Bold Blogger...

I have been a very bad blogger…. I broke the two main rules of blogging:

1. I told a lie

2. I left my blog unupdated for a long, long time…

How can I expect that anyone reads this anymore… well I don’t… but I’m hoping that someone still is ;-)

So… the lie! How did it happen? Well first of all, it was only a white lie, there were elements of it that were true but I was lean on the truth. In my last post, I said I was in Calcutta thinking about what to do next. This was only partially true… I was sitting on an aeroplane, having just flown from Guwahati in the northeast. My flight stopped in Calcutta on its way to Mumbai. Also, I wasn’t thinking about what to do next, I knew full well that I was staying one night in Mumbai and then flying from there back to Dublin through Abu Dhabi.

My plane left Mumbai on the 21st of June, the expiry date on my visa and the last day I was going to be legit in India. Ten days beforehand, I had been searching the web looking for ways to get into Bangladesh… For shits and giggles, I went on a mission to see how cheaply I could get a flight back to Dublin for. When I found a flight for 280 Euros I began to get mild shivers down my back at the prospect of coming home. I had my credit card in my pocket. I took it out and placed it in front of the computer. I clicked ‘book’. I entered my details and I thought to myself: “Do I want to press the confirm button”… I felt good about it! I did it!

As soon as it was done, I got very, very exited about the prospect of coming home. I was a bit weary from being away… I had lived out of a rucksack for the guts of a year and the prospect of Bangladesh or Nepal wasn’t getting me as worked up as it should have been. I didn’t want to go somewhere and not be in a mood to take full advantage of it; I wouldn’t have been doing either country justice.

Also, my bank account had finally come down to zero. Don’t ask me how I had enough money to last that long abroad without going into debt, but somehow I did. I had previously thought that I was well ready to use up my overdraft facility and to max out my three credit cards, but I decided in the end, that that would have been very difficult once I got settled down.

So I came back to Ireland, where for the past six months I have been doing … nothing! Nothing at all! I shared a room in Temple Bar to keep down my costs, collected the dole which kept me fed and watered, did a shift or two a week as a waiter to sponsor the occasional piss-up and dug into my overdraft facility and credit cards. I've had a very relaxing, very enjoyable six months.

I was originally supposed to head down to Melbourne for a year but I found something better to do… I’ll update on what that was in the next post… Suffice to say that it’s what I’ve always wanted to do!

I’m off to Africa on Sunday… Will explain more in my next post (they’ll be coming fast from now on...)!

Your man packing his bags in Dublin…

Tribal Antics

Back in the land of moustaches again… that is lowland north India… In Calcutta now thinking about how to cross the Bangladeshi border. The thing is that it’s Friday afternoon and the embassies are closed until Monday. Unfortunately my Indian visa runs out on Sunday, so in theory I’d need to get out of here by then. Could chance it at the Bangla border without a visa but I’ve heard from other Irish people that they got laughed at when they tried that (although in theory the Irish don’t need a visa for tourist purposes – theorizing with border guards don’t always work though!). If that doesn’t work then I could make a beeline for Kathmandu, but I’ve got Bangladesh on the brain now. Maybe I’ll just overstay my Indian visa for a day, sort out my Bangladeshi one on Monday and go then. I’ll be a day late, but the Indian guards shouldn’t go too mad on that… I might just have to grease them up with some baksheesh to keep ‘em sweet! Anyway, it won’t have been the first time I’ve overstayed a visa and been an illegal alien… (USA, Bolivia, Pakistan…)

Anyway, let’s see what happens… In theory I could go anywhere I want, so we’ll see where I end up.

I’ve spent the last few days in a tribal village called Umsavvar in the East Khasi Hills of Megalaya, outside Shillong. It was a brilliant experience. A development worker I met in Shillong, Prince, invited me to accompany him to this village where his work was focused on education. He had a hut there and had been accepted by the villagers, so it was a great opportunity. I sat on the roofrack of a jeep for three hours while we dirt-roaded our way there (sore arse extraordinaire!)

There are three tribes in the State of Megalaya: the Khasi, the Genthia and the Goru. This village is Khasi and I met many of the villagers during the two days I was there. Prince brought me from house to house introducing me as Khana from Ri Pharang or The Foreign Land (as if there was only one). He also acted as an interpreter and would translate so that the villagers could ask questions. They asked about what we ate in my country, about my family and my work, about the weather and about my travels. I asked them about there kids, their work, their festivals and village traditions.

The village was pretty poor, without electricity or phones or anything like that. The land there was rocky and not arable, so people made broomsticks out of brush they found in a nearby gorge. Prince had been visiting the village for ten years and had established a school there and some other education-linked initiatives.

One of the interesting things about the Khasi tribe is that they are matrilineal. This means that the mother’s clan is of primary importance, rather than that of the father as is usually the case. Children inherit their mothers name only, and all property and wealth is passed on to the youngest daughter. The birth of a daughter is celebrated here as a son would be in the rest of India (given that a dowry is necessary for a daughter normally).

On a tangential note, I only found out last week that pre-natal gender determination is illegal in India, since in the past, female foeti have been aborted upon such. Is that mad or what?

Anyway, as I was saying: matrilineal… sounds alright doesn’t it? But it’s a bit weird as well! It’s not that it’s a feminist inclined society, considering power is still wielded by men: The local durbar, or village council, is a men only affair, with women banned. It’s just that the mother’s clan is of prime importance, i.e. The most important man in the family is the mother’s brother, as opposed to the father. This means that the nuclear family, as we know it in Europe, doesn’t really exist here and men are left slightly disenfranchised and tend to disappear off the scene as soon as their child is born.

I also spent the few days horsing this paan into me. They chew it all the time here, paan being to the Subcontinent what the coca leaf is to the Andes. In the northeast, they have a particularly vile concoction, which I have found myself actually getting quite used to: they wrap up a chunk of betel nut in a leaf from the paan tree smeared with a small bit of limestone paste and stick in their gobs. The betel nut and leaf make you salivate like a rabid dog and turn your spit red like blood, the lime gives you a slight high. It’s a bit of disgusting habit though. First of all, all public areas are covered in a layer of red spit that has been gobbed out by a variety of people. Secondly, you sometimes see lovely people only to open their mouths to reveal a stained set of rotting choppers from chewing paan all day.

See below for pictures of my tribal experience.

Dusting off my Salaam Aleikum

Fuck was I happy to leave Guwahati. I have to admit that I’ve become a bit of a right cocky cunt (if you’ll pardon my French): There I was exclaiming from the rooftops how much of a seasoned traveller and generally fantastic person I was ‘cos the heat in India didn’t bother me… Well, fuck me sideways… I’ve met my match! The heat during the day in Guwahati was like nothing I’ve experienced before. Combined with high levels of humidity, it meant that normal day-to-day life became a struggle of the highest proportions. Respiration during the day was like breathing with your face down in a bowl of scalding hot soup. The sweat would run down your neck in rivers and collect in little reservoirs under your arms and chest. The small of your back (see arsecrack) could have rivaled Niagara or Iguazu in volume. A shower would provide respite only for the amount of time that you were actually under the water. As soon as you step out of it, you’re a sweaty mess again instantly. Sleep at night was possible only under a dozen fans or else an AC unit. I had the former and managed a good night’s sleep.


Vikram, his cousin Nitin, Nitin’s wife Chin Chin and I all hopped in Nitin’s car and made the three hour journey from Guwahati to Shillong. At 1450m, Shillong is a nice respite from the heat of the lowlands. It’s the capital of the Indian state of Megalaya, bordering Bangladesh to the south and Assam to the north, and, due to its rolling hills, more temperate climate and history, is known as Scotland of the East.


For the past two days I’ve been driven around the city; taking in the various attractions and eating like a king. Vikram’s extended family are very hospitable and are really taking care of me. I’m going to stay here until the 21st of June, when my Indian visa runs out and it looks like there’ll be some exiting stuff on the cards. We’re going to a Jazz concert tomorrow evening and I’m going to look into doing some pot-holing in the caves around here and also visiting some waterfalls over the next few days. This evening, I had dinner with Vikrams friends. One of them works on a development project in a Kasai tribal village, Umsabhar, three hours from here and has invited me to come and stay a few days there, so that should be an interesting insight into the more remote rural areas of Megalaya.


So… the big question… what am I doing when my visa runs out? Well, I’ve decided (a while back actually) that there’s no point in continuing overland to South East Asia. First of all, I don’t have the money for it. I’ve already been away for over ten months now, two months over the initial eight months and my bank account will officially be at zero within the next month. Also, I’m ready to settle down again now for a while and am looking forward to working (and being able to live out of a wardrobe and cook my own food). And there’s no point rushing South East Asia: I’d like to give it some time and its due consideration, so look forward to exploring it in the near future.


I’m going to fly home to Ireland in August for a month or so. Then I will fly down to Melbourne to find a job there for a year or two. I already have my work visa, so I just need to find a way of getting some cash, and given the economic situation in Ireland and the fact that I’d look forward to working abroad again for a while, I figure Oz is as good a place as any.


So between now and August, I don’t have too many choices. I need to leave India on the 21st of June (visa runs out), so my choices are Nepal or Bangladesh. In July the monsoon will have hit with full force so it’s not the perfect season for travel in either country: Nepal’s famous treks will all be closed with leeches the main customers on any remaining open; Bangladesh’s deltas are infamous for flooding and its coast will no doubt be hammered by cyclones. However, I have to go somewhere.


