Zonino

Hi there.

I’m thinking seriously about blogging. This is a warning.

I’m not going to ‘blog’ about anything that interests you. I’m going to ‘blog’ about boring crap that only I care about.

I’m just saying.

Tim

I’d love to just post some photos from the last 10 days (but the 88 hours on a boat) but I haven’t taken all that many and I haven’t got an internet connection up to the task of uploading the ones I  have taken… It’s all going to have to wait.

None the less, you can rest assured that so far it has been amazing times. Very beautiful, very calm, very relaxed. I have developed a whole new appreciation for a simple hammock.

There has been a surprising amount of rain over the last days which I’m assured (almost) isn’t the monsoon. That should start at the end of this month which, not coincidentally, will be when I leave the Anderman Islands alone for a year or two and head back to big bad Delhi before winging my way back to the UK.

Right now I’m in Port Blair to extend my permit to be here and to head to the seldom seen wonders of Little Anderman with my new friends Dabu, Simon and Fred (and old friend Briar). Dabu runs one of the resorts on Havlock but is on holiday now. We are tagging along. Should be good times, though apparently there are a lot of sandflies.

Oh, and my UK phone seems to have died. I should be able to put the SIM card in another phone but it does mean I’ll be online less as I was using the wonders of modern mobile technology to keep up to date with my email. No longer.

I don’t have time to say much (for which you can be greatful) but the summary is that we went to Sikkim, it was awesome though a little cold. We are now in Kolkata on the way to the Anderman Islands where we will chill for a couple of weeks before heading back to the mainland. After that I will go to Nepal (probably) and Briar will go to the North West to do a lot of Yoga and check out the mountain wastelands.

I suspect there will be no cell phone signal in the middle of the Bay of Bengal so don’t expect any communication for the next few days. We will be amusing ourselves with a book of card games and a pack of cards – and possibly with a couple of bottles of booze.

The Madness of India is even more mad coming from Sikkim and the hill stations than it is coming from London. Perhaps no shock there.

I know I’m not the best at it, but I’m going to try to be brief. I’m sure you’ll agree it’s for the best.

Darjeeling is awesome. Such a great town. The people are friendly, the geography is amazing and the weather is active. We came up in a massively overloaded ‘Jeep’ which in any normal place would have seated at most 9 people, probably 8. Here it seated 12. 4 on each of the bench seats. Check out how squashed the driver is:

Note that I took the photo while sitting in another row of 4 behind the 8 people you can see. This was a normal Toyota Highlux type vehicle. Not all that large (as seen from the outside in the next photo on the flickr page – with it’s bonnet up after over heating).

We can’t see a lot from Darjeeling at the moment because there hasn’t been enough rain to clear the air. We got rained on today and are hoping there is more overnight so we can see the mountains tomorrow.

One of the other highlights has been the Tibetan Refugee Self Help Center where they sell hand made rugs.

I’ve purchased one, but at they are made to order I wont see it until at least November. They are very cool though and it’s nice to know your money is going to the people making the product rather than to a middle man.

Oh, and we finally saw some Tigers though they were in the zoo and so don’t really count. Still, The Most Awesome Animal In The World.

Brevity hasn’t gone my way as much as I’d hoped. I’ll try harder next time… I promise.

So yeah… Holi. What a crazy event. I ended up sitting with a bunch of Rickshaw drivers who were well and truly plastered. Holi is seemingly a day entirely for men and man, did they make the most of it. It was filthy. I saw a lot more of those indian men that i really wanted to… If you know what i mean. It was an interesting experience but not one I’d rush to do again. Not in the same way anyway.

Anyway after that we one more day in Varanasi before heading to Kolkata on another night train. There was a young guy working at the hotel who had got us some beer the day before and who offered to take us around the town and show us the sights. We started off at dawn (!) with a little boat trip up the Ganges which was very cool. We then checked out a couple of temples, one Hindi, one Muslim – which had 800KG of gold plating – and then on to what was really the main attraction, the silk shop.

I really enjoyed the silk shopping. The stuff was nice, but better than that was the process. It took over two hours of sitting and chatting and drinking tea to buy some silks. We talked about all sorts of things. Cricket, traveling, Holi, cost of living in London… they told us some jokes that weren’t really funny but they loved them so much and laughed so much that suddenly they were funny. We didn’t buy huge amounts but it was nice stuff. The main thing I got was a big bed/duvet cover and some scarves. It was a lot of fun.

