....

So my time in India was at and end. I said my fond farewells to some of the lovely people I had been spending time with, but also to this insane society that had somehow become my norm over the previous two months. I thought back on what friends had told me before I started this trip; that if I could survive travel in India, I could survive travel anywhere! No shit! Or, in fact, lots of it. Cows, dogs, pigs............

I Think It's Pronounced Gan-ga, not Gan-ja... (India)

End of February, 2006

On the way to Varanasi I had to stop for a few hours in Delhi to change trains, and took the subway from Old Delhi station to New Delhi to hang out in the Paharganj area for a bit. My first "Delhi Experience" was quite an unexpected one. The subway system was new, orderly, clean, quiet, hassle-free, it didn't smell of anything, men weren't spitting everywhere and there were no cows. Quite an un-Indian experience!

The second "Delhi Experience" was a bit more on the expected side. When I surfaced at New Delhi I had to negotiate the maddest, thickest, noisiest concentration of people, vehicles and animals I have ever encountered in India, including one bus trying to execute a three-point turn in a busy narrow street by nudging the pedestrians and street traders on either side of the road. I stood, watched and re-confirmed my belief that these people are all quite mad.

Having got myself into Paharganj un-nudged by bus, tuk tuk or any other vehicle, it was a nice surprise to bump into Max again. He was in Delhi to oversee having a Royal Enfield motorbike built from scratch. Enfields are classic old Indian bikes, and even someone like me who has no interest in motorbikes can't help but admire their old-school style. After it has been built, he's riding it up through Pakistan, Iran and all the way back to Norway. Now that's a trip!

So I left after a few hours on another overnight sleeper to arrive in Varanasi the next morning. Varanasi is probably the holiest city in India, and activities are centred on the Ganga (Ganges) River that flows through it. The river has many religious roles, but the main one is that of disposal of the dead. For Hindus, Varanasi is a most auspicious place to come to die as you can then be cremated on the banks of the Ganga.

At certain ghats, (sets of steps down to the water), bodies are burnt on funeral pyres. On the day I arrived, I took a walk along the river and watched activities at "the burning ghats" for a while, (which is OK, but no photos of the pyres of course). Although the cremation is a ceremony, here was very little that was ceremonial about is as far as I could see, and the whole process had quite a shocking matter-of-factness about it. I guess the realities of completely and properly burning a human body using only wooden logs mean that you have to be quite practical about it.

Men of the lowest caste administer the pyres, as only they are allowed to touch the dead. The body arrives at the ghat wrapped in an ornate shroud, and is placed on top of a pile of logs. Further logs are then placed on top of it, and more ornate cloth is then stuffed into the pile at the bottom to act as kindling. There are huge stocks of logs just by the ghats, as the cremations are a continual business during daylight. Several pyres are on the go at any one time, and when I was watching there were several at different points of building and burning.

One was in quite an advanced stage of combustion, and when I looked at it I couldn't make out anything being burned other than logs. However one of the men came over and gave the pyre a good stoke, and it was only then that I recognised the shape of a human torso and head, charred completely black except for some ribs sticking out of the chest. Apparently the only bits that don't burn at temperatures achievable on a log fire are the ribs and sternum of a man, and the pelvis of a woman, since the bone is too thick.

The ashes and any unburned bits are thrown into the Ganga. Also, there are some types of bodies that are not cremated, such as babies or smallpox victims. These bodies are simply placed in the river and carried away by it, (until of course they drift ashore a bit further downstream). Apparently at one point flesh-eating turtles were introduced to the Ganga to assist in the disposal process, but they died.

However, the river has other uses, and like any other river in India people bathe in it, brush their teeth with it, do their laundry in it, wash their animals in, as well as drinking straight from it. But it's not just the funeral activities that make this a strange idea to Western minds; there is also the upstream industrial pollution, not to mention the direct dumping of sewage from the city itself right into the river. It says two things about the Indians who use the Ganga: that they have incredibly tough physical constitutions not to get sick from it, and that their faith as Hindus must be incredibly strong to lead them to revere such a dirty, fetid body of water.

After seeing the ghats, I took a cycle rickshaw back to the hotel through streets clogged with celebrations for a religious festival. The driver kept having to take alleyway detour after alleyway detour to avoid the blockages, so having bargained hard at the start for a reasonable price I tipped him for all the extra effort! Nothing stops the religious celebrations - in fact they stop the city if need be.