Bangladesh is what I’m aiming for. I’ve decided that if I’m gonna witness the monsoon, I might as well do it in style. Also, the ‘road-less-travelled’ naturally draws me there and after the positive experiences of my time in Pakistan (Muslim country) and Calcutta/West Bengal (Bengali places), I figure it could be interesting.


I’ve heard on the grapevine that Irish citizens don’t need a tourist visa for Bangladesh. If this turns out to be true and if I can cross from one of the border crossings around here (there’s a border three hours from Shillong), then that’s where I’m headed. If it turns out to be a porky, that I actually DO need a visa, then I don’t have the time to make it to the consulate in Calcutta and will instead make my way to Nepal.


Either way, I’ll be away for another six to ten weeks and will be finish up my trip by the end of August by the latest (over a year from when I left Ireland for Istanbul).


Will update on Bangladeshi visa situation and plans for Shillong over the next few days.


Ur man in the Northeastern Subcontinent,


C.

Big-tuskers and one-horners

I’m in Guwahati, the biggest city in the Northeast of India and the capital of the state of Assam. It’s hot and it’s humid. The monsoon is playing with our minds… it hasn’t really started raining yet, but there is the occasional downpour. It’s getting late in the season and the city’s suffering a water shortage. Any day now, the heavens should open and the continuous reliable rains of the monsoon should cool the earth and lessen our infernal anguish, but so far, the clammy heat and pea-soup humidity prevails.

I’ve met up with my friend Vikram, whom I met in Bombay, and he’s been good enough to let me stay with his family here. We’re going to leave tomorrow morning to Shillong in the state of Megalaya, which is only a three hour taxi ride away. I’ve been assured that Shillong is a good deal higher and that the climate there is much more agreeable, which is good because neither Guwahati nor my wardrobe can sustain the fourteen-showers-and-three-shirts-a-day habit I’ve developed in the last 24 hours.

Vikram’s family has been a culinary delight and a welcome break from the samosa diet I’ve been on for the past while. For breakfast this morning we had chickpeas in a light tomatoe sauce, scrambled eggs with peas and onions and the Assamese equivalent to the ubiquitous Puri, which is a type of deep-fried bubble made from refined flour. For lunch we were invited to his uncles house where I gorged myself on multiple helpings of the most wonderfully light Dal (lentils), fish in a mustard and coconut milk sauce, fish cakes with spicy sweet olive chutney, lightly battered ochra, mixed vegetable and potato curry, followed off with a semolina desert with fruit and nuts; and ice cream. To aid our tummies in the monstrous challenge of digestion, we chewed betel nut and cardamom seeds.

The stopover in Jaldapara National Park in the West Bengali Hills was a fantastic experience. In the wild, we got to see rhinos, elephants, deer, ghul (the Indian version of bison), peacock and lots of other birds. We also got a close look at leopards in captivity. One day we were driving through the forest when a huge wild elephant (or a ‘big tusker’ as the guide called it) came out right onto the road behind us. It was magic (even though I nearly shit myself cos it looked like it was gonna charge us). The next morning, we rode out on elephants to look for the endangered Indian one-horned rhino and managed to find two fine specimens.

It was weird, I dunno if it was something unique to these two Rhino specimens, but they appeared to have some kind of issue with projectile defecation and urination. One of them went for a shit and it exploded out its rear end and landed about five feet away. The other one went for a piss and, again, it fountained up into the air nearly soaking an elephant-full of Injun tourists.

So I seem to be more of a novelty out here in the Northeast of the country. When I made my way from Jaldapara to Guwahati yesterday, I passed through the town of Cooch Behar, which is the setting for ‘Memoirs of a Maharani’, a book I read before I came away. I had this romantic notion of the town, which the book describes in detail, in reference to the princely states which existed before, during and (to some extent) after the Raj (British India). Anyway, it’s the arsehole of the universe; and they had clearly never seen a ‘whitey’ before so I caused a bit of a ruckus as I passed through the town. The Injuns have little sense of embarrassment about staring. There doesn’t seem to be the ‘rude’ taboo linked to it like we have at home. Most of the time I don’t mind, and I’m happy to stare back, or else to ignore, or else to smile and head-bobble, but sometimes… if the person looks particularly stupid… I’m liable to stop in my tracks, stare right back at them with my mouth open, tongue dug under my bottom lip and my eyes all googley in an attempt to illustrate to them how fucking ridiculous they look staring at me like a retard. Like any attempt at misguided social conditioning though, it falls flat on its face, with their gaze only turning even more moronic due to the increased peculiarity of engagement.

The staring reached its zenith this morning at the train station. I arrived at 3.30am and had to hang around until half six until my friend collected me. I was sitting outside the station minding my own business when I realised that ants had discovered the biscuits in my bag and had… well, ‘taken it over’ as such. I started dancing around like a lunatic trying to get the little formic fuckers out of my bag. Of course all I ended up achieving was getting myself covered the little bastards and then proceeded to attempt de-ant-ification through a series of jerks and slaps that must have made me look like I was suffering the advanced stages of dementia. Every station in India is besieged 24-7 by an a plethora of a people in one or other stage of transit, be it sleeping in the middle of a stairwell or arguing with rickshaw wallahs. And by the time I had managed to quell the invading armies, I looked up to find about four hundred people – stopped in their tracks - staring at me, smiling from ear to ear. I laughed and they all laughed too, it was actually pretty cool.

See below for pics of Indiana Jones-style jungle exploration in Jaldapara.

I promise the next post will be about what I’m going to do in the future, cos I’m coming to a crossroads pretty soon.

Ur man in Hindustan…

C.

Back to guilty boozing

Just a quickie... After a final few drinks with my fellow trekkers last night, I left Gangtok this morning at nine o'clock. I got a five hour boneshaker jeep to Siliguri and from there caught a four hour local bus to where I am now.

So where am I now, I hear you ask... Well, I've left the mountains and come back down to the plains. Together with Siobhan, one of my fellow trackers, an Irish girl stuck in a Scottish accent, I've shacked up in a little place called Madarihat, in the West Bengali Hills. It's just outside the Jaldapara Wildlife Reserve, where tomorrow morning, we're due to mount elephants (in the transport sense of the word) to go rhino hunting. Well, OK... that's a bit of a porky. We're going rhino spotting, rather than hunting. (Siobhan would never agree to that, she's a vet and ridiculously animal friendly... although she's been regaling me with stories of how she castrates puppies for a living).

I'm gonna do some rhino spotting and forest trekking tomorrow and then I'll head down to Cooch Behar the next day to get a train to Guhati (in Assam) where I'll meet my friend Vikram from Mumbai and we'll boogey on down to his family's house in Shillong.

It's weird being back in the lowlands. Sikkim was very different from the rest of India. The government is quite well off up there, so it's very clean (plastic bags are forbidden) and the infrastructure is very good. Gangtok itself feels more like a town in the Alps than an Indian town. Also the people are more like the Nepali's or Tibetans (of which there are many) and not really like the Indians that much. There's lots of meat everywhere (even pork and beef) and it's got to be the only state where you don't feel like an absolute evil deviant if you want to have a drink. They have off-licenses galore and really nice bars and clubs where you can have a tipple, nothing at all like the dingy, men-only, dark backrooms of Indian bars, where you feel like you're waiting on a child prostitute instead of a beer. But it is a weird state, it was only incorporated into India in the 70's, before that it was a kinda of Indian protectrate. Click here for more Sikkim info.

Signing off for your correspondent back in the sweatshop of India.

C.

Kachmanjunga and Gochala Pass

I’m back… I expected to be absolutely fuckarooed, but I’m not actually that bad. I had an absolutely brilliant trek, it was very exiting and adventurous! Considering that it’s the basecamp for the worlds third highest mountain, it’s quite an undeveloped trek and doesn’t compare with (the Nepalese) Everest or Annapurna in that regard. At one point, the weather looked to be disallowing our progress (we caught the arse-end of a cyclone in the Bay of Bengal), but just as we were getting ready to abandon ship and head for the lowlands, it broke and opened up a window for us to make it to the top: Gochela Pass.

Days 1 and 2 were spent hiking up trough the lush Sikkimese forests. They were fairly easy days with no more than three hours trekking each day. I had left Yuksom (the starting point at 1800m) with an Israeli girl and a British guy, as well as a guide, a cook, three porters and three dzo’s (a mixed breed of a yak and a cow).

Day 3 saw us arrive at the Zongri trekking hut, at 4000m, when the worst of the weather set in. We arrived to find a group of two Aussies, two Kiwis, two South Africans and another Irish girl. The driving rain meant that we were unable to leave the trekking hut for a good 36 hours. Luckily for me, this constituted an acclimatization day in my itinerary (or a day of rest), when I hadn’t planned to move anyway. For the others, it meant a day was shorn off the end of their trek.

On the morning of Day 5, we awoke bright and early to find the sun shining and the mountains inviting our ascent. We lost one Kiwi, the Israeli girl and the British guy (who had only planned to come as far as Zongri anyway) and the remaining seven of us started up the mountain to the Thangsing trekking hut, set in beautiful meadows at the bottom of an awesome glacial valley. We went to bed early to prepare for our ascent to the Gochela pass the next morning. This is the valley we stayed in in Thangsing.