After the silk shop we got some lunch and after going back to the hotel we misplaced our guide somewhere (we really have no idea what happened to him – hopefully the hotel managers didn’t find out that he was guiding us or he might have got in a lot of trouble as he wasn’t aloud to) but we managed to fend for ourselves well enough. We’d done the most interesting bits by then anyway – at least as far as we know.

Anyway, that evening we got out next train to Kolkata. This time in AC2 class which means there is aircon and its only two bunks high rather than three. It turns out that it also means they supply linen, have curtains between you and the corridor and have a pretty decent meal service (which cost an additional 64 rupees both both of us – less than a pound). Because it has AC, it also has sealed windows (like any British train) so it was also much quieter. I slept really well. As well as I normally would have in a hotel I think.

Waking up and being in a different city is weird and Kolkata is a very different city. The roads have a totally different feel about them, primarily because there is a much lower concentration of autorickshaws and many more actual cars, mostly taxis which are universally Austin Ambassadors. Very old school. Kolkata also seems much more friendly than Delhi. So far its my favorite.

We went to the shipping office on Friday to buy our tickets to the Anderman Islands but they turned us away. I’m pretty sure they just couldn’t be bothered and we should have been more insistent… Oh well.

As we had the weekend to fill in we did the most logical thing which is to go to a Tiger reserve! Unfortunately, we didn’t get to see any tigers, you’re seemingly pretty lucky if you do. No one from our tour company had seen one for over 2 weeks. This is the largest concentration of tigers anywhere in the world (i think) but there are still only 280ish of them. Still, it was nice being out of the cities and in some more natural environs (which in this case meant endless mangrove forest). We saw monkeys and wild spotted deer and monitor lizards which were all cool though clearly not in the same ball park as a Tiger.

The most alarming thing was the bus ride to the boat… Man, Indian drivers have a lot of faith! The stuff they do every 15 seconds is amazing and in any other country would get you arrested pretty much instantly. Accelerating until the last possible moment all the time no matter what is in front of them. Never looking behind just trusting that they will have heard the horns of anything coming. There were so many close calls in each 4 hour journey. I got talking to a French Canadian couple who’ve spent a lot of time in India over the last three years and they said this was nothing… At one point they were in a bus which killed a motor cyclist… Traumatic for them but no one else seemed all that phased apparently. It really must happen all the time. We saw two rolled over trucks on the way out (one of which might have been there for a day or two but was still smoldering) and a car crash on the way back. That said, a lot of people use the roads and don’t die. Blind chance is still on the side of the billion people still using the roads.

We went to the shipping office again today (Monday) and got the bookings done in only an hour and a half! The guy who was doing the booking went off for tea breaks and possibly some sort of staff meeting half way through. I haven’t seen apathy like that in quite some time. I think it even surpassed London sales clerks. We are traveling ‘delux’ which basically means Briar can have her own bathroom to throw up in as she apparently gets sea sick. Still, three days on a boat can’t help but be fun… Right? I’ll be taking a book.

We are now going to head up to Darjeeling for a week or so but have once again not made a plan until the last minute so we are going to have fun getting a ticket for the night train. We’re going to go talk to the tourist office at the main station tomorrow… I suspect we will be in Kolkata for at least another couple of days.

Oh, and I’ve put up more pictures on Flickr. There is a link to my photostream on the right.

I’m finally getting some photos uploaded but its very slow going.

The fort in Gwalio was awesome. Very cool old engineering to get light and air into underground chambers and a little ‘telephone’ system connecting two palaces 500 meters apart via pipes you could talk down. Nifty. Also lots of complicated architecture to keep the queens (9) apart from the musicians and dancers etc.

After that we got our train to Varanasi. I said it was a 12 hour journey but it was really supposed to be 14 and ended up being more than 16. We were in ’sleeper’ class which means no air con but there is plenty of ventilation and it isn’t that hot at the moment (no more than 30) so temperature wise that was fine. Unfortunately the lower class ticket also seems to mean that you end up with more people trying to muscle in on your space. Each bay of the carriage has 8 beds (2×3 on one side of the gangway and 2 more against the other wall) which is pretty efficient use of the available space but until about 2am there were an extra 6 people crammed in to our area. Some sitting awake or asleep, some lying down between the bunks. There was one guy, in army uniform, who had a great night bus sleep going on… Constantly almost falling over, swaying side to side back to front and completely totally asleep. Only quite vigorous shoving and shouting seemed to rouse him in the slightest despite his amazing ability to not quite fall.