The next day I took a 6 a.m. boat trip down the river with other people from my hotel: Lawrence and Nina from Leeds, (avid 6 Music listeners! They want more Aphex Twin and Cooper Temple Clause, please....), and a Canadian. The light was fantastic at that time, and made it well worth getting up at 5 a.m. Lawrence, an affable landscape gardener, puffed on a fat joint during the boat trip to "enhance his cultural experience" and kept referring to The Ganga as "The Ganja". His girlfriend corrected him, but I think he quietly preferred his own way of saying it....

So after a day and a half in surreal, holy Varanasi, I got another overnight train back to chaotic, crazy Delhi......

Post Script. On 7th March, not long after I had visited Varanasi, two bombs were detonated simultaneously at a train station and a Hindu temple in the city, killing 14 people and injuring 105.

Saddle Up That Horny Camel! (India)

Mid February, 2006

Being a bit of a blog novice I only recently realised that people can post comments on your blog, and some of you have done so on mine - thank you if you have! One comment, (hello Guy!), and an email, (hello James!), made the observation that I seem to have found some parallel existence, (possibly in my imagination), populated entirely by females. Well as if to dispel this idea, in Udaipur I spent most of my time with a male and a female, namely Andrew, (left, male, with facial hair), and Kimia, (left, female, without). They were from a place called Waterloo, which is somewhere in Canada.

I met them at Udaipur train station as we all sat on the platform working out what to do next. As it turned out, we took a tuk-tuk to a hotel, stayed there together and hung out for the next four days.

Udaipur was a breath of fresh air after Pushkar, literally and figuratively. It was cleaner, quieter, not so nutty-religious and quite a bit more laid-back. Having said that, cleanliness is relative and, this being India, the streets still had enough vehicle emissions and dust on them to give me a nagging sore throat for pretty much the whole time I was there. In response I bought a thin cotton scarf and wrapped it around my nose and mouth which helped, even if it did make me look like a Palestinian stone-thrower.

Andrew and Kimia had some great ideas for fun activities, which lead to us all attending 8:30 a.m. yoga classes every morning, and a tabla class! This may cause some dismay to those I share an office with, (good morning, Johnny Mole!), who I am sure would take the view that my tendency to drum on the desk and floor doesn't need any encouragement. However, I can now annoy my nearby colleagues with a whole new set of Asian rhythm patterns! An improvement, mais non....?

We also went to a showcase of traditional Rajasthani dance, and a performance of A Midsummer Night's Dream which I greatly enjoyed, staged in the courtyard of the City Palace by an English theatre company resident in Udaipur. I don't think the Sikh gentlemen seated behind us thought much of it though. Their muttering grew throughout the first act until eventually they all walked out; I suspect the Elizabethan English was a bit much to follow! Fair enough. I doubt I would sit through much of a 400 year-old play performed in Punjabi.

Udaipur is built around a beautiful lake which has two islands in it, each island having a palace built on it. As the locals won't let you forget, scenes from the Bond film Octopussy were filmed there, and half the restaurants in the town show the film every night! I watched the first 45 minutes one night, and was simply reminded of how all the Bond films are formulaic crap after the first few that Sean Connery did. Certainly late-period Roger Moore, like Octopussy, is about as lame as Bond gets.......

Kimia was somewhat taken by Mr. Dasje, and spent considerable time and effort teaching him to get into the poses we were learning in yoga. I did sometimes wonder if he might mysteriously disappear on an unscheduled trip to Canada at the end of our time in Udaipur! However, I managed to tear Kimia and Mr. Dasje apart, and said goodbye to her and Andrew, I caught a couple of buses overnight to Jaisalmer which is in western Rajasthan on the edge of The Great Thar Desert.

On the way I met Barbara and Danni, a couple of final-year medical students from Tubingen in south Germany, and John the Australian cabbie who was travelling with them. I talked to Danni for a while and we decided we would all take a camel safari together, (the safaris being one of the main reasons people go to Jaisalmer). We got settled into different guesthouses, then met up and decided the safari that we would go on - three days, two nights, sleeping under the stars. John decided not to go, but we were joined by Max and Espen, two guys from Norway, and Niki from New Zealand making six of us in total.

The camel trip was excellent! Camels are funny creatures, and after a while you could see the different personalities of our individual animals. Mine was a ten-year-old male called "Lucky". This name was not without irony, as he was very much "in season" but just wasn't meeting the ladies. It wasn't for lack of trying though; he kept emitting his strange mating call, which started off as a rumbling from deep within him, developing into a bubbling noise as he inflated a weird pink sack out of the side of his mouth, subsequently sucking the sack back in. He was also somewhat unruly. When I was steering him he would sometimes just take off in the direction he thought might be more interesting to him. You're supposed to be able to pull the reigns, turn the camel's head and make it go in the direction its head is pointed. Not so with Lucky; he would just carry on trotting in the direction he wanted, his head at 90 degrees, (or more!), to his body!