After a 1.30am breakfast of porridge, we started up the valley under the cover of a starlit night. By 5.00am it was bright and we had reached the first viewpoint, a mountaintop overlooking a glacial moraine stretching up to the Gochala pass. It was cold… really fucking cold! We could see that there was snow on the pass and its access ridges (the rain we experienced lower down had been snow up here). Many of us weren’t really kitted out for snow and were already pretty cold, so only one of the Kiwi guys, the other Irish girl and myself continued (yes, the Irish are hardy fuckers…!).

After a near-vertical descent, we traipsed across a dry lake bounded by Mt. Pandim to the east and huge glacial ridge to the west. After the lake, we reached the snowline, but the snow was still cold and concrete-like so at first it was easy to walk on. We moved up the access ridge, but the trail was super narrow and wasn’t one that was meant for snow and we quickly found ourselves moving across the face of a very high steep ridge standing on extraordinarily icy snow (needless to say, we didn’t have crampons or any of the kit one might have appreciated in such a scenario). I was roaring at the guide that “this just isn’t fucking safe, you fucking gobshite”. One slip and… well, who likes to think about that. The trail was traversing the ridge, rising slowly towards the top, but at one point it became so steep that we decided to ‘go vertical’ and make a break for the top of the ridge. Using sticks and our boots we hacked footholds into the snow and climbed the ridge like a ladder.

When we got to the top of the ridge, I was fucking ecstatic that we hadn’t died and was… ahem… “marginally flipping out” at the guide that he had brought us that way. (He later admitted he had never reached the pass in snow). We decided to come back down from the pass by a different route, but first we had to make our way along the top of the ridge to the pass.

This was not as easy as it sounds. As described the ridge was about 300m high, and had steep slopes of icy snow. As we walked along it, every now and then, there would be a fucking ginormous boulder in our way. Some of these we could climb over, but others we had to walk around, meaning we had to go onto the sleek, icy face of the ridge, either to the east or the west and somehow manipulate ourselves around a boulder. We had about four or five dodgy boulders to circumvent, but with teamwork and resolve, we did a good job and arrived at the pass at about 8.00am, six hours after having left camp and just as the sun was coming over the mountaintops.

In fairness, the view we were rewarded with was nothing less than spectacular. Although the view of Kangchenjunga, the worlds third highest mountain, was somewhat underwhelming due to its distance (20km to the north), it formed a nice backdrop to things. And the view back on the valley, its glacial ridge dividing a lower dry lake/desert from a higher (startlingly blue) lake and the surrounding 6-7000m peaks was absolutely gobsmackingly beautiful.

OK, this entry is way too fucking long, so basically over days 7 to 9, I came back down the mountain again and am now in Gangtok, the capital of the Indian state of Sikkim.

See below for pics…

Peace out,

Ur man in the mountains…

Goin' off the air... temporarily!

I've recovered now from my bout of negativity. I still don't think Darjeeling is so great, but it's surrounding landscape is quite nice and I'm feeling slightly better about it. We went rafting yesterday, which, although not quite as mental as previous rafting experience in Colombia (you can read about that here), was quite cool the same. I've thrown in some random pics of Darjeeling and rafting below.

Tomorrow, I'm starting out on a ten-day trek to the base camp of Kangchenjunga, the third highest mountain in the world. It's supposed to be quite challenging and I haven't ever done a trek of ten days, so I'm slightly nervous about it. Also, it's the first time that I'll be trekking at sustained altitudes, with this trek bringing me up to the 5000m mark. See below for the itinerary.

So I'm out of radio contact for the next ten days but will hopefully have something mildly interesting to say upon my return on the 2nd of June.

B gud people and I'll be smellin' ya later (although after ten days without showers, it may be that you'll be smellin' me)

C.




GOECHALA TREKKING
(KANCHENDZONGA BASE - THIRD HIGHEST MOUNTAIN IN THE WORLD)

DAY 01
YUKSOM TO SACHEN. (1785M/5400FT) (8 KM, 5 TO 6 HRS.)
IT IS A GRADUALCLIMB. STAY AT SACHEN FOR THE NIGHT.

DAY 02
SACHEN TO TSHOKA. (3000M/9840FT) (9 KM, 6 HRS.)
THIS WILL BE A STEEP CLIMB .WE WILL SPEND OUR NIGHT AT TSHOKA, SURROUNDED BY SHEPHERD HUTS.

DAY 03
TSHOKA TO DZONGRI (4030M/13218 FT) (10 KMS, 5 TO 6 HRS.)
ON THIS DAY THE TRAIL PASSES THROUGH THE VILLAGE OF TSHOKA AND CONTINUES TO CLIMB NORTH THROUGH THE FOREST OF RHODEDENDRON TO THE ALP OF PHEDANG (3650 M) TAKING AROUND 03 HRS TO COMPLETE THE ASENT. CONTINUE FURTHER TOWARDS DZONGRI. ON ARRIVAL SET CAMP SIDE FOR OVER NIGHT STAY.

DAY 04
DZONGRI
THIS DAY IS FOR REST AND ACCLIMATISATION. ON THIS DAY ONE CAN SAVOUR VIEWS OF THE MOUNTAIN PEAKS BY CLIMBING UP TO DZONGRI TOP WITH A PANOROMIC VIEW OF KABRO (7353M), RATHONG (6678M), MT. KANCHEN DZONGA (8848M), KOKTHANG (6147M), PANDIM (6691M) AND NORSING (5825M) TOWARDS THE WEST. THE SINGHILILA RIDGE WHICH SEPARETES SIKKIM FROM NEPAL CAN ALSO BE SEEN. OVERNIGHT IN TENT.

DAY 05
DZONGRI TO THANGSING (3800M/12464FT) (7 KMS, 4 TO 5 HRS)
THE TRAIL FROM DZONGRI CONTINUES EAST ALONG THE RIGHT BACK OF THE RIVER. AFTER CRESTING THE HILL, THE PATH DROPS INTO THE VALLY AND THEN CROSSES A BRIDGE OVER THE PREKCHU RIVER. AN HOURS CLIMB BRINGS YOU FROM THE BRIDGE TO THANGSING (3800M), LOCATED ON THE SLOPES OF MT PANDIM. OVER NIGHT IN TENT/HUT.

DAY 06
THANGSING TO SUMITE LAKE/ LAMUNE (4500M/14760 FT) (7KMS 3 TO 4 HRS)
THIS IS A HIGH ALTITUDE MODERATE WALK. THE TRAIL FROM THANGSING CLIMBS GENTLY NORTH AND FOLLOWS A STREAM AND ALPINE MEADOWS. ABOUT AN HOUR ABOVE THANGSING WE REACH ONGLATHANG, WITH A SUPERB VIEW OF THE SOUTH FACE OF MT. KANCHENDZONGA. IN ORDER TO CAPTURE CLEAR VIEWS ONE HAS TO REACH ONGLATHANG EARLY. THE TRAIL THEN SKIRTS THROUGH A SERIES OF GLACIAL MORAINES BEFORE CROSSING OVER MEADOWS AGAIN, AND ARRIVES AT THE EMERALD LAKE AT SUMITE. OVERNIGHT IN TENT.

DAY 07
SUMITE LAKE TO GOCHALA (5000M-16406FIT)
THE CLIMB TO GOCHALA BEGINS FOR ABOUT HALF AN HOUR WITH A GENTLE GRADIENT EASTWARDS. THEN A STEEP ASCENT STARTS; THE TRAIL FOLLOWS THE GLACIAL MORAINE NORTH-EAST AND THEN DROPS TO A DRY LAKE AT ZEMATHANG. A TOUGH SCRAMBLE OVER ROCKS AND BOULDERS RISING 400 METRES WILL BRING US TO THE TOP OF THE GOCHALA PASS. THE PASS IS FORMED BY A DEPRESSION BETWEEN THE SPURS OF MT PANDIM AND MT KABRU. IT OVERLOOKS THE TALUNG VALLEY AND COMMANDS A VERY IMPRESSIVE VIEW OF THE SOUTH FACE OF MT KANCHENDZONGA. IN THE AFTERNOON WE RETURN TO THANGSING VIA SUMETI LAKE. OVERNIGHT IN TENTS/HUTS AT THANGSING.

DAY 08
THANGSING TO LAMPHOKRI (4200M/13800FT) (7KMS, 6 TO 7 HRS)
THANGSING TO LAMPHOKRI EXCURSION TO SEE THE HIGH ALTITUDE HOLI LAKE. RETURN TO THANGSING AND OVERNIGHT IN TENTS/HUTS.

DAY 09 THANGSING TO TSHOKA VIA PHEDANG (11KMS, 7 TO 8 HRS)
OVERNIGHT AT TSHOKA IN TENTS.

DAY 10 TSHOKA TO YUKSOM (17 KMS, 7 TO 8 HRS)
RETRACE STEPS TOWORDS YUKSOM ON THE FINAL DAY OF THE TREK.THE GOING IS EASIER AS THE PATH IS MAINLY DOWNHILL. ARRIVE BACK IN YUKSOM




View Goecha La Trek in a larger map

Photos of Darjeeling

Limited Darjeeling

Some of you may be surprised to learn that Darjeeling, despite the tea-sipping, colonial-balcony-dwelling romantic imagery it ushers to mind, is in actual fact, a bit of a shithole!

