goodbye india, hello england

so..... this has been my last day in india. my last day wandering around, being free to do what i want to do, looking at cool shit and eating curry for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

it's been the most amazing 14 weeks of my life. without question. i've seen and done things that have been beyond my wildest dreams, things that i didn't think i would ever be capable of. i've been so scared at times i thought i would cry, and laughed so hard and for so long i thought my face would explode. i've travelled for thousands of kilometres through jungles, deserts, mountains and dusty plains. i've stayed in 5 star luxury, in rooms with bedbugs and cockroaches, and lived for a week in a hovel next to the beach. i've met so many amazing people from all over the world - canada, new york, germany, holland, grimsby, california, austria, new zealand, oregon, south africa, brazil, mexico, china, thailand, italy, manchester, russia, israel and gloucester :D i've been drunker for longer than i've ever been, i've danced in the sea listening to crazy tribal music, swung through trees on zipwires with one of my bestest friends from university, been clubbing in hyderabad's latest trendy nightspot halfway up a skyscraper and had dinner with aurangabad's prominent businessmen, educators and the state government of bihar. i've seen the taj mahal, the golden temple, the ruins of the vijayanagar empire, the gateway of india and more cave temples than you can shake a stick at. i've walked through tribal villages and tea plantations, hung off the side of a suburban train in mumbai, had a go on chinese fishing nets, smoked weed on the beach while watching fireworks with kim and hannah and a nepali guy in goa, had dinner in bangkok with a friend from my game and watched an evening of thai boxing. i've drunk singapore slings at the raffles hotel, had a cooking lesson in the kitchen of a woman from jodhpur, been thrown off a moving train, seen the himalayas and taken a train trip that took 40 hours. i've rocked up in strange places with no idea where i was, no idea how to get to where i needed to sleep, and no idea how to communicate to the people around me yet always managed to get a roof over my head and food in my stomach. i've laughed, i've cried, i've been lower than i've ever been and happier than i've ever been ever.

and i've made it. i didn't think i'd make it 1 week, india was such a frightening place when i got here. but i've made it. even when i was feeling like the only person on the planet, was missing home and felt so so so shit i stuck it out. i've done it.... and now i'm coming home.

this country is amazing, such a contradiction in every way. so much poverty, yet so much wealth and so much promise. the landscape is truly stunning, the culture and the heritage bowls you over. the passion of the indian people, their love for their country and their humble, open

generosity makes this place what it is. how on earth does india work? i've asked myself this so many times and still haven't really come up with an answer that satisfies me. 30 odd states, all with different languages and history and culture... it's like 30 countries operating as one. the one thing that binds everyone together is their love of india. on every truck, car and motorbike there is always a sticker or handpainted saffron, white and green flag proclaiming "i love india" or "india the great".

so yeah.. for those of you that have stuck with me - thank you for having a read of my ramblings. hugo reckons i should keep blogging when i get home but i think you've all heard enough from me for now. maybe on my next trip.....

the final countdown!

my last day or two in kolkata were cool. i wandered and i wandered and i wandered. the most impressive part was around the bbd bagh area, there were lots of wonderful examples of british colonial architecture. admittedly most of the buildings were now in a state of decay but it was really easy to imagine how grand and impressive they were in their heyday. interestingly the best preserved and cleanest building in the whole of kolkata was the income tax office :D

my train from howrah to mumbai was scheduled to take 30 or 33 hours (i forget which) - and it took 40.... it wasn't that bad actually, what's 7 hours or so when you're on a massive journey? i was sharing my 4 berth with a really miserable old woman, her daughter and her daughter's young baby. they were the messiest people i've ever seen in my life! after day one there were crisp packets, cake wrappers, rice, curry and all manner of crap strewn everywhere on their bottom two bunks - i was glad to be in the top berth and well away from it all though the smell caught at the back of my throat which was quite annoying. actually the stench coming from the whole carriage after 2 days was pretty hideous! the baby was the cutest thing i've ever seen and was really well behaved, which was a blessing as when they got on i thought "uh-oh... screaming baby for 2 days... augh!!"

usually on the train in 2ac you get a plug socket so i didn't bother charging my ipod or mini dvd player thinking i could just plug them in when i got there. silly, silly david! had i learned nothing from my trip in india? of course there was no charge point, so i read my book for the most part, and got some good work done on the best man speech i have to give in just under 2 weeks... it's not worrying me at all i promise! ordinarily i would sit in one of the doorways smoking, drinking chai and watching india glide past but on this train i had a tyrant of a conductor. every time i got settled in he would tell me to get back to my seat, despite protestations that i had travelled all over india on the train and had never encountered a problem before. which really sucked as this journey was my farewell to india. i was crossing the whole subcontinent so it seemed the perfect opportunity to sit and reflect on my time here. oh well, the view from the window was just as good i guess.