After 2am I did manage to sleep but not exceptionally well and only until about 6 when it got light and people started moving around and getting on and off the train again. The train was far from express as it had to stop at a huge number of stations and seemed to wait at some for an exceptionally long time. Once for an hour or so (before alarmingly setting off in the opposite direction).

Brair did some Hindi lessons while she was in Delhi without me and she was going over some ‘home work’ in the train when a couple of younger guys got on… They ascertained that we were from NZ, politely gloated about the cricket and then proceeded to instruct Briar on her Hindi… They thought her accent was hilarious. Every time she said something in Hindi the main guy would burst out laughing, but he seemed to be able to work out what she was saying which is nice. I’m amazed she can remember as much as she can but some of the sounds in Hindi are pretty hard for a kiwi tongue to get around.

So now we are in Varanasi! With all the Ghats leading down to the river where people wash, prey etc. It’s not the filthiest looking river I’ve ever seen (it looks much better than the Thames) but apparently there are also several sewers leading into it within the same area. It’s not a safe place for your body but seemingly it will save your soul (or the Hindi equivalent who’s name I forget).

Tomorrow is Holi, a religious festival celebrating the coming of spring, though I’m not sure I understand the affect of that given the warm climate and the lack of a real winter. Holi is marked with bonfires (tonight!) and the throwing of a lot of dye and paint. Though technically that doesn’t start till tomorrow if you look like a target you’ll get hit today – and even last night. Briar, as tall blondish white women seems to qualify as a target far more than I do though we’ve both been got. We don’t mind as this was one of the reasons we came here and we bought clothes especially but some of the other guests at the hotel seemed a little more put out.

Another unfortunate side effect of being here for a the festival is that all the shops and restaurants will be closed tomorrow. We haven’t really bought food to eat later before so this is new to us. We’ve found a little bakery and some street fruit so we should be OK. Apparently the hotel might be able to sort us out a cup of tea if we smile nicely.

The travel plans have hit a bit of a hitch. We are still in Agra (the city with the Taj Mahal) but we can’t get any transport out… The hotel is trying to sort something out for us but it looks grim. We might have to stay here another night and the trains to varanasi (where we are planning to go) only go in the evening. 21:15 and 23:30. And it takes 12 hours.

We are both learning lessons. Primarily that we need to book transport more than a day or two in advance.

After a couple of days in Varanasi we will be heading to kolcutta for a bit. More because it is close to other things than because we want to be there. There is a boat from there to the Andoman Islands for example… 56 hours of boating action.

(Time passes)

Since writing the above, we are now in Gwalio… which isn’t in any way on the way to where we are going except that there is a connecting train. We just finished lunch after a 2.5hour “local” train where we didn’t have reserved seating. I think we were a bit of a novelty, especially to the kids. We did manage to sit down for most of the journey though we were definately in the wrong class of carrage. I think the ticket inspector just gave us the benifit of the doubt because we are forign.

We are about to go check out another fort (the third so far) and then wait around a bit before getting an autorickshaw back to the train station for our overnight (12 hour) sleeper train to Varanasi. Fun.

Still, at least we are off the hard core Lonely Planet trail for a bit.

The header says most of it. We are leaving Delhi today for our first indian train trip. Briar is very ready to leave having been in this big dirty loud city for almost three weeks now. I’m not going to be too upset either.

Yesterday we went to the Red Fort in Old Delhi which was cool. I took a bunch of pictures but uploading anything from the hotel internet is pretty dire.  I had also hoped to get local internet on my phone but so far that’s been a complete failure. The guy in the shop said it wasn’t possible – on any network – but I think he was full of shit. There must be a way.

Oh, and Briar bought a tiny little Laptop – a Lenovo S10 – so at least I will be able to do things like this more easily.

Irritatingly HSBC have blocked me out of my internet and phone banking and don’t take my calls until late in the day. It isn’t a problem but it is annoying. Especially as they have done it because i put my code in wrong over the phone after they declined to give me cash when I arrived. I’m pretty sure I had it right.

So yeah… The plan is something like: Agra for the Taj -> Ranthabore(sp?) National Park for Tigers, Varanasi for a religious paint throwing festival then on to somewhere else… Not quite sure where yet.

Hopefully the hotel internet will be better at our hotel in Agra and I will be able to upload some scaled down photos.