As a town, it suffers from colossal over-development, its windy roads dominated by honking jeeps stuck in eternal jams. Since I’ve arrived here, it’s more or less pissed rain non-stop, yet the town suffers a shortage of water the likes of which I’ve never witnessed before. This water shortage manifests itself (perhaps not surprisingly) in an absolute lack of water. All toilets are closed, with taps in my own bathroom not working for nine out of ten attempts; laundry prices are extortionate and the smell of undiluted effluent invades your olfactory senses.

As I mentioned, my time here has been marred by bad weather. Not only has it been wet, but it’s been quite cold as well (the town is at an altitude of 2100m). Coming from the heat of the lowlands, this has been quite a shock to the system, and I’ve had to invest in winter wollies and wear shoes and socks for the first time in a while. The mountains have been covered in mist, meaning that the only peaks visible are those of the mountains of rubbish which line the pathways.

I suppose I’m not in the best of humour either, and perhaps this is tainting my experience here. It’s now a certainty that any exposure to air conditioning leaves me with a cold. My most recent case of the snuffles was contracted on the 3AC train trip from Varanasi, and now I’m leaving a trail of snot behind me wherever I go and generally feeling like shit.

Also, I appear to have arrived here at some kind of peak tourist season. On the first night of my arrival, I had to spend an hour and a half traipsing around the town looking for a hotel with an empty room. This is unheard of during my travels so far, with any traipsing just being a question of finding a nice room at the right price. But here, I’ve had to settle for what must be the shittest room in the history of the hospitality industry. And what’s more, I’m paying through the (runny) nose for the privilege of ‘a view’, although you can’t see your hand in front of your face most of the time. There are marauding hordes of Indian tourists; families with the loudest, most obnoxious little shits as children. How I haven’t thrown one of the little bastards off the side of the mountain yet, I don’t know. It must be a sign of my deep rooted altruism.

This irritability extends also to bureaucracy and a phenomenon I have elegantly termed “fucking retarded Indian gobshite syndrome”. I swear to God, how I haven’t murdered someone here is beyond me. Myself and a friend took this toy train thingy the other day (a kind of silly little tourist steam driven thingy) to see a town a bit down the road. We had shelled out for first class tickets for the hour long journey, for shits and giggles. When we went to the (toy-) train station, which has a grand total of one departure per day, it took us about an hour to find the train, carriage and seats we had booked. We must have asked all 100 people who worked in the station, from station manager to ticket clerk to luggage carrier and got 100 different responses. I had to give my friend the ticket and charge him with solving the problem as I was going to explode.

This one clerk guy we showed our ticket to, just generally pointed into the ether with his finger… I fucking snapped and in the middle of the railway station I started jumping around pointing everywhere with my eyes crossed and my tongue hanging out, trying to communicate to him that I considered his intellect on a par with that of the iron girding lining the tracks.

My only solace in this time of snuffly-nose induced misery is that I’m really enjoying Rushdie’s Midnight Children. The protagonist also has a perma-cold, so at least I can identify.

I got my permit for Sikkim today. On a positive note, it only took an hour and was a surprisingly easy bureaucratic hurdle. Sikkim is a small Indian state sandwiched between Nepal and Bhutan so I’m gonna head up there in the next day or two when I start feeling better. Maybe Darjeeling will unveil some hidden beauty in the meantime, lets wait and see.

Signing off for your correspondent with a big red nose…

The smell of charred human flesh

Would you be very surprised if I told you I was on a train… The Mahananda Express picked me up in Mughal Sarai, just outside Varanasi, last night at midnight. It had come from Delhi and was packed with people. I had to eject someone from my upper berth before I could claim it, but that’s fairly standard practice. The family in my compartment appear to be moving all their earthly belongings with them, so there’s no room for me anywhere except in my upper berth haven.

The trip to Mughal Sarai from Varanasi was knicker-gripping. I got a very enthusiastic auto-wallah who immediately gave me a fair price, despite all his colleagues being upset with him for not ripping off the gora. He proceeded to make the 1 hour journey in about 35 minutes, driving at breakneck speed, although he was a good driver. We crashed thrice (the Injuns still use that term); once into a cycle-rickshaw, once into a cyclist, once into an old man. Although my driver was at fault each time, he insisted on further molesting the victims with a torrent of abuse… the cyclist was even honoured with the term behenchod, the only Hindi swearword that I’ve learned to recognize: sisterfucker!

I arrived back in Delhi from Kashmir to a wedding that my friend Vikram had invited me too. It was a pretty opulent affair. Being part of the groom’s side of things, we had to dance in front of his white horse for about three hours, the objective being to slow down his nuptials as he made his way towards his bride. Eventually the horse reached the bridal party and after some mock-arguments as to whether the groom was to be permitted entrance and as to whether his dowry had been sufficient, he finally made his way into a decorated army mess (his dad was a Major) where he sat on a throne-for-two awaiting his beloved (it was not an arranged marriage, it was a love marriage… ain’t that just purty!). Eventually the bride was led in with her family holding a silk sheet over her head. She was presented to her husband and took her seat beside him. Photos ensued, with every permutation and combination of relatives besieging the happy couple. The bride looked like she was going to faint. After that, the couple moved outside where the religious rites were read by an aging saddhu under a silk canopy. We left before this as the whole thing went on for… pardon my French… fuckin’ ages. Excellent food was served in a beautifully lit and immaculately decorated garden patio during all this, and the six-hundred odd guests knocked back juices and multicoloured drinks by the gallon. It was a great night, but I was banjaxed by the time I hit the hay.

After that I had a good few days in Delhi. I met up with some friends and ate like a king. Between Indian fast food in Neruli’s on CP, fish in Blanco’s at Khan Market, Mughal style legs of lamb at Karim’s in Old Delhi or mango milkshakes in Gianni’s, I generally spent the week stuffing my face.

Then I overnighttrained it to Varanasi, one of the oldest permanently populated cities in the world, and sacred pilgrimage place for Hindus and Buddhists alike. I’m happy to inform you that I’m now clean, not clean in the sanitary sense (I’m far from that after twelve hours of train), but clean in the spiritual sense rather. Varanasi is on the Ganges river (Ganga) and a quick dip is supposed to clean your soul and absolve your sin. When I say it was a quick dip though, I mean it was lightning. The river is fairly manky. When you walk along the ghats at the river, some of them are for swimming in and some are burning ghats, where bodies are burned in Hindu funeral rites. So if you’re unlucky, you can have a half charred human foot or hand float past you while you’re bathing. I didn’t give it the time for that. See below for some pics of Delhi and Varanasi.

The Mahananda Express is running four hours late. It’s supposed to be arriving into New Jalpaiguri now (1pm), but it’s gonna be more like 5pm. Then I’ll jump onto the ‘toy train’ which will bring me up to Darjeeling, ex-hillstation of the Brit’s and tea plantation zone. The weather in Darjeeling should be nice, compared with the heat of Delhi or Varanasi. Everyone warned me that the heat would be unbearable and although it has been hot, with temperatures wavering around the 40 degree mark, it’s been fair from unbearable. You wouldn’t want to be running a marathon in a plastic bag in the midday sun, but then again, you wouldn’t want to be doing that anyway. You find yourself unconsciously jumping sunny hurdles between shadowed straights during the day. At night, you can sleep well as long as you have a decent fan above you (one that isn’t too loud; first thing to check in a new room!).

In other news, I’ve gotten fed up of being told what to do and what not to do by random Injuns with or without a uniform. There’s mad security everywhere here, in cinemas, train stations, shopping malls and just about anywhere where wealthy Indians could possibly congregate. Every shop has its own private army and there are security ‘systems’ in place everywhere. I emphasise systems, because none of them actually work. You’ll have fifteen armed guards and four metal detectors supervising and controlling the entrance to the train station, frisking people, going through bags etc. and then ten feet away someone will have left another door open through which people will be filing into the station unperturbed. Every corner you turn, there’s some little wallah with a private security uniform on telling you that you can’t walk here (even though the entire population of India could be walking in front of you). If you sit down in a train station, you can be assured someone with stripes on their arm will ask you to move. So I’ve given up, I’ve now added security men to the growing list of people I ignore in India (beggars, touts, policemen, salesmen, religious people etc.). Not surprisingly, nothing has actually changed. If I just ignore them, then they (like everyone else) will eventually go away and leave me alone… hihihi. Oh, the irony… as I write this a man approached attempting with body language to lay claim to my seat. I showed him my ticket (not letting him touch it, just see it) and now I’m happily ignoring him while he’s rattling on about something.

It sounds like I’m a bastard, but honestly, I’m not! You’ve got to stand up for yourself here, or you’ll be walked all over. Even in terms of safeguarding your private space and sanity of mind, you have to assert yourself. If you engaged with everyone who tried to engage you in conversation, you’d actually never move off the spot.

Ur man on his way to the mountains again…

Oh those beautiful boys...

Back in Delhi. Met up with Signe and Pelle (Danish louts) and their friends... Had a few beers last night and listened to CocoRosie... nice songs, particularly this one:

Kashmir pics

I’m back from my three days trekking in the Kashmir valley, back snug as a bug on my little houseboat. This time there’s no music, there’s only the baying of the minarets calling the faithful to prayer.

The three days was good fun. Unfortunately the weather didn’t really play along and it lashed down for days two and three, leaving me only the afternoon of day one for actual trekking. (Your correspondent doesn’t like getting wet). But our tent was sturdy and comfy. It kept us dry despite the driving rain and we had a little harem-type set up inside, with loads of cushions and blankets. There were three of us. Babloo, son of the houseboat owner, playboy of the Eastern World and general money-spinner, was the brains behind the operation. He was the guy I met in Delhi, who insisted I put his number in my phone just in case I made it up to Kashmir. His friend, the aptly named Omelette, also accompanied us as general handyman. I say aptly-named, as the quantity of charas he smokes seemed to mix him up a little. His eyes looked like someone coated them with varnish and his speech was a concoction of random interjections. Nice enough guy though, when he could scrape together cohesion.

The scenery was pretty awesome though. I was expecting to see similar sights to the Karakoram Highway, which isn’t too far away on the other side of the line of control. (BTW, while I’m writing this I have Babloo’s uncle chatting away to me… he speaks excellent English but he’s as barmy as the bathroom door and makes absolute zero sense. The family try to shoo him away from me, but he’s a happy man and I’ve taken to reciprocating his nonsense with some of my own and generally giggling with him… ok, back to the scenery). But it was quite different here. First of all, we were able to drive quite high (dunno how high) and our lift dropped us off only twenty minutes away from our campsite. You have rolling hilltops in the shadow of larger, jagged, snowcapped mountains. This time of year, the snow is melting and the valleys below (one of which we were camped in) have roaring rivers, fed by innumerable streams and cascades coming down from the glaciers and peaks. Fir trees line the valleys sides, soaring up to the tree line beyond which are high-level grassy fields awaiting their release from a snowy burden.

The first evening was spent chowing down on some good chicken and aloo gobi, followed by several bottles of whiskey in preparation for the next days walk. Some of Babloo’s friends were camped beside us with another tourist, a French guy, and we all sat around the fire chatting and singing. A supposed bear sighting freaked the shit out of the Kashmiri guys and they were too scared to go back to their own (fireless) camp. Only upon my discovery of a stray dog while pissing could they be coerced into departure.

The second day was spent sitting in the (admittedly very comfortable and warm) tent, while the heavens opened outside. I read the first few chapters of Midnights Children, a book by the Kashmiri-born Salmon Rushdie set (by absolute chance timing) in around Dal Lake where I am staying. The guys caught a few trout which we chomped down for dinner, along with some mutton and leftovers from the day before.

Having not been economic with the previous nights fuel supplies, we were left high and dry and eventually fell asleep without the aid of booze. When I woke up this morning, it was still raining so we decided to use a short break in the downpour to pack up camp and head home, back to H.B. Raja’s Palace, my current aquatic abode.

I’ve become accustomed here to introducing myself to people as Khana, which is the Kashmiri word for food. It helps people easily memorise how to imitate an anglosized word and it’s close enough to my actual name to keep me in my comfort zone. (Considering ‘Conard’ in French means asshole, it ain’t too bad!).

The family I’m staying with here are “luvly” altogether. Babloo’s sister’s name is Frieda and chats away to her hearts content. His brother, Tariq, has the biggest smile this side of the Indus and is without doubt the Kashmiri equivalent of Mrs. Doyle; he plies with me more tea than my kidneys can handle.

Oh dear Jesus Christ… you’ll have to excuse me! I simply can’t believe that I’ve written this long a post without mentioning the military here. From what I can gather, every ten metres squared has it’s own army-man, and I mean not only in the city, but in the country as well. I think I saw twelve men today guarding a hayfield no bigger than my back garden at home…(although not quite as beautiful ;-). Eh, OK, so it’s not quite that bad, that was a liberal sprinkling of hyperbola… but there are a lot of guns being pointed around up here!

Kashmir was a princely state under the British Raj. It enjoyed special privileges which other Indian states didn’t at the time. From what I gather, the royalty of Kashmir kept full control of land, but paid tithes to the British for that achievement. Anyway, somewhere along the line (click here for details of that line), Kashmir somehow found itself in a strategically quite important geographic position when it came to Partition, and drawing a line between an India and a Pakistan ‘to-be’. Both sides grabbed for it and haven’t let go since. (Actually, China jumped in on the show as well according to certain stories). The border between Pakistan administered Kashmir and India administered Kashmir, the infamous Line of Control, must be one of the worlds most disputed boundaries (although I admit, now I’m just musing… maybe I should click on that link myself ;-). Anyhow, long-story short, when I see a man standing in a field beside a road, up to his ankles in rice paddies, with a gun slung over his shoulder, looking immensely bored, then I think that surely this cannot be productive use of a mans time. I wonder to myself about the families who have been honored because their sons have to gone to the military… and stood in fields getting sunburned!

Right, that’s enough now… I’m getting sleepy and I have to get up at 4am (weather permitting) to go to a floating vegetable market (or some such malarkey). I booked a flight (yes… that’s right, you heard me correct… I booked a flight) from Srinagar to Delhi for Wednesday. I know that its cheating on the whole overland thing, but then again, so was flying home for Christmas so let’s not kid ourselves on this one. I’m invited to a wedding in Delhi, but I want to ensure that I spend maximum time in Kashmir (and minimum time on a crappy bus), so on Wednesday, I’m arriving in at 1pm and the wedding starts at 8pm.

I really honestly believe that when you go to bed tonight, you will have the sweetest dreams and wake up in the morning feeling better than you ever have. I wish this for you… and all the happiness that life can bring.

-The Kashmiri Way

Ur Correspondent on the Subcontinent (UCotS)

C

Post-Ed: Back in Delhi now... please marvel at Kashmir pics below ;-)

Floating on a cloud

I wish I could transfer to you some kind of appreciation of how beautiful it is here. I’m in a place called Srinagar, it’s the capital city of Indian Kashmir. I’m sitting on the back terrace of a houseboat called “Raja’s Palace”. Behind me, the terrace is decorated with carved walnut wood and the curtains are blowing gently in a light afternoon breeze that kisses your skin. To my fore, I have the vista of Dal Lake and its houseboats, with the snow-capped peaks of the Himalayas stretching out into the distance beyond that. I’m listening to George Benson and sipping on cardamom and ginger tea. In an attempt to overcome the limits of sensory transmission, a small pic has been included below, but believe me, it just don’t do it justice.


Getting here however, was not quite as tranquil an experience: From Dharmshala, I jumped on an eight hour local bus to Jammu on Wednesday morning. Jammu was hot and unpleasant. My usual knack of good timing had my departure for Kashmir coincide with elections here, and for those of you who know a little about Kashmir, you’ll recognize that election time here is not considered a time of guaranteed stability. There was a curfew in place in the Kashmir valley, so all buses had stopped running from Jammu. Luckily I managed to squeeze into a jeep with eight other people, all heading for Srinagar, and they told me it would take 12 hours. The local shepherds however, had other plans for me.

The shepherd community sought to take advantage of the election and the curfew, and in the assumption that not many people would be traveling into the valley on that count, they had decided that they would use that night to monopolise the infrastructure to move all their livestock to higher ground. When I say all their livestock, I mean at least two or three hundred herds of cattle, goats, sheep and horses. The 3km long tunnel, which links the valley with the rest of Kashmir, was therefore closed to traffic with this mass migration of animals making an assortment of general farm noises (the pig, being a notable exception).

Having left Jammu at 8pm, we arrived at the tail-end of the tunnel at 3am the next morning. The tunnel was packed with fluffy sheep and other such livestock though, so we had to sleep in the jeep until 11am the next day. I eventually arrived into Srinagar at 3pm that afternoon, a good thirty hours after I had left Dharmshala, and absolutely fookin’ knackerooed.

But it was all worth it, this had got to one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been. It would be unbelievably romantic place but unfortunately, I’m here on my tod. However, I do I know the owners nephew from Delhi, and he’s taking me around, showing me the sights with his friends, so all is good. I’m taking it easy today, but have arranged to go trekking with him tomorrow for three days. Having been in Pakistani Kashmir six months ago, I know that I won’t be disappointed by the mountains here.

The Kashmiri’s have a bad reputation in India. They’re Muslim and separatist, neither quality endearing them to the general Indian public. The Kashmiri region acts as a stage for ever-deteriorating Indo-Pakistani relations. The people here have a reputation for doing ‘business’ and not always in a fair manner. However, I’ve been lucky here so far. I’ve fallen into the bosom of a local family in whose house boat I live. They live just behind me and all speak good English. I’m hanging around with the guys in the family; I lent the daughter some face moisturizer for her sunburn and had dinner with the father last night, where we came pretty close to finding the meaning of life. It’s very pleasant altogether.

Also, the people in Kashmir are beautiful… I mean, really, really beautiful… both the guys and the girls. They are fair (in a dark way ;-), with brown or black hair and they all have fantastic faces with deep blue eyes. The guys have high cheekbones combined with quasi middle-eastern features and the girls have an elegant rotundity to their faces. I guess it’s something about where they’re located. In the northwest of the subcontinent, the gene pool has North Asian, Middle Eastern and Eastern European elements to it.

I’m listening to John Coltrane now. I have to get off this jazz buzz, it doesn’t make for very amusing writing. I promise I’ll listen to Abba next time.

Signing off for your correspondent on the Indian side of the LOC (line of control – the de facto, albeit disputed, border between Pakistani and Indian Kashmir)

Dharmshala pics

Sorry, I've been bad with posts over the past week or two. Will make up for it soon. I'm leaving McLeod Ganj / Dharmshala tomorrow to go to Srinigar, the capital of Kashmir. Here are some pics from the last two weeks in Dharmshala in the meantime.

C.

CP and the DL

OK so, the actual truth of the matter is that I don't care what any of you think about anything. The poll on the right is now closed and I'm not going to be taking it into account when I decide what to do. That's how much I value your opinions.

I'm in a place called McLeod Ganj, in the Dharmasala area of Himalchal Pradesh. This is where the Dalai Lama lives in exile from Tibet. Fortunately he's not here at the moment, he's off giggling his way around California giving lectures and being peaceful. I say fortunately because apparantly the place becomes a hell-hole of DL spotters when he is here, so it's all quiet and peaceful now. Click here for info on the Tibetan Government in Exile.

I've been taking it easy for the past few days here, hiking around in the forests and mountains and doing some yoga and other peaceful shit. It's a lovely little place altogether. Last night I had three beers and was flat on my ear, and today I feel like an elephant is waltzing in my head.

Here are some pics from the rest of my tour around Rajesthan. As I mentioned, my camera kicked the bucket, so I have almost no photos of my ten days in Delhi. However, I've bought myself a new super dooper, snazzy little Panasonic with a 10x optical zoom. It's cool cos i don't like sticking my camera in people's faces (hence the lack of people pics), so now I can hide behind trees and subtly click away MI5-style. If you behave yourselves, I might put up some of my photos from Dharmashala over the next few days, but only if you're good!

Signing off from amongst the Tibetan exiles,

His holiness, the 1st (and only) CP

Flying mangos

See the post before this one to understand what to vote on in the poll to the right >>>

I've booked myself onto a train tomorrow to Chandigar, in the north of the state of Punjab. From there I'll start a three week tour of the North West: Chandigar - Shimla - Jammu - Srinigar - Leh - Manali - Dharmasala and back to Delhi for a wedding which I've been invited to on the 6th of May.

I'm looking forward to getting out of the city and up to the mountains again. I'm gonna do a lot more walking and a lot less eating so that I can get back to my usual ripped physique.

Delhi was nice, but I stayed in the gora ("whitey") epicentre of Paharganj. Not that that's so bad, and actually it was a particularly nice part of Delhi, with lots of street life and action. It is crazy walking down the street here though. You get assaulted from all sides by people trying to sell you anything (and I mean any piece of shit is sellable here): "Ekskuse mee sirrrr, yuwanna mangooo" or else they shout SirSirSirSirSir, until you look and then they demonstrate their wares quickly, be it firing up a little helicopter into the sky or having some kind of flashy, clicky, gimmicky piece of Taiwanese crap that they animate... so then your options are to ignore them or to engage with them. I fuckin' ignore almost everyone... Every now and then I drill out a "Nai chahir baia" (no thanks dude) and stroll on.

Delhi is quite a nice city actually. I know this sounds weird, cos we all have our preconceptions of a place like this, but it's actually quite clean and green, especially South Delhi, the newer part of the city. Aptly named New Delhi, it was the part of the city founded by the Brits when the capital of India was moved from Calcutta to Delhi back in the early days of the Raj. And the old city has its charms as well. I was hanging out with some Danes last week and we went to the Jamme Mashid mosque to hear the evening call to prayer bay out over the roofs of the old city.

Now can we all bow our heads please and observe a minutes silence. My camera.... has died! Boo-hoo-hoo, waaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhh... This camera was so brilliant. It was red (not pink, red!) and jumped through hoops for me. It's beeen buried in snow in the patagonian winter, has survived a dunking in the caribbean and the sand of the Thar desert. I bought my Casio Exilim before I went to South America over four years ago, and I said to myself at the time that I would be happy if it survived five months of that trip. It outdid itself, surviving my whole South America tour, and the intervening years, with only two cheap repairs. The only consolotion that can come from such a tragic event, is that it owed me absolutely nothing! Unfortunately, I now have to scrape some hard currency together now from my flea infested travel budget to purchase a replacement. (On that note, if anyone has any suggestions as to camera makes and models, then comment here).

So my next update should see me hangin' off the side of Mount Everest or sumfin' like that... wish me luck.

Ur man headin' for da hills...

Ye ol' plan of attack

For once, I've got a cash injection from the Irish government... Seen as I worked for six months of 2008 and my tax deductions were based on working for 12 months, I'm due a fairly substantial chunk of taxback, which has now been confirmed to me... Yee-frickin'-haw!

The following is definite: I'm going to stay in India until June 22nd when my Indian Visa runs out. On that day I'll cross into Nepal, where I'll stay for at least a month.

After that, i.e. towards the end of July or exactly 12 months from when I left Ireland, I have two options. I'm going to outline them here, with their advantages and disadvantages... if I put them down in writing, then it'll help my decision making.

Both options end up with me in Melbourne, Australia, trying to find a job.

Option no. 1

Cross into Tibet, carrying on into mainland China and across into Vietnam, then travelling through South East Asia, the Malaysian peninsula and Indonesia, before hopping on a boat to Oz.

It should be noted that this may not be possible. Many people are saying that China has currently disallowed travel from the Tibetan Autonomous Region to Mainland China for foreigners. If I wanted to do this, I'd have to try my luck when I get to Nepal/Tibet, it wouldn't be guaranteed.

Pro's:

• This was the original plan, the achievement of overlanding to Istanbul to Oz,
  
• The adventure of travelling through China,
  

Con's:

• Would need to be done at speed (2-3 months max from Tibet to Oz),
  
• Could leave me in small amount of debt,
  
• May not be possible,
• Do I want to travel more now?

Option no. 2

Fly from Nepal (or India) straight down to Oz.

Pro's:

• I'd arrive in Oz with some cash in my back pocket instead of in debt,
  
• Could leave South East Asia for my return journey, maybe evening throwing in Japan and Northern Asia, bringing me back overland to Europe (just an idea)
• I kinda wouldn't mind the settled life for a bit!
  

Con's:

• Abandoning of original plan and not overlanding Asia
  
• Will miss South East Asia (again),
  

So that's the cud I'm chewing for the time being... Even having put it down like that, it seems fairly obvious that I'm particularly partial to one of the options. Feel free to comment with thoughts. I've thrown up a poll as to your choice on the right hand side, just for a laugh and to use the polling function.

L8r, C

Nocturnal Giant

Last night I had a lot to drink... I met up with my good friend Sudeep, who I had met in Goa, and we went out to a club. I was coming home at about three o'clock this morning. I was well oiled... had a rake of beers and some shots etc. etc. etc. So I'm alone, sauntering down the empty main bazaar in the Paherganj area of Delhi, it's drizzling lightly and there's not a sinner around... I turn a corner and what do I bump into...? ...... An elephant!

And it wasn't like he was being led somewhere or he had a driver, he was just loitering there all on his lonesome, pushing cardboard into his mouth with his trunk. So in my inebriated state, I started chatting away to him and then started inching past him to my hotel. But he seemed to take a liking to me and walked alongside me, and anytime I put out my hand, he'd reciprocate and give me a high-five with his trunk. By the time I got to my hotel, it was just me and him... best of buds!

So then I brought him up to my room and he fell asleep in the bed beside me... he snored like a mofo and in the morning we had bamboo leaves for breakfast!

Alright... so that last bit is a lie, but up until then it was all true. I had to say goodbye to him when we got to the hotel... it was very sad... he stopped and looked at me with his big floppy ears and his little tail flapping around his bum.

So yeah, Elephants are definitely the new favourite animal!

Tajless

So the Taj Mahal was closed... that's fairly typical. The whole compound was barricaded (as it is every Friday)... Not the best planning.

But we got to see it from the backside... which when I think about it was pretty cool in itself...

Arrived in Delhi last night. Am fucked, but we found a nice, cheap hotel in the Paharganj district and I've been doing a lot of sleeping today.

L8r amigos...

Karma Chameleon

So I’ve met up with two Danes who I had previously bumped into in Udaipur. They took a different route around Rajesthan to me, but we’ve met back up again in Jaipur. We’ve been walking around the pink city for the past few days and are leaving Jaipur (and Rajesthan) tomorrow morning.

We’ve been musing a lot about what it is that makes India so special and how it really seems to rub people up the wrong way. It’s a bizarre country. People frequently say that India requires submission… that the visitor doesn’t try to work against it, to fight it, or even to understand it, but rather that they submit themselves to it and ‘go with the flow’.

Jaipur, seen from a certain perspective, is an absolute hell-hole… it’s dirty, it’s hot and it’s loud, so loud that you can’t hear yourself think… there are people everywhere… you can’t walk two feet without being bugged to shit by rickshaw wallahs or chai wallahs or sari wallahs or people trying to sell you maps, pens, souvenirs, sight-seeing tours… there’s beggars at every street corners… people with polio with their legs wrapped up around their heads, hideously misshapen extremities, women with crying babies, dirty children who have been told to that perseverance is the key to getting that ‘ten rupees’… Then there are the people who don’t want anything from you, except to say “Hello… how are you… what country… what’s your good name?”… shake your hand and then run off giggling with their friends… which is all very nice, but becomes a bit daunting when it happens every five seconds.

At first experience all this is absolutely overwhelming and I think that it really gets to people. I think that the secret is to let it all bounce off you. Keep your smile, stay happy, make funny faces, laugh and be silly… don’t worry about anyone or anything… go where you want to go… or if you just want to stand and stay, then stand and stay… engage with people if you want, ignore them if you want… don’t worry and be happy!

Now that all sounds very nice and pleasant but it ain’t always that easy: I find myself, at intervals, getting extremely agitated… sometimes to the point where some unlucky little Injun will take the brunt of my wrath when he offers me a rickshaw ride and I break out into hysterics shouting at him in English that “I never fucking asked for a fucking rickshaw ride… I’m just walking down the fucking street and you’re bugging the fucking shit out of me… If you don’t fuck off now, I’m gonna punch you in the face you little scrawny piece of shit ”. Luckily, that doesn’t happen very often anymore. I’ve learned that when I get extremely agitated, I stand up straight, pull back my shoulders, close my eyes, breath in through my nose deep into my lungs, and breathe all my agitation out again… that may not have me singing Kumbaya, but it does take me down a notch or two.

But Jaipur is a lovely city… life happens on the streets here, as in the rest of India, and if you can learn to chill out and brush off the mobs, then you can open your eyes and see the cauldron of humanity that you find yourself in: the women haggling with the fruit seller, the kids chasing each other in and around sauntering cows, old men sitting around nipping chai from small glasses… it’s all good here!

Paradoxically, the mobs seem to recognize this state in people and actually the more relaxed you are, the more they’ll leave you alone and the more you become used to dealing with them.

So when people say that India requires submission, I think it shouldn’t be taken as a need to be subservient, but rather that one should give in to things, to offer oneself up to things, without preconditions… without imposing your version of normality onto things, without projecting your standards onto the world… I think it requires a paradigm shift, an ability to change the focus of the lens through which you look at the world … and to be open to the world.

Tomorrow morning I’m up at half five for a train to Agra… a few snapshots of the Taj Mahal later, and I’ll be jumping on a train to Delhi to arrive there tomorrow evening. Lets see if my relaxed attitude to things can survive Delhi… it’s been known to break a few hardened travelers.

Signing off for ur man in Nirvana…

Sill View Play

I had a minor altercation with a French lady today. But before I regale you with my amusing anecdote, let me qualify how I feel about French people. You (should) all know that I spent a year in Paris, that I loved every second of it, that I have many French friends, that I love French people, that I frickin’ devour French food and the lifestyle of ‘les 35 heures’ et cetera, et cetera… However, sometimes I think that they have a serious chip on their shoulder, more than a chip… a whole plate of freedom fries with ketchup and a burger! So the result is that I love nothing more than to take the piss out of them, and do so with glee at every occasion. And I feel smug that I can speak French and can take the piss out of them in their own language.

So here goes… and it’s not even important that this lady was French, the sentinel fact is that she was a gobshite, but the fact that she was French makes it all the more enjoyable for me.

You see, I have been reading a book that friend gave me. It’s called Atlas Shrugged and it’s by a lady named Ayn Rand. It’s fiction but it’s got a philosophical undercurrent which promotes her objectivist and capitalist ideas… She’s all for private property, civil liberties, minimal state, dog-eat-dog, market supremacy etc. etc. So having spent all day reading this book, I was in a certain state of mind… let’s just say that I wasn’t gonna look up the nearest hammer-and-sickle outfit and offer them my services.

I was leaving my hotel to get a rickshaw to the bus station for a night bus to Jaipur. Standing outside the hotel, a rickshaw pulls up with the aforementioned French lady. She gets out and pays the driver. I stand there looking at him, letting him know that he has another fare if he wants it. He asks where I’m going and I say the bus station. I ask if he’ll take me there for 20 rupees (the price the hotel receptionist had told me was a fair fare to the bus station). He agrees and indicates for me to hop in at which the following dialogue begins:

Stupid French Women (SFW): (to driver) Excuse mee, butt ow much does eee wont to pay you?

Me: I’ve offered him 20 rupees to bring me to the bus station and he’s agreed.

SFW: But twontee ruupeeeees is verry leetel… you should pay at leest feefty roopees

Me: Ehhh, he’s agreed to take me for 20 and that’s a fair price for a five minute journey.

SFW: Noooo, eet ees not fair… eet ees too leetel

Me: With all due respect madam, this is a transaction between me and him. It is no concern of yours, I’m sorry.

SFW (getting emotional now): Eet ees verry muuuech my con-sern… I know zis man for a long time… forr five yearrrrss.

Me: Madam, if you would like to distort the local market through inflated prices and to degrade the businessmen through forcing charity on them, then please feel free to do so with your own money, but not with mine.

She stared at me with a blank face and walked off tutt-tutting and mumbling under her breath (she was probably saying Sacre Bleu). Anyway, that pissed me off no end… This is the problem with foreigners in India… you get so many frickin’ do-gooders all looking to work in an orphanage or a slum, either that or you get the spiritual types… A bit of either in small portions is alright, but people go way off the scales here!

I knew that that women was gonna be trouble. I had seen her come into the breakfast room that morning on her own. I looked up from my book, smiled and said: Good morning… She gave me a stupid grin of superiority and said Bonjour in a way that meant: Fuck off, you’re not French! The frenchies always do that: they always say Bonjour. You never hear the Krauts saying Guten Tag, or the Spics saying Buenos Dias, or the Ruskis saying Dobre Dien, or even the Japs saying Konichiwa… but the frickin’ froggies will always say BONJOUR, as if it’s some kind of frickin’ stamp of honour branded into their forehead: I – AM – FRRRRRRENCH… I – SPEAK – FRRRRRRRRENCCCCCCCCCHHHHHH… You expect them to crack out a beret and out into a rendition of the Marsaillaise

Anyway, that’s enough French bashing for today… although it was good fun! No hard feelings to any French people, you know I love you (and your chip)…

Oh yeah, camel trek… great fun. Just two of us, me and an American chap, Joey (his website is here). It was a cool three days: sauntering around the desert on camels, stopping for chai, lunch and dinner, eating and drinking around campfires, sleeping under the stars on big dunes, a sandstorm one night, a scorpion attack the next, desert bugs the size of my fist., stopping in local villages and getting invited to chai, washing at wells… It was really cool. See photos below for da viz-oo-al ill-oo-stration!

Also, I was immensely happy to hear about Ireland’s Grand Slam in the Six Nations. Unfortunately, I could only listen to the first twenty minutes of the match on the net before the only Internet café insisted on kicking me out for the night, but I enjoyed reading about it the next day… sounds like it was a nail-biting match!

Right, that’s all for today. I'm in Jaipur now, the pink city and plan to stop off at a little town called Bundy before I continue to the city of Agra, and the Taj Mahal.

Pour votre correspondent en Inde… a la prochaine ;-)

Tales from the beyond the grave

Soy muerte! I’m expired… six feet under… dead as a doorknob! I’ve passed on, I’ve checked out… I am, no more!

OK, so strictly speaking I’m not actually dead, but I am in a coffin. (I can’t be dead, cos I promised my Mum I wouldn’t die on this trip). I’m in a coffin with my laptop. It’s actually worse than a coffin cos I would imagine that my family would splurge on a coffin that I might fit into. This particular coffin is about half a foot short of my height and fits snugly around my midsection with enough headroom for me to fold open my laptop while it rests on my crotch.

OK, OK, stop shouting… Jesus H. Christ… can a man not use some mild hyperbole to illustrate his point. I’m in a sleeper bus and have a single sleeper cell/bed/coffin. When I was in Turkey I remember an Ozzie girl telling me that the best thing about India was sleeper buses… Mental note to unfriend her on facebook and notify the Australian mental retardation authorities that they have a loony on the loose with a round-the-world ticket.

Give me my trains any day… I’m being shaken to shit here (I have to go bcak and erspell veery word afresh). Its just after midnight and I left Udaipur at half nine this evening for a place called Jaisalmer in the Northwest of Rajasthan. So either I’ll arrive there or at the pearly gates at half eight tomorrow morning. I hope it’s Jaisalmer, cos if it’s the pearly gates, St. Pete will probably tell me to take a long walk of a short pier.

Udaipur was luvly altogether… If anyone remembers the Bond film Octopussy, well that was all set in Udaipur… it’s all palaces and lakes and that kind of malarkey. I met some cool Danes on the train from Bomgay (oh dear, a Freudian slip) and we walked around the old town, ate some good chow and drank tea and beer. The weather played ball as well, and despite foreboding warnings of extreme heat, it was quite pleasant. In fact, this evening we were sitting down having a final Udaipur beer when thunder and amazing lightning started up and it started pissing rain. First rain in India, it was great.