so now i'm back in mumbai and i'm having a great time. i had yesterday to myself which was top, visiting the sights i had seen before to take one last look and chuckling to myself about how scared and shocked i was by the place when i first got here in january. compared to the rest of india this place is a little slic

e of heaven. it's pretty clean, there's pavements, coffee shops, restaurants, everyone speaks english and it's so not scary at all!!!. i met with kim and hannah again this morning, we had booked a room for the three of us at bentley's back in january and paid the deposit and everything. bentley's had no record of this, despite the girls having a receipt! so they lost their 2000 rupees which sucks big time. i reckon we should write to the lonely liar, as they have bentley's as "our pick" and it shouldn't be... the gits. luckily my hotel owner is cool and he's put a mattress in my twin room so we're going to watch movies (superbad is on the list... :D) eat cake and have a fun last night for them in india - they fly home tomorrow morning. today we've spent all day wandering and shopping. first to crawford market to get a bucketload of spices, then to fashion street (the mg road) and back to colaba to actually buy some stuff from the street hawkers we've ignored the other times we've been here. the art of haggling is our bitch.. we've gotten so so good at it after 3 1/2 months travelling that we've gotten some real bargains!

i'm really going to miss this place, india has gotten under my skin and i love it, i really do. i'm ready to come home though. bangers, mash and onion gravy for tea on thursday if i'm lucky!

train ticket madness, mother teresa and a blessing from a brahmin

i woke up early yesterday with three objectives. 1) get a train ticket sorted. 2) get some new specs (i lost mine on koh tao in a moment of dawn swimming with cocktails madness...) and 3) go visit mother teresa's motherhouse. i grabbed some breakfast at the blue sky cafe, which is a traveller institution on sudder street (though i can't think why as the food was average and every traveller in there kept themselves to themselves.) the lonely liar said the place was buzzing with travellers exchanging tales

and advice but i guess that marked the end of the blue sky's heyday. something i've noticed is that anything the lonely liar recommends or raves about is invariably crap. once the establishment has a recommendation i guess the effort stops, they are guaranteed custom as for the first day in any new city you always stick to what the guidebook says until you've found your feet. that's the law.

so anyway, after a mediocre brekky i headed onto park street which is the main shopping drag. i don't know if i've mentioned this site before, but indiamike has been a lifesaver on many occasions. they helped me to find a well established british opticians who would be able to whip me up some new specs - some sexy ralph lauren ones, 58 quid including the lenses! the traffic here is just as barmy as everywhere else in india, but with an added twist... pretty much every street here is one way, but at 2pm every day the whole system reverses so cars have to go the other way!! i'd missed the nuts factor of india while i was in thailand and in this kolkata really hasn't let me down! so needless to say being sans-specs was causing me a bit of trouble as i have zero peripheral vision on my left side and the traffic just zooms around here, ignoring pretty much all traffic rules and changing directions at the drop of a hat! so yeah, i'm all kitted out in spiffy new specs and i look incredibly good :D

where was i...? ah yes, after i bought my new specs i headed over to howrah station to try and sort out a ticket to mumbai. over a million people pass through this station every day, and i reckon most of them must have been there when i was. i thought cst in mumbai was busy - there was absolutely no way on this earth i was going to get a ticket before next week so i hung around a while people watching and then jumped on a ferry across the hooghly river to the main side of town. i sneaked a few photos of the howrah bridge (apparently it's illegal to photograph it for some reason) which made me feel all naughty.

my next mission was to get to the motherhouse of mother teresa's order. i knew that all i had to do was go down park street and chuck a left at some point.... but at which point i wasn't entirely sure... i used the metro to get to park street, something i had been looking forward to. i don't know what it is but i love underground systems, the ones in delhi, singapore and bangkok were fab, really clean and well maintained and reliable, who wants to guess what the one in kolkata's like? i'll give 50p to the winner... well, it was old, rusty, dirty, no signs or maps and actually what i expected a metro in india to be like. it was crowded, at each station it was every man for himself and every stop or so the thing would halt suddenly and unexpectedly in the middle of the tunnel. what an experience!!

i got hideously lost trying to find mother teresa's house which i am actually thankful for, as i got to see parts of kolkata i ordinarily wouldn't have. kiddies playing in the street, families going about their hard, impoverished lives on the roadside, people washing under leaking pipes, men sifting through garbage dividing plastics and metals up for re-sale and maybe food for the day. it really saddened me to see my fellow man in such a shit state, so hopeless and with absolutely nothing yet managing to cling on to existence by any means possible. for maybe a mile up to mother teresa's house i saw all kinds of horridness, so so many people in such a bad way. when i got there and looked around the motherhouse, saw her tomb and her simple room i was really humbled, and aware that i was in the presence of someone special. the pope blessed her in a way that means she's one step down from being a saint (forgive me for not knowing the exact terminology) and after seeing the poverty around her and reading about the sacrifices she made in her life to help those in need i could see why. i sat in the main chapel which houses her tomb for maybe 15 minutes as kolkatans filed in silently, pressed their foreheads against her simple white marble tomb and uttered silent prayers. it was altogether an overwhelming afternoon and another experience i will never forget.