We would ride in the morning and afternoon, stopping for a long lunch under a big tree somewhere during the midday heat, then camping on sand dunes at night. We had started the trek by driving 50km away from Jaisalmer out into the desert, so we were a long way from any towns and the light pollution was minimal. It was incredible to see the night sky as it really is, particularly before the moon came up. I had never slept in the open before and I loved it, despite waking up several times to find a big dung beetle on my neck. Maybe after a couple of days riding camels and not showering the beetles were trying to tell me something. After the first day on the back of a camel my thighs were certainly trying to tell me something - like "For the love of God, STOP!" At camp that night I collapsed on my belly on the blanket and could hardly move for an hour or so, but I was soon revived by the camel men's cooking and Espen's bottle of whisky.

After the safari I decided to spend a couple of extra days in Jaisalmer to carry on enjoying the excellent company, then on the day I was supposed to leave I got sick, (again!), and couldn't face two days on a train going to Varanasi. So Max and Espen left for Delhi, Frau Doktor Danni left for Pushkar laving Frau Doktor Barbara with me to see me back to health! I actually got well again the next day, and was able to spend a really nice last couple of days in Jaisalmer before I finally got the train eastwards.

Mr. Dasje Banned in Agra! (India)

Early February, 2006

The 28-hour train ride north was pleasant enough. My travel companions in the sleeper carriage included a Russian couple who spoke very little English, some Korean youths who spoke even less and a Canadian with a goatee beard and a djembe. Since my Russian and Korean both need a little work to reach conversational standard, I spent much of the time talking to Adam the Canadian. The Indians in the carriage were quite focused on the Koreans, being drawn as they are to whatever is the most exotic-looking target for the barrage of "which country? what your occupation? where is your husband/wife? how many children?" questions. It was quite a relief to have these directed elsewhere for once, and for this I was very grateful to the beleaguered Koreans........

The long ride enabled me to get to know Adam quite well. He had a small bottle of Indian "rum", (paint-stripper hooch tinted brown), and I had a bag of clementines so we were all set. We sat on the top bunk and played backgammon on the lovely little wooden travel set that Celine and I had bought on the street in Margao, and on which she had taught me to play. Since I learned to play I have become addicted to it, and taught the game to quite a few people I have met, consequently generally winning! However, Adam's faux naivete about the rules and strategies started to shine through as the gentle hippy proceeded to "whip my ass" in game after game. I retired to my own top bunk to sleep surprisingly well for a night in second-class sleeper, so I guess respect is due to the Indian "rum" after all!

I got a train from Delhi straight back out to Agra, arriving in the middle of the night which is never much fun but at least I had accommodation booked, and the rickshaw driver I used to get there was no more or less a shark than is usual. The next day I set out to see the main reason anyone would go to Agra - the Taj Mahal. I aimed to spend maybe two hours at the most there, but ended up spending at least four hours until kicking-out time at dusk.

The Taj Mahal is just amazing. When something has such a reputation I tend to expect less from it, but that place really lives up to the hype. It is built from an amazing translucent white marble that glows in the light, and when the sun was setting the colours were remarkable. It was also so clean, quiet and well looked-after compared to the Indian norm.

Mr. Dasje almost was denied entry to the Taj. When my bag was searched by the policeman at the entry gate, he found him and told me that I would have to check him in at the gate! (Not quite sure why, but I think that since it is a Muslim mausoleum the depiction of an animal might cause offence). However, the policeman seemed to have a sense of humour and appeared to find Mr. D. amusing, so he allowed him in on the condition that he remain in my bag throughout my visit! Of course I managed to take the inevitable "Mr. Dasje visits the Taj" photo and still keep my word, (he's still technically in the bag!); obviously it would be unthinkable to go to the Taj Mahal and not get that shot......

At the Taj I met Leonor, an Australian air hostess. We got chatting, and decided to have dinner that night. She was on a tour of Rajasthan on her own, being driven by Mahinder, her Indian tour guide/chauffeur, in a nice old white Ambassador car that is typical for a posh Indian taxi. That evening Mahinder drove us to a very pleasant restaurant, where all three of us ate and he poured liberally into all our glasses from his bottle of rum, (did I mention that he was the driver...?). Then at the end of the meal, he insisted on paying! Nice guy......

The next day Leonore and I arranged to meet in Ranthambore National Park in Rajasthan, where we would take a short safari together in the hope of seeing a tiger. I took the train; Leonor offered me a lift with her, but understandably the tour company wouldn't allow an extra, (non-fare paying), passenger in their car. The safari was very enjoyable, and we saw all manner of deer, antelope, birds, monkeys etc. etc. but no tigers. Hardly surprising really, as we were hooning around the park in a noisy 20-seater 4-wheel drive vehicle; any sensible tiger would slink away before we got within two miles!!!

We then moved on to Jaipur, the state capital of Rajasthan, and met up again. By then it had become apparent that Mahinder no longer approved of me, and had started to suggest to Leonore that I might be "a bad man"! It turned out that this was the first time in 20 years of driving he had been required to drive a lone female tourist, and I suspect I was cramping his style.....!

While Leonore was given a tour of Jaipur by Mahinder, I took a bus tour of the city and surrounding areas run by the local tourist board. All my preconceptions about such tours were reinforced as we were whisked through The City Palace & Museum, Jantar Mantar, (a very cool ancient observatory), Amber Fort, Narhargarh Fort, Jaigarh Fort, Laxminaryan Temple, (in which we had literally 10 minutes!), various craft workshops and associated retail outlets, all in about eight hours. They should slow down and "feel the quality", instead of getting caught up in cramming as much in as possible. Anyway, I was so exhausted by the end of the day, I cancelled dinner with Leonor and just went to bed! It's times like that when I realise middle-age is winking lewdly at me and beckoning from just a few birthdays away.....

I met a nice couple on the tour though. They were young Indians from north London, and because they looked the part and spoke a bit of Hindi they were getting into all the monuments for the 10 Rupee "Indian Price" instead of whitey here paying 250! The two-tier pricing system, (one for Indians, one for tourists), exists both formally and informally; formally with respect to things like entry fees to national monuments, and informally with respect to the starting price in any negotiation. Rickshaw drivers will always swear that the price they are offering you is their "Indian price". Yes my friend, of course it is!

After Jaipur we met up again in Pushkar, before Leonore had to leave for Delhi and go home. Pushkar is a holy city built around a holy lake, and has a charming reputation for people who abuse it's holy status to make unholy Rupees.....

Fake priests hook tourists into a complicated "puja", (prayer ceremony), by the water, involving flower petals, a Hindu "smudge" on the forehead, a thread bracelet wound around the wrist and lots of "repeating after me"s. They ask you to name all your family members and you both then "pray" for them. At the end they "ask" for a "donation to charity", usually specifying the amount and weaving your undertaking to give this specific amount into the "repeating after me" mantras! If you refuse, or reduce the amount, they try to give you a guilt trip by asking you if your family's happiness is not worth the "paltry sum" that they are asking for!

So Leonore and I duly got nabbed in the Brahma temple, (do Brahmin priests usually wear camouflage combat pants?!?), but we knew what was coming and went along with it to see what happened. In the end mine wanted 700 Rupees (about 9 pounds), but got 50 Rupees from me, (about 70p), in return for the "interesting cultural experience" he had provided me with. Leonore gave hers even less, accompanied by a strong insistence that she put the money in a charity box, rather than onto his plate! They quickly lost interest in us and the happiness of our loved ones, and started looking for the next pair of tourists. So if anyone dear to me has bad luck in the near future, you can blame my refusal to buy your happiness in Pushkar!

Pushkar also saw my first instance of Delhi-Belly, (despite being several hundreds of kilometres from Delhi). It was quite manageable as these things go and not really debilitating, but it did make me feel constantly slightly nauseous. This had two main effects; it put me right off Indian food, which made eating more problematic, and it meant that many of the more "exotic" experiences of the street.... the cows, the cow shit, the pigs, the pig shit, the food smells, the vehicle fume pollution, the constant noise.... were now intolerable to me.

For the first time, I stopped politely acknowledging the incessant "hello! hello!"s from everyone in the street, which come both from people just being friendly and people trying to sell you something. I was concentrating on holding my breath, and trying to get off the streets as soon as I could. In addition to this, my room was right on the lake and this meant that every morning at around 4:30, someone would crank up some chanting or devotional music through a distorted PA system on some nearby ghat. Not what you need when you are sick, (or indeed at any time)!

I decided it was time to try somewhere else, (and even went as far as considering another country and fleeing to Nepal for a "peace and nature" fix!), but decided that Udaipur, a little further west in Rajasthan, was a good idea. Thankfully feeling better after a couple of days, I took another overnight train to this beautiful city on the biggest man-made lake in Asia.