On Wednesday, we also went for a days trekking, which turned out to be very, very, very relaxed trekking. Like a frickin’ loser, I decided that I was gonna wear my heart rate monitor and maybe get an aul’ cardio session out of it. So we started off and after about four minutes we stopped for our first break at this cave temple on the side of a mountain. There was a big group of delinquents hanging around outside who invited us for tea and chillums. An hour and a half later we set off again on our grueling quest. We walked around the corner to another temple (a Shiva temple to be precise)… oh fuck, my bus just stopped and the engine turned off… the sheer peace and tranquility… Ommmmmmmmmmmmmmm…

Anyway, where woz I? Yeah, so we stopped at another Shiva temple where we were given an audience with a Sadhu (a holy man). We were ushered into his quarters and sat down cross-legged in front of him on his bed. We had a little Shiva shrine behind us and everything was painted red. He must have been at least ten thousand years old. His hair and beard merged into one rug-like unit that collected on the floor in front of him, broken only by random black teeth-like objects protruding from the area where I would imagine his mouth must have been located. He sat on his bed in the lotus position, his torso bare and shriveled. Behind his beard, every rib and bone in his upper body was clearly defined with dark brown skin stretched over it like cling film.

We sat there for a while. He had a couple of young acolytes who prepared chillum after chillum and passed them our way. The Sadhu appeared to take a liking to me and ranted away about god-knows-what. At least I think he was talking, his beard was moving slightly and muffled noises were coming out. Every now and then one of his bony fingers would extend in the direction of the Shiva shrine in front of him, his eyes would light up and I’d hear a name of one of the Gods … One of the acolytes tried to translate for me. He seemed to be talking of the Hindu trinity: Shiva, Brahma and Vishnu, and how they were all really one God.

After so many chillums, I could only really just sit there and stare at him, nodding occasionally and feigning an understanding of what he was saying. But he was a nice guy… At one point he took a wooden flute out of his bag, stuck it into his beard and started playing away, happy as larry! He was a nice man… when we were leaving, he gave us some sweets and a pat on the head… which was nice!

After that, we sauntered up to a lake which I had informed everyone I was going to swim in, no matter what state it was in. The first thing we saw was a big bloated cow, it’s body submerged, it’s feet sticking up out of the water. It was like a caricature of what a bad place to swim looks like. We went to the other side of the lake and after a few minutes of playing amateur scientists, we decided that swimming wasn’t going to be an option, so we continued on our merry way. (It was more of a delirious way actually).

So then we walked back around the corner and we were back where we started, having spent most of the day sitting around talking shite and having taken about seventeen footsteps. My heart rate monitor indicated that my heart had beaten about twelve times in the five and a half hours we were gone. So it was a lovely relaxing day.

Right, apparently my peace and tranquility is over again… the engine just roared up and we’re away bumping across the countryside again. As soon as I close the screen on this laptop I’ll be landed back in a claustrophobic nightmare… St. Pete has it so easy up there with his little register of who was bad and who was good. Anyway, I don't care about all that... I’ve decided I’m gonna be reincarnated as a cow in India.

Signing off… ur man in a coffin…

PS: I was actually good with photos in Udaipur, so I’ve decided to post them below bringing me completely and utterly butterly up-to-date with my viz-oo-als… Gimme some skin…

Post-ed: I've now actually arrived in Jaisalmer and am posting this entry. It's supposed to be hot as hell here but it ain't actually that bad... This evening it's been quite windy and it even rained a little. I've signed myself up for a three day camel safari starting tomorrow morning at 7.30am... So I'm going to bed early now and I'll prepare my bum for some camel riding... (ehhhhh, as in using the camel as a means of propulsion...). I'll lash up some photos when I get back.

Holi shitballs!

It’s 7.30am and I’ve just come back from the latrine… daily ablutions performed, teeth brushed, face washed… I feel fresh as a daisy! I’m on the Udaipur Express which left Bombay yesterday afternoon at 3.45pm and is due in the Lake City of Udaipur in about an hour’s time. My phone has just beeped with a ‘Welcome to Rajahsthan’ message from the operator. As usual, I’ve got myself an upper berth where I can remove myself from the floor-level madness, and it’s here that I’m now perched, typing this entry precariously onto my teetering laptop.

So I’ve finally been able to drag myself away from Bombay. Having previously booked my train for last Monday, my friends managed to persuade me that I should stay for Holi, so I rebooked for Friday. That, of course, was an amateur mistake. “Conor, what’s the point of leaving a major city before the weekend”, they prodded, “Surely you should stay for brunch on Saturday and some Saturday night antics?” So again, I cancelled and rebooked for Sunday. After two weeks in the city of dreams, I finally managed to escape.

‘Escape’…? Dunno if that fits the bill. The truth is that I could have stayed in Bombay indefinitely. Without a doubt, it’s my favourite city so far on this journey. I feel that I penetrated its chaotic haze and lived like a Mumbaiker for a short time, rather than just passing through. My experience there was sculpted by the people I met: Jerry, Vik, Mal, Dex, Son, Pooty, Vicky, Ivan, Sam, Saatu, Bushen, Anahata, Krishna, Karnika… the list goes on… I’ve never fallen into the life of a city like I did in Bom and it won’t be something that I forget too easily.

Holi was a pretty wild day. It’s the Indian festival of colours celebrating transformation and the changing of the season. We got up early and prepared ourselves with the prerequisites: Supersoaker… check… White clothes which you’re willing to fuck up… check… Gulal (or coloured powder)… check… Water balloons… check… A Ziploc bag to protect anything of value from the multi-coloured sludge… check… We marched down a jam-packed Juhu beach for around eleven o’clock and started throwing colours at each other. As a firangi (or foreigner) I seemed to attract the attention of kids who felt their myriad of colours contrasted nicely against my pale skin. I also lost all inhibitions concerning the sea. Any Bombay beach that I had previously sauntered down was always marred by the feeling that I would, under no circumstances, ever touch that water. But on Holi it was different… It seemed that half of Bombay was in the sea playing games, so I waded in and joined them.

The story of Holi is as follows: There was a king who thought he was all that and then some. He felt he was in touch with the gods and thought he was their deity on earth. All his subjects bowed down and submitted to him, with the notable exception of his son, who rejected his omnipotence… So the King asked his sister, the son’s aunty, who had been blessed by an inability to be burned, to take the son into a fire and kill him. As she brought the son into the fire, the gods transferred her incombustibility to the boy, who was saved while his aunty burned to death… To reinforce their support of the child and their rejection of his megalomaniac father, the gods came to earth in the form of a lion and tore the King apart, placing his son on the throne. Dunno how throwing colours got linked to that but that’s the story that the guy on the train told me… (PS: I looked it up, it's marginally true... see here for actual story).

The Injuns like their stories. The Hindu deities are animated in a plethora of different lores and legends which are recounted to children as they grow up. The legends seek to illustrate the characteristics of different deities and to reinforce the morals by which people should live.

The clothes that I had chosen to meet their maker on Holi included my lucky white cotton shirt. It had seen me through a lot: being soaked bloodred after my NYC car crash and an innumerable amount of mud, coffee, wine, beer and (I’m not afraid to say) puke stains. My mum had always managed to turn it around and rescue it. But recently, it’s been going downhill and didn’t really fit me so well anymore. I decided that ‘Death by Holi’ was a respectful and worthy final resting place for such a fateful garment.

So now I’m arriving into Udaipur. Excluding my brief time in Amritsar at the start of my Indian leg, it’s the first time I’m in the North. I can already see some tell-tale Rajastani trademarks… coloured turbans, twirled moustaches etc.

There’s one thing which I’ve been meaning to mention but keep on forgetting. It’s completely unrelated to anything else but is one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen in my life. Sometimes in big cities, you get fancy malls with western shops. These malls have escalators. You should see some Indian people getting on to these escalators… it’s the funniest thing I’ve ever seen in my life. They approach it slowly, trying to grab the handrail (which is of course moving)… They lift their feet and try to place them on the moving steps very carefully. Obviously, you can’t do this with an escalator and you just have to hop on, but they don’t seem to get this. (For those of you that know Father Ted, think of Mrs. Doyle trying to get off the window ledge). I’ve spent hours sitting at the bottom of escalators giggling to myself while watching their attempts. Eventually, they jump on holding onto the banisters for dear life.

Oh, in other news (and since I haven’t mentioned poo for a while), I broke through a new barrier recently which caused many of my friends wild hilarity: I… ehhhhhhh… ‘cleaned myself’ without toilet paper! Yes… that’s right, I just did it… I summoned up all my courage and did it. Toilet paper is something only used by firangi’s here (and Jerry), so I took the plunge and cleaned myself Indian style using hand (left hand) and water. Apparently though, I didn’t do it quite right. I made the mistake of telling my friend Vikram, that I had done it ‘from the front’. Being the loudmouth that he is, he then told the rest of Bombay, who rolled around the floor laughing at the prospect of cleaning yourself ‘from the front’. Anyway, it’s actually not half as bad as you might think. You definitely get yourself much cleaner ‘down there’; you just have to make sure that you give your hands a good post-defecation scrub.

That’s it for the moment… I was really terrible in Bombay with pictures… I’ve posted what I have below, but it’s only really party pics and stuff like that. (I feel too self conscious taking pics of people… I feel like I’m intruding)…

Signing off… ur man in Rajastan…