i had an interesting time trying to get back to sudder street. the taxi drivers weren't interested as the one way system had switched so it would be a pain in the ass to get me there so i got in a rikshaw and waited for 3 others to join me, apparently they always fill up before they leave unlike the ones elsewhere in india. he dropped me off about a million miles away so i ended up walking the rest. before i turned in i bought a train ticket from one of the travel agents. well, i gave him lots of money and he said come back tomorrow.... so having achieved everything i set out to for the day i flomped in my hot, smelly skank-o-rama(tm) hotel room. i'd felt a little bit left out of conversations with fellow travellers about bedbugs and cockroaches before but now i have some of my very own! i'm not complaining though, the room is as cheap as chips, the shower's one of the best i've had on this trip and there's a swift internet cafe across the road from which i am typing this over-long blog post. last night i was a very lucky little essex boy indeed. as i was channel surfing hoping for some bionic woman or at the very least some bones i heard "du du du duuuuuh the chaaaaampions" and it was the arsenal - v - liverpool game! i of course watched it and finally got to sleep at about 3am.

today has been tip top also. it started with me going to the travel agent and him telling me that my ticket had been cancelled, so i collected my refund and headed off into the kolkata noise grumbling about the fact i should have bloody done it myself. i found a masala dosa man on the street and breathed two in for my breakfast before flagging down a taxi and heading to fort william, site of the black hole of calcutta. i knew that the place was off-limits to civilians as it is now an indian army base but i thought i'd try my luck anyways, even if only to get a glimpse of the place. no dice. as soon as i walked through the main gate i was accosted by two soldiers in funny hats and politely but firmly asked to leave. i asked if there was anywhere i could see the building and they said no, there was nothing to see anyway.

i suspected they were fibbing but i needed to crack on and get to my next destination, the kali temple in the south of the city. the holiest of all hindu temples in kolkata, i was alarmed at my taxi driver's blank gaze when i asked him to take me there. his english was perfect so it can't have been a language thing, and it wasn't until after we had asked about 3 people that he knew where to go. what a cool afternoon! i wandered around with one of the brahmin, a chap called rasbehari who told me all about the history of the place and the ceremonies that take place within. he showed me the inside of the temple, where maybe 2 dozen faithful worshippers were whipping themselves up into all kinds of frenzies, and then took me to a strange, gnarled old tree which has it's own shrine built around it. the tree was covered in small clay stones attached to it by means of thin yellow and red thread. rasbehari explained that hindus believed that the tree would grant them blessings of fertility and long life, and young newlyweds would come here and offer the clay, one hair from each of their heads and a small offering (in the form of cash usually) to be granted such a blessing. i chatted some more with my new priest-friend and i was invited to the sacrifice the next day - each day they sacrifice a goat to appease kali as she is quite the badass, and they then cook the goat with rice and hand out the food to the many needy people who reside around the temple. i don't know whether i will go or not, i don't think i would have any trouble watching the animal die - after all i have killed rabbits and chickens myself back in my roughty-toughty army boy days - i think i would be uncomfortable being present at a very holy ceremony when i am not part of the religion involved. we'll see, i'll think on it some more tonight as i battle with the humidity, bedbugs and cockroaches in my room tonight trying to sleep. as i headed back to sudder street i tried again to get a train ticket, this time from a more reputable looking establishment. i again gave the chap lots of money, again the chap said come back tomorrow... watch this space.....

i've just scrolled up and seen how much i've written... sorry... there's a lot going on here!

kolkata

sorry for the spam-blogging but i've had a great day and thought i'd share it with you all.

so i'm back in india and i feel awesome! i don't know what it is about this place but i felt instantly at home when i landed. something about thailand never really sat right with me, i think it's because you get off the plane at bangkok and everything is so easy, everything is clean and (relatively) ordered. you don't have to graft for your travel. you go to a travel agent, buy a ticket, get on a bus and you're there - everything works and everything is done for you. plus there's the fact that i feel like a pioneer again now i'm back, i saw more westerners in a day in thailand than i have on my whole trip in india - i don't think i like that kind of travelling but i definitely needed the 3 weeks or so there to kick back and relax .

i'm in kolkata (calcutta) and the poverty is everywhere. lining every street are homeless people and i've lost count of the amount of naked kids i've seen playing in the rubbish today. i arrived pretty early this morning after a nightmare travel day and a half from koh tao. i shared a cab with a crazy girl called maya from new zealand who has no guidebook, no real idea about india and was just going to wing it here for a few months. when she told me this i grinned and said "you'll love it, watch out for rikshaw drivers they're bastards.. oh, and keep a stack of 10's in your pocket nobody in this country has any change" and couldn't really think of anything else to say. the thing about this place is that no amount of preparation, advice, hints or tips can really prepare you for this chaotic, contradictory, wonderfully nutso country. looks like the time in thailand has done the trick as when i left here i was pretty sick of it all.

so, after a fairly hectic cab ride i found a nice enough room for 300 rupees with a tv and (allegedly) a hot shower and had a wee snooze. this afternoon i have been wandering around the victoria memorial which is easily as impressive as the taj mahal. going to stay here for maybe 3 days to check out some colonial goodness before heading to mumbai on the 30 hour train - eeshk!!
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now i'm off to hunt me down some food (when i've finished gmail chatting with young christopher plumb....) thai food is lush but i love the indian food more. maybe it's the fact i get to eat with my hands and throw it all over my face.. who